Welcome to Season 2 of The Family Dinner Project Podcast! In each of our episodes, Content Manager Bri DeRosa and Executive Director Dr. Anne Fishel will talk through tough topics related to family meals. Pull up a chair and grab a plate — we’re serving up real talk about family dinner! You can get caught up on older episodes here.
It’s Back to School season, and we’re talking about how to get back into the swing of family dinners during the busy nights ahead! In this episode of The Family Dinner Project Podcast, Bri and Annie tackle back to school family dinners: How to plan them, what to eat, and how to manage everyone’s big feelings with smart conversation ideas. Plus, Annie gives advice on easing back into the routine, and challenges Bri to a “lightning round” with questions about different ages and stages. What to do when a teenager suddenly decides they’re a vegetarian this school year? How to deal with a preschooler who suddenly won’t eat their favorite foods? And how to manage the tough transition when one kid heads off to college and leaves an empty seat — and a sibling — behind?
Key Takeaways:
- Go to 5:25 for Bri’s tips on coming up with ideas for easy meals
- Go to 14:53 for Annie’s thoughts on transitioning into the school year with conversation and a ramp-up to routine
- Go to 20:11 for the “lightning round” — Bri’s answers to questions about teens experimenting with vegetarian diets, preschoolers who refuse their favorite foods, and the first family dinners after sending a child to college
Related Links:
Full Episode Transcript:
Bri DeRosa: Welcome back to the Family Dinner Project Podcast!
I am Bri DeRosa, and with me as always is Dr. Anne Fishel.
Anne Fishel: Great to be with you as always, Bri.
Bri DeRosa: And I am really excited about today’s episode, Annie, because it’s almost back to school time and we have not ever done a back to school Family Dinner Podcast. So I think it’s time.
Anne Fishel: I think it’s, I think it is too. We have lots of resources on the website.
Bri DeRosa: Yes.
Anne Fishel: But for those who like to listen in, this is the first of Back to School content.
Bri DeRosa: I have to say, I’ve been on the back-to-school hamster wheel for well over 15 years now, and it’s, I feel like it’s always a challenge. You know, just when you think you’ve got it nailed, the kids get older and there are new schedules or new competing priorities and everybody’s needs change. I feel like at every age and stage you’re kind of relearning the back to school ropes and trying to figure out what’s gonna work this year. It’s never the same.
So I think today we’re just gonna try to talk people through, after all of your years of experience and my years of experience with sending kids back to school, we’re gonna try to navigate the transition from summer to school year and what happens with family dinners and all of the planning.
Anne Fishel: I’m excited. I know already that I’m going to feel a little bit regretful that we hadn’t met 20 years ago or 25 years ago, and I could have benefited from all your planful skills. Because as you know, I’m very much a fly by the seat of my pants kind of family dinner planner, or non planner, and I’ve learned already so much from you, but I don’t have my kids at home to apply those lessons to
Bri DeRosa: I have to say, if you had met me 25 years ago, I was just starting out in all of this planning and so forth, myself, I was not yet fully fledged, so maybe it wouldn’t have helped that much. You know, I’ve developed over the years. But, you know, I think it’s a, it’s a great place to start, the point that you and I are both very different in the way that we have approached family meals and meal planning and cooking and shopping and all of the things, and my own mom was not, did not approach things the way that I do, right?
I started doing things the way that I do them because I could not wrap my brain around how I was supposed to get out of the grocery store on time, on budget, and with everything I needed if I didn’t have a really good plan. I can’t do it the other way. But my mom was really good at going to the store and just buying a bunch of stuff and she always had a freezer full of meat and a, you know, cupboard full of this and that. And she would just decide day to day which she was gonna make. I’m not that person. Some people are that person. And I wanna honor right at the beginning that it, we’re all different.
Anne Fishel: I think I, I am more like your mother.
Bri DeRosa: I think a lot of people do it that way, and I just, I just never could find the trick. I would end up way overspending or then wanting to make something and not having a key ingredient and feeling really frustrated. And so I thought, if I just decide what we’re going to eat, and make the list off what we’re going to eat. And then it kind of went from, I’m gonna do that for one week to, I’m gonna do that for two weeks at a time.
And then it went from that to, you know what, it takes me actually less time overall to sit down and plan out like a month’s worth of meals than it does if I try to find the time to sit down once a week or once every two weeks, I just get in the rhythm and I can do it right and not have to think about it again. Not everybody’s like that, but for me, planning a lot in advance takes the mental pressure off.
