Dinner Tonight

Dinner Tonight

Healthy Cooking for a Healthy Texas

New Year’s Eve Food Traditions

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New Year’s Eve Food Traditions Around the World: A Celebration of Culture and Connection

New Year’s Eve is a time for celebration, reflection, and hope for the future. Across the globe, food takes center stage as a way to usher in good fortune, prosperity, and health. While each culture has its unique customs, the common thread is the importance of gathering with loved ones and honoring traditions passed down through generations.

Here are some cherished New Year’s Eve food traditions from around the world:

  • Black-Eyed Peas and Greens (Southern United States): A staple in Southern New Year celebrations, black-eyed peas symbolize coins, and greens represent money. Eating them together is believed to bring prosperity for the year ahead. Eat your Black-Eye Peas in our Black-Eyed Pea and Jalapeno Salsa recipe. 
  • 12 Grapes at Midnight (Spain): In Spain, people eat 12 grapes as the clock strikes midnight—one for each chime—to bring good luck for all 12 months of the coming year.
  • Soba Noodles (Japan): Long soba noodles, eaten at midnight, symbolize longevity. Their length represents a wish for a long life, while their easy-to-cut texture signifies letting go of the past year’s struggles. Try Soba Noodles in our Soba Noodle and Snap Pea Salad recipe. 
  • Round Fruits (Philippines): Circular fruits like oranges and grapes symbolize coins and prosperity. Families aim to gather 12 different round fruits to welcome abundance in the new year.
  • Lentils (Italy): In Italy, lentils are a must for New Year’s Eve, symbolizing wealth and fortune due to their coin-like shape. They are often paired with sausages to represent abundance. Try lentils in One Pot Lentil Soup or Spicy Lentil and Quinoa Bowl.

Why These Traditions Matter:

Cultural food traditions do more than fill our bellies; they connect us to our roots, help us honor our heritage, and bring us closer to our communities. In a fast-paced world, taking time to engage in these rituals provides an opportunity to pause, reflect, and celebrate shared values. Passing these customs to younger generations ensures that the stories, meanings, and flavors of our heritage remain alive and cherished.

 

Sources:

https://www.southernliving.com

https://www.smithsonianmag.com

https://www.nippon.com

https://www.lacucinaitaliana.com

Family Mealtime Challenge

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This month, we’re encouraging families to come together for dinner and create lasting memories. Join us for a series of fun and easy challenges designed to strengthen family bonds and make mealtime a meaningful experience. Here’s what we’ve got planned:

Did you take the Challenge? Please take this (short) post challenge survey to tell us how it went! https://poll.app.do/family-mealtime-challenge-2024-post-test

Week 1: Family Dinner Week: Commit to having dinner together as a family at least 4 times a week. If 4 times a week sounds too challenging, try adding one extra mealtime more than your typical week. Let’s make mealtime a priority! 🍲 Adding additional family meals may take some additional planning, check out our list of slow cooker recipes or air fryer recipes to make dinner easier.

Week 2: Tech-Free Table Challenge: Make dinner a screen-free zone. Put away the phones, TVs, and tablets and focus on each other. 📵 Tech Free week is a great time to discuss Table Manners! Table Manners are an important skill for kids to learn, read more about table manners here and start creating a positive mealtime experience!

Week 3: Dinner Conversation Starters: Engage your kids with fun conversation topics. Ask your kids about their day, favorite hobbies, or dreams for the future! Let’s make every meal a time to connect. 💬 Learn more about why family mealtime is important and how it can benefit your family and children.

Week 4: Kid Cooks Week: Whether they help with the chopping or the cooking, get them involved in the kitchen. Let them help plan and prepare one meal this week! 👩‍🍳 Check out our list of Kid Friendly recipes to gather some inspiration for your kiddos!

Week 5: Clean-Up Crew: Make post-dinner cleanup a team effort. Assign tasks and work together to tidy up after dinner. 🧽

Join the fun, share your progress, and let’s make September all about family mealtime! Tag Dinner Tonight on Facebook and Instagram to share your experiences and use the hashtag #familymealtimechallenge ! 

Spaghetti Squash

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Spaghetti Squash can be super intimidating to try and work with, but its so yummy and good for you! See our tips, tricks and safety information below so you can incorporate this veggie into your diet.

 

Intimidated by how difficult a spaghetti squash can be to cut into? Use your microwave! Microwave your squash for about 5 minutes to soften it, this makes it easier (and safer!) to cut into. 

Now that you know the microwave tip and your spaghetti squash is soft, how do you cut and deseed the squash? See our video below:

 

Help to promote your child’s creativity by asking them to make something with some of the spaghetti squash you saved to the side. Ask them to create a funny face, a favorite animal, or even have them use the extra squash to work on their letters and numbers. 

Table Manners

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Table Manners are as easy as 1…2…3… Learn how to set your expectations for table manners from @EatRightNutrition

Teaching Good Table Manners to Kids

Reviewed by Vicki Shanta Retelny, RDN, LDN

Published August 27, 2019

From high chair to school lunch room to business lunches, your children will have many opportunities to implement good table manners throughout their lives.

Developing table manners is one of the earliest steps parents can take in teaching and modeling good behavior to their children. And, families that eat together most days of the week tend to be healthier.

Teaching table manners can start when the child is eating independently out of the high chair or old enough to sit at the table. Table manners taught in the early phases include teaching kids to not reach across the table, eat from their own plate, put a napkin in their lap and say please and thank you.

Parents are the most important role models for children and can provide ongoing positive reinforcement of good table manners at family dinners.

Having family meals is the best way to model and teach good manners, especially when introducing kids to new foods. They can be taught to politely say when they don’t like something. Also, young kids often can’t sit the whole meal, but can learn to properly dismiss themselves, rather than interrupt the meal.

In addition, never correct manners in an insulting way and explain to kids why you practice manners, such as why we chew with our mouth closed and put a napkin on our lap.

Everyone at the table should get a chance to be part of a positive conversation. Keep it lighthearted and fun and talk about positive things at the table.

Kids as young as 3 to 5 years old can get involved by learning to set the dinner table. Other important rules, of course, are no elbows on the table and in today’s electronic culture — no tech devices, phones or texting at the table!

Good table manners are about respect for the household and can highlight the pleasure of eating. It is something that everyone can do well.

Reviewed May 2018

Find the full article at eatright.org