Eating Together, Being Together: Recipes, Activities, and Advice from a Chef Dad and Psychologist Mom

by Julian Clauss-Ehlers, Caroline Clauss-Ehlers, Randi Zafman (Illustrations)

Grow closer as a family through mealtime bonding. Explore more than 80 recipes plus essays, tips, and activities for the whole family that show how cooking together and sharing family meals can help build healthy relationships with food and with each other.
 
With unique insights from