Good Good Food

Back in my pre-kid days, when most of my meals were eaten in hotels, airports and client cafeterias, I didn’t have to worry about getting dinner on the table every night. That allowed me to devote all my cooking efforts to planning lovely dinner parties for our friends, on the weekends when I was home. A week or two before a dinner was planned, I would take my favourite cookbooks to bed with me and idly flip through them picking and choosing perfect combinations of dishes (with no ingredient repeats) to make for our friends. It was my hobby and a great way to relax.
Fast-forward to today and our three-soccer-practice, four-ballet-class weeks, getting dinner on the table is a seven-night a week affair and needs to be done as efficiently as possible—no relaxing allowed. But my current obsession with sodium means that I really try to stay away from prepared foods and store-bought frozen foods…which means even more cooking. So I am finding that having a copy of The Good Food Book for Families by Brenda Bradshaw and Cheryl Mutch, MD in my kitchen is like having my own nutrition consultant and executive chef all rolled into one. The cookbook is full of delicious recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinners, snacks and desserts, and also includes menu planning tools and a host of nutritional tips and help on interpreting Canada’s Food Guide for family eating. All the basics are covered (meatball, tuna melts and more) but the recipes I like the most are for the little things like make-your-own ice cream and peanut butter hummus. Off to make dinner now!