Eating Dinner With My Family

Today, I let my nerd flag fly high! (again;)  I saw that today, would be Frodo and Bilbo's birthday, so what does a proper foodie nerd do?  Why have a celebratory dinner of course!  My husband said he would happily have the same dinner we did for our The Hobbit on DVD meal 'An Unexpected Dinner'.   I wanted new recipe for the blog, but I tried to stay pretty close menu wise to the last one.  So, found this recipe for Julia Child's favorite roast chicken on F & W, and this month's issue had these mushrooms sautéed in red wine, and since I omitted po-tay-toes from the last dinner, I chose these amazing looking potatoes from my pintrest side dishes to try board.  And of course cheese, (the same as last time, a English Double Gloucester   with chives) bread and pickles. The chicken was wonderful, juicy and perfect!  The potatoes were amazing and I nearly died of delight when I tasted the mushrooms!  We made Hobbits of ourselves...

I thought I would take another post to talk about the importance of sharing dinner time with your family.  It has always been important, but in our electronic age even more so. It is so easy to immerse yourself in the fast paced constant data stream that is conveniently located in our palm.  I am as guilty of this as the most technology savvy teen.  I love the wealth of information we have at our fingertips, the games from crosswords to inane fruit slashing, and the fact that I have reconnected (albeit superficially) with old friends from high school.  I am not advocating becoming a Luddite, but I am advocating setting some time each day to turn it off, ignore your texts and updates and talk to your family.  I know it can be hard to do but it needs to be done.  I think this picture is a perfect example of why! So let's work on preventing generations of idiots!  I know it won't be easy at first.  The art of conversation is like a muscle; if yo...