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Cooking with your family, for health and pleasure
Do you know that families who cook and dine together have better eating habits? Unfortunately, throughout the Western world, people are cooking less than in the past and the act of eating together has also reduced. According to a survey that Dietitians of Canada conducted among 4,000 respondents, the reasons for this include a lack of time (30%), lack of energy (26%), ideas (23%), planning (17%) and cooking skills (3%).
Why cook as a family?
The benefits of home-cooked meals are great though: improving the quality of food (less saturated fat, less salt, more fruits and vegetables, etc.) and especially more quality time with loved ones.
So here are some tips to encourage you to discover the pleasures and benefits of cooking together!
Solutions!
Lack of time and planning
It’s all a matter of organization. Set aside Sunday afternoons to cook together as a family. You will probably even have enough time to prepare the evening meal and others dishes for weeknights or even to freeze them in individual servings. Such provisions will come in very handy on evenings when you are most rushed. Children can get their hands dirty by preparing raw vegetables, fresh fruit and setting the table. Follow our Action plan, which tells you what you can prepare in advance so you can minimize the time spent in kitchen.
It’s also a matter of equipment: Get a pressure cooker and a crock-pot. The pressure cooker lets you prepare delicious meals in a fraction of time (ideal for soups, stews, legumes, etc.). The crock pot, meanwhile, makes it possible to cook your supper slowly and safely, without any supervision, while you are at work. Just put all the ingredients in the crock pot in the morning and voila, when you return, there will be a warm and comforting dinner waiting for you, as well as a wonderful aroma in the house!
Lack of ideas
With all the culinary magazines, cookbooks and food shows on TV and Internet resources, it is practically impossible to run out of ideas! Our can certainly be of help to you, but it will be even better if you follow our menus that almost exclusively use fresh seasonal produce, besides being suited to different tastes and health conditions. If you have young children at home, try out the recipes that have the “Cook for Kids” symbol ( 
). We have over 500.
Lack of cooking skills
Start off with simple, error-tolerant recipes such as soups and stews that contain few ingredients. You will gain experience and confidence. Cooking is no different from many other activities: Just practice a little, because the more you cook, the more you’ll learn and develop a taste for it. Try out recipes from our beginner recipes which have only 6 ingredients and are very easy to make. There are close to 500.
Cooking, an education in time
Another reason to cook and teach this activity to our children is that in an age where we live in a mode of immediacy, “cooking” is a way to reconnect with time. When we cook food, we have to follow certain steps and a process to obtain a result, and it’s not enough to just press “Enter”. And the end result, a delicious meal all together, is totally worth it.
Author
Cinzia Cuneo, founder of SOSCuisine.com, never wanted to neglect the quality of her food. She shares her special expertise to make good food quickly and without complications!
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