Anne Fishel: Bri, do you have, like, years and years of journals of your monthly planning?
Bri DeRosa: I do. I do. Yeah. And people always ask me like, oh, so what apps do you use? I don’t use apps. I don’t. I have, I carry a notebook with me everywhere I go.
And a lot of parents will resonate with this idea that you spend a lot of time waiting for kids. You sit in your car in a parking lot, right? You’re texting your kid going, where are you? And if I always have a notebook with me, I can open it up and be like, oh, I just thought of that pasta dish that we haven’t eaten in a while. I’m gonna put that on the list for next month and I can just kind of always be running with it.
So yeah, I have a, I have years and years worth of, and I actually just the other day I got stuck. And I grabbed an old notebook from, you know, a couple of years ago, but from this same time period, like summer, and I opened it up and I went, well, what were we eating, you know, three Julys ago? It got me unstuck.
Anne Fishel: That’s fantastic. You’re kind of your own research assistant!
So can we drill down a little bit on where these ideas come from? And also some, what are some of your best ideas, if you would share them with us about how to do quick dinners, dinners that you have mostly in your pantry, kind of, sort of like your mother might have done.
How, how do you go about pulling out a week’s worth of dinners?
Bri DeRosa: Yeah. Well, so I mean, I think there’s, there’s always a little bit of a template that you keep in mind, right? So if you eat a variety of proteins, you sort of always are thinking, well, I don’t want five nights in a row of chicken, so I’m gonna try to come up with a rotation that, you know, there’s gonna be chicken one night and there’s gonna be fish another night, and maybe there’s gonna be beef one night.
I’m gonna be thinking about, there’s always gonna be pasta in my house. My husband’s Italian American. My kids love pasta. Everybody’s kids love pasta and it’s easy. There’s always gonna be one night that’s gonna be, I call it big pot of food night. During the school year where my younger son has sports practice earlier that night than on other nights, he has a longer practice, so they go early and I have to get out the door after that for something. And so we’re all kind of running differently and the easiest way to manage that is to have a big pot of food, chili or soup or stew or something that just sits and can reheat and doesn’t go bad. Right. So there’s always gonna be big pot of food nights.
Anne Fishel: So family members can eat that at different times.
Bri DeRosa: Exactly. One of our things is, you know, we try not to let anybody eat alone. So when my younger son eats, I usually will go ahead and eat with him so that I’ll have something in my stomach before I have to rush out the door later. And so I’ll sit with him and we’ll eat early, and then my husband and my older son usually go to the gym.
And then they come home later and they’re hungry and they eat together, right? Everybody eats with somebody. So that’s how I sort of think about it, right? I frame out, oh, okay, well I’m gonna need a big pot of food and I’m gonna need a pasta night. I’m gonna need this, that, and the other. And then for a lot of people, it’s very helpful to think about things like, oh, maybe you do Taco Tuesday.
Or maybe, um, you know, in my house we do Sunday dinner. And Sunday dinner is almost always going to be either big Italian things, spaghetti and meatballs, or manicotti or something that takes longer to make. Or it’s gonna be something that is a little bit nicer, and takes longer to make than I would usually do.
So it’s gonna be, you know, a couple of roast chickens. It’s gonna be a big pot of beef bourgignon in the winter, or something that I can kind of like be working on all day. And then, yeah, there’s probably gonna be a pizza night or a sandwich night. There’s, you know, there might be a breakfast for dinner night and different iterations of breakfast for dinner.You might do an omelet bar or waffle bar, or you know, we’re gonna do breakfast burritos or something. Right. So you kind of, kind of just have themes and loose variations that I can run with.
Anne Fishel: So I also know that you do a lot with bowls and boards. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Bri DeRosa: Yeah, and we’ve talked about that I think on some other episodes, but yeah.
So a great way to do dinner on really busy nights is to do make your own bowls or make your own whatever. Have a board out, so obviously people are really into charcuterie boards, so that type of thing. We call it a snack plate, we’re not fancy about it. But you know, some cheese, some crackers, some meat, some fruit, some nuts. Right. Throw that out there. That’s, that’s fine. That’s a perfectly good dinner, especially if you’ve been out all day and you’re coming home late.
Bagel board is another one that my kids like. Bowls – you can do anything with a bowl. Right? You can make, we call them sushi bowls, but they’re roughly poke bowls. But we don’t do, we don’t bother with trying to get raw fish, right? So you can do smoked salmon or you can get tempura shrimp from the freezer section and do those instead. Make a sushi bowl, make a burrito bowl. Make a Greek inspired bowl where it’s couscous instead of rice, and you’re adding maybe some ground chicken or ground lamb and some feta cheese and some tzatziki, right?
It’s all just, here’s some chopped up vegetables, whatever’s in the house. Here’s some meat, here’s some cheese, here’s some various seasonings and sauces, and you can make any type of combinations, easy.
Anne Fishel: And each person composes that.
Bri DeRosa: Exactly right. You just throw everything out on the counter and everybody composes their own bowls.
And I know I’ve had a few people say to me over the years, oh, but I, I hate doing stuff like that ’cause I feel like I’m standing there chopping vegetables forever. Understood. Sometimes that feels really annoying. But on the other hand, if you’re doing bowls one night, then you could do omelets or pizzas or wraps or something another night and you can use the same array of vegetables.
And for us, you know, if we’re packing lunches for the kids, my kids will eat sliced cucumbers or sliced peppers, or some chopped up grape tomatoes alongside their sandwich. So just chuck a handful of already sliced veggies in the lunchbox and you’re kind of, you’re gonna use it up.
Anne Fishel: You’re giving yourself a running start for the next meal.
Bri DeRosa: Exactly. Yeah. So you’re not ever doing it just for one thing at a time.
Anne Fishel: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. As you know, I’m hosting 16 family members for lunch and dinner for a week, and I’m thinking I’m, I’m leaning on those boards, I’m leaning on those bowls.
Bri DeRosa: Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely. And you can do so many fun things. I think the thing is everybody has their favorite sauces and salad dressings on hand.
So if you like barbecue sauce, do some pulled pork or some chicken and some corn and some cheese, and some different veggies and some rice, and put barbecue sauce over the top. If you like Caesar salad, you have Caesar dressing in your house, probably. You can do any number of things with Caesar dressing, it’s never as hard as people make it.
It’s just like, what do you like to eat? Okay, use that.
Anne Fishel: Those are words to live by. I like that, Bri.
Bri DeRosa: It really like, it’s really that easy, I think. And a lot of times people I think are not confident cooks and that’s hard, but it’s the same principle no matter what. You know, if you’re doing a sheet pan dinner, you can make a sheet pan dinner with any ingredients you have on hand.
You really can. You’re just throwing it on a sheet pan, putting it in the oven. You just have to know how long things take to cook, but, and then season it the way you like it, add the sauce that you like. It’s just really not, you don’t need a recipe, I think. It’s not, it’s not rocket science.
Anne Fishel: Right, right. Sheet pans are another – It’s not necessarily, well, it’s quick, but it’s also quick on the other end, ’cause you only of course have one pot to clean.
Bri DeRosa: Right. Yeah. And that’s something I, I try to hold to when I can, ’cause my husband does the dishes. And I know how annoying it is if I make something really elaborate and I’ve used like every pot and pan in the kitchen, right? So I offset that other nights with, Hey, we’re doing a sheet pan tonight, or we’re using the grill, even better. You don’t need to, don’t need to do anything. But yeah, sheet pan dinner is really easy.
Anne Fishel: You do make it sound easy, Bri.
Bri DeRosa: You know, I think the important thing is when you’re talking about back to school time, the overwhelm is actually, it’s not just about like what are you going to eat, but it’s also about like back to school shopping, back to school scheduling and that, right?
So like part of the battle here is you have to be ready to stock up. There are things that you wanna have on hand, right? Like you always wanna have rice on hand. You always wanna have canned beans or dried beans. You always wanna have, in my house, canned tomatoes of various types, right. I need diced, I need whole, I need crushed, whatever. I need that on hand.
Different types of pasta things, things that you always wanna have and different, the seasonings that you like. You wanna always have that stuff. But I think, you know, at back to school time, people are also thinking about like, oh my gosh, lunches and snacks and so like, stop, don’t overbuy, don’t overthink it.
We all come out of the starting gate at the beginning of the school year trying to be better than we are. This is like, really aspirational. The parents, we go, oh, I’m gonna get an A plus this year. But like, nobody’s grading you. There’s a middle ground, right? For dinner, for lunch, for snacks, for everything.
I have a big cookie jar in the pantry and we keep that for granola bars, individual trail mix packs, you know, little like single serve snacks. If that jar is half full, I am well stocked. Just keep it really easy, is my point. Have a place where if that is stocked, you know, you’re good. You don’t have to buy more, you don’t, you don’t need 20 yogurts and three packs of cheese sticks.
You just don’t. You need enough for a week, right? Like keep your, keep your expectations calm. That’s all you need is like one week at a time. And the same thing with dinner. You don’t need your whole freezer stocked before the first day of school. You’re gonna go back to the store.
Anne Fishel: Yeah. Right.
Bri DeRosa: Just know what you’re going to eat that first week of school and make sure you have what you need, along with something like pasta and tomato sauce, that in case things go awry one night, that’s your fallback meal.
Anne Fishel: Well, as I said, I wish I’d had these words to live by back in the day, but I’m glad our listeners do. Should we talk about some other aspects of back to school?
Bri DeRosa: Yeah, so I mean, do you wanna, I think, I think probably the transition from summer to back to school in terms of the emotional wherewithal is really important, right?
Anne Fishel: Yeah. I mean it’s, I think it’s a, can be kind of a bittersweet time. I remember this with my own kids, that we so enjoyed the relaxation of summer and the spending so much time outdoors and with much less rigid schedules and so on. And then as our thoughts turned to school, we knew it was gonna be a dramatic change and there was some excitement about that, of course, starting a new year.
So, I mean, I think one very practical thing that can be helpful is to start making that transition to a school schedule maybe with a week ahead of time. Getting kids to wake up maybe not exactly when they would for school, but earlier than maybe they did during the summer, or moving bedtime a little bit earlier so that it’s not quite a shock to the system when the school year starts.
Bri DeRosa: Yeah, I think that’s really important. And I also think there are a lot of families in that situation that you described where, you know it’s hard to get back into the swing of school ’cause summer was really fun and you, it was really relaxed. And then there are a whole bunch of other families for whom summer is kind of a, just a different kind of chaos because they’re navigating camps and childcare.
And it can be really, really difficult, that constantly shifting schedule of the summer or you know, maybe you’re lucky and your kids are in the same camp all eight weeks or whatever. But it’s a different, just a different routine. Sometimes it can feel really relieving to parents to actually just get back to the school year where you feel like you know a little bit better what’s gonna be happening.
Anne Fishel: Yeah.
Bri DeRosa: But it’s still, it’s whiplash for the kids, right? Yeah. It doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter how old they are, either.
Anne Fishel: That’s right.
Bri DeRosa: Teenagers are still the, the new classes, new schedule, new…is my best friend in my AP history or not? Who’s in my lunch? It’s still a thing that they have to get used to every year.
Anne Fishel: Yeah. So I’m thinking about conversation, transitional conversation at the dinner table. You know, what are, what are you looking forward to? What are your three wishes for next year? What do you think will be most different about next year compared to last year? What would make it easier? How can I help you make this transition?
Are there any friends that you’d like to have over this week, so that, you know, you can make that transition a little bit easier? You know, what are you worried about? What are you excited for? Those kinds of questions and, you know, to listen, not to dismiss their worries, not to say, Don’t be silly, that’s not gonna happen.
But really to invite their, their worries and to sort of maybe problem solve or to think about how they faced similar worries and how they’ve gotten through them in the past. Or maybe to share your own stories about starting something new and how that went for you.
Bri DeRosa: Yeah, I think those are all really good ideas.
And I think also, cautioning parents that the first week of school is not the time to go real deep, and it’s the time to make dinner and home like the soft place.
Anne Fishel: Yes.
Bri DeRosa: You know, there’s so much going on. So, you know, things that I always like to do to kind of anchor things around here is, you know, the night before they go back to school, I always try to make something that they really like and that I know makes great leftovers for lunch.
So that, that first day of school, they have something that they brought for lunch that is like, really exciting to them and they’re really gonna enjoy it. It just makes that first day better, right?
Then the first day when they come home. You know, make sure that you have the good snacks, the favorites, and again, make something that they really like for dinner. And it can be really uncomplicated! You know, if your kids really love buttered noodles or cheese quesadillas, like, this is fine. Make that the first, the first night of school dinner, but that they’re coming home to something that’s not an additional challenge to their nervous system. This is really easy. Something we’re gonna eat and feel comforted by.
And don’t go really hard at like, how was school? What did you do, how was it? Tell me everything about all the teachers. If they want to, that’s great. But they might just not feel like they wanna unspool all of that. Don’t, don’t ask. Right. Let them come to you, I think is the thing.
Anne Fishel: Go at it slow. You’ve got the whole year to, to interrogate or to, to wonder with them how school is going. It doesn’t have to be all in the first week. I think that’s what you’re saying. Right?
Bri DeRosa: Right. Yeah. Exactly. And, and you’re gonna be dying to know, and they’re still forming impressions, you know, they’re still figuring it out. Like, how do they feel about this teacher? How do they feel about that math class?
They don’t know. It’s the first day. Give them a little time.
Anne Fishel: So speaking of the first week, I have a little lightning round for you.
Bri DeRosa: Oh gosh. Okay.
Anne Fishel: First night dinners. You ready?
Bri DeRosa: Maybe. Okay.
Anne Fishel: Alright. Here’s the first one. You have, and this is not true of, of you, but this is a hypothetical. You have a teenager who’s come back from a summer away and is now a vegetarian.
How do you think about family dinners, how do you adjust? How do you draw him in?
Bri DeRosa: Yeah, so that’s a great question and I think a couple of things. One is if you, like us, try to eat vegetarian or low meat at least once a week, you’ve already got a few things up your sleeve that you can use as transitional…These are your transitional objects, right? Like, oh, we can make that pasta and this thing and that thing.
The other thing is. I don’t think the whole family necessarily has to go vegetarian. I think you wanna think about having meals where there are component parts that could be vegetarian. So for example, if your family eats fajitas, great. That’s very easy. You can make chicken fajitas and rice and beans and that goes really well together, right? And your vegetarian can have veggie fajitas. You keep the vegetables separate from the chicken when you make the filling and rice and beans, and they’ve got a complete meal.
Think about things like curries where, you know, you can make, we have actually on our site a really good tandoori chicken recipe and a bunch of great vegetarian curries.Those two things would pair together very well for a family dinner. And the people who want the chicken can eat the chicken, and the people who don’t can just eat the veggie curry and the rice and you’re good. Right? So you wanna think about it that way, I think.
And do a lot of the make your own kind of stuff. Make your own pizzas, make your own burritos and wraps and bowls, and again, you’re gonna be able to cater to everybody’s needs without having to completely change the way that you eat.
Anne Fishel: Okay, I like that. Here’s another one from a different age group. It’s a preschooler’s first week of school, and she’s refusing all of her favorite foods.
And she’s become much pickier than she was before. What do you do? How do you talk to her about that?
Bri DeRosa: First of all, you’re thinking about the food in that situation, but it’s not about the food, right? This is such a high demand situation for a preschooler, and when little people refuse foods that they have previously loved, especially during a time of transition, it’s usually just their way of saying that they’re overloaded. Their whole system is overloaded, and they’re just tired. And somebody used the green crayon and they didn’t, you know, they didn’t wanna share. And the preschool smelled funny and…right? Like, whatever. It’s, they’re just done. They’re tired.
So there are a few things you can do. One is you might try serving their favorite food that you were gonna make for dinner. Maybe you make it early. Maybe it’s after school snack, right? And they start eating like a mini meal when they get home from school when they’re really hungry, instead of trying to make ’em wait until 5:30, 6 o’clock, whenever their usual dinner time is when they are just burnt, they’re done. See if that helps.
Another thing you can do is, Okay, that’s fine. Make sure that they get something in their stomach, you know, offer a bedtime snack later – nothing too exciting, but, you know, cereal and milk or you know, bananas and yogurt, something easy so that they’re not going to bed hungry. But then try to reintroduce that favorite food for lunch the next day and see how they do. Right? It’s a process. Give them a week or two.
And they also might have just, you know, encountered some other kids at school who are like, oh, I don’t eat cheese. And they’re trying out, I don’t eat cheese ’cause my peers don’t eat cheese. You know, talk to them about what they might like to eat. But keep it really chill and just know that they’re probably gonna come back out of it.
Anne Fishel: Yeah. That’s great. All right, I have one last one. And this, I think, will be a little closer to home.
It is the first dinner with one child at home and one child off at college.What do you do to acknowledge that this is a different kind of family dinner? To make it special for the child who is at home, to not feel too sad or to acknowledge sad feelings about the child who’s now off on their own adventure at college?
Bri DeRosa: Gosh, this is so hard ’cause I don’t, I don’t know quite yet! For all the listeners out there, Annie’s hitting very close to home.
My first child is going off to college this fall. We do have a lot of experience with him being gone because he, he goes away in the summer quite frequently, so it’s not, I think what’s hard is it’s not gonna feel super different at first.
But I think here are the things that we’re probably gonna do. One, the, the first night, I think we’re probably gonna just break the script entirely and get some favorite takeout, the younger child’s favorite takeout. Right. The one that, like, maybe he would never pick if his brother was home. Let him choose that and just make it a totally different thing where we’re not having the usual family dinner so it doesn’t feel quite so weird. You know?
And then I think the next night or two we’re gonna lean into enjoying things that older child doesn’t like. Younger child is obsessed with cheese. Older child hates cheese. So you know, we’ll make some really like, cheese dinners, or something.
Anne Fishel: Fondue!
Bri DeRosa: Yeah. Right. Exactly. Like things that he just can really enjoy and feel like, yay, I, I don’t get to have this when my brother’s home.
But, you know, try, I think, also to let him take the lead conversationally, purposely not be sitting there talking about like, oh, well what do you think Liam’s doing at college? Oh, well, what do you think he’s eating right now? That’s what we’re gonna wanna talk about, as parents, but I think not. Right?
Instead, like, Hey, what are you doing this week? You know? What are you thinking about? You’re wrapping up your summer internship. What is that like for you? What do you wanna do this weekend before the school year hits that we can do, just the three of us? That maybe was something we wouldn’t have done, you know, that your brother wouldn’t enjoy? And just try to like transition that way.
But I think it’s gonna be hard. You know, I told you I’m thinking about what to make for meals at the end of August and I’m like, Oh, I don’t wanna make that because Liam really likes that and he’s not gonna be home to eat that. But I have to stop thinking that way.
Anne Fishel: Right.
Bri DeRosa: Because he is not gonna be home.
Anne Fishel: He’s gonna be enjoying or not enjoying his own dining hall food.
Bri DeRosa: Yeah. He has a whole, he has a whole life to go live. We will, I am, I will say, keeping a little running list of things that he really enjoys and keeping that aside so that when he is home for Thanksgiving break and for Christmas break, I will be ready with like, oh, these are the things to make, right?
Don’t forget to make this dinner because that’s one of his favorites, and you wanna make sure he gets it before he goes back.
Anne Fishel: Yeah. I mean, you and I are both youngest children.
Bri DeRosa: Mm-hmm.
Anne Fishel: I still remember vividly what it was like when my older sister went off to college. And while it was very, very sad and disorienting and I missed her terribly, there was, there was an upside to having the full attention, upside and downside I guess, of that, of having the full attention on me at the dinner table.
But there’s, you know, there’s something to be leaned in about that.
Bri DeRosa: Yeah, there absolutely is. And you know, there’s, I think, advantages too. With two teenagers at home and everybody’s schedules being crazy, it can be a lot harder to plan and organize meals and make sure, you know, who needs a ride and what’s, where are we going right now?
With one teenager at home, we can be a little bit more relaxed in a way, because we are only dealing with his schedule. We’re only dealing with his needs. And you know, I know that this is a kid who, he might actually prefer not to eat dinner at X time because he’s gotta go do this thing and he’d rather just have a sandwich. And I can deal with making something later if he really wants a full meal, but he might be a little bit more casual about the way that he wants to approach things.
And we can, we can tailor around that instead of trying to fold everybody’s needs into the pot, you know? So, I don’t know, but it will be weird not to have people, you know, poking each other and throwing elbows on the bench across from me. Why are you touching each other? You’re 18 and 16. Why are we still doing this? But they’re brothers and that’s what they do.
Anne Fishel: Sounds familiar. So should we wrap up with our food, fun and conversation for this time of year?
Bri DeRosa: I guess we should. I guess we should. Gosh, so, I think I’m supposed to do food. And I feel like I’ve already, I’ve already given all of the food things, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna say for food, I want you to always make sure that if your kids eat chicken fingers or chicken nuggets or anything like that, make sure you have a bunch of those in your freezer, because not only are you going to make that easy in terms of like lunches or snacks or dinners or whatever, but you’re gonna be able to fold that into family dinners.
You’re gonna be able to use chicken fingers to make a quick chicken parmigiana on a really busy night, right? Throw some sauce and cheese on. There you go. You’re gonna be able to make chicken fingers into chicken Caesar wraps or barbecue chicken wraps. You’re gonna be able to use them to make bird dogs, right, with a hot dog bun and some vegetables and some honey mustard. You can use those as a template for a lot of really fast family dinners when you feel like I don’t, I just don’t know. So that’s my one thing for back to school. It’s an easy transitional object that just makes a lot of things much simpler.
Anne Fishel: Yeah, I love it. Yep. That’s a great tip, Bri.
Alright. I have a new game that I learned from a journalist and I’ve already played it and it’s really fun. So it goes like this: One person is “It,” and she closes her eyes and everybody else at the table picks a number and they might pick a number by a show of hands. And then “It” opens her eyes and she says, tell me a dessert that’s the number you’re guessing. Tell me a vacation. Tell me a TV show. Tell me a type of dog.
So each person takes a turn. If I were taking a turn and I knew the number was one, which is what the “It” person likes the least, I might say for a dessert, if I knew that this was true, an ice cream sandwich. And then for vacation, I might say camping in the woods with no, no showers nearby. That would be my guess for her.
Or what else? For a TV show, I might say…
Bri DeRosa: Real Housewives of New York.
Anne Fishel: Real Housewives. Right, right. Real Housewives. Exactly. And so we’d each take a turn trying to come up with something that was her one, and then when we were done, she would try to guess what number we were all thinking about.
Bri DeRosa: Okay, so like on a scale of one to 10, one being the lowest, 10 being the highest, you guys think of the number, you agree on the number, right? And then you try to rank things based on what her preferences would be.
Anne Fishel: Exactly.
Bri DeRosa: And then she has to guess like, oh, is it a one? Is it a 10? Is it a five? Like, where are we? And you also get to know how well you know that person
Anne Fishel: Exactly. As you go around the table and you offer your, your, your guesses to the, to the “It” person, you can course correct. So if you think somebody gave an answer that was not exactly a one, you might course correct. You know, sort of do something to really hammer home that this is their least favorite thing.
Bri DeRosa: Mm. Okay. Okay. Oh, that’s fun. I’m gonna have to give that one a shot.
Anne Fishel: Yeah.
Bri DeRosa: I feel like that’d be really good too, for like bigger family gatherings.
Like you could have a lot of fun with that at Thanksgiving, for example, if everybody knows each other pretty well, right? Sometimes you have a Thanksgiving table where there’s people who don’t get together very often, but if you know each other really well, you could have a lot of fun with that in a big group.
Anne Fishel: And, but I think even if, if it’s two people or three people, then you just go around the table a couple more times right before the “It” person guesses what the number is.
Bri DeRosa: No, I love that. Oh, that’s a great game. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that one.
So conversation…I think the best thing we can do for conversation is direct people to 100 alternatives to how was your day, right? We did this, I think it was last year or the year before we came up with this. We’ve got a big list, all different ages and stages, but just a hundred ways to avoid asking the question, how was your day or how was school?
Anne Fishel: Which, you know, often gets a monosyllabic answer.
Bri DeRosa: Yes. Ask anything else. So here are the hundred other things that you can ask that will get you much more information and a much more engaging conversation than just saying, tell me about school.How was your day?
So, and that’s on our website. We’re gonna put it in the show notes. But yeah, that’s what I would say for this time of year. You’re, you’ve got a hundred days worth of alternatives here, so it’ll carry you pretty far into the school year.
Anne Fishel: Great. Yeah. That is a, that is a list to hold on to.
Bri DeRosa: It really is. Keep it in your back pocket.
Anne Fishel: Yeah.
Bri DeRosa: Alright, well I think that’s that. I feel like that’s not even close to everything for back to school, but that’s a little running start on back to school. Ideas for things you can eat, games you can play, conversations you can have, and how to make sure that everybody manages their big feelings and time of transition as we head back to school this year.
Anne Fishel: Alright, it’s a wrap.
Bri DeRosa: Alright, thanks so much Annie. And if you have questions, as always, reach out to us. You can find us at our website, social media. Thefamilydinnerproject.org has everything you need. We will see you next time on The Family Dinner Project Podcast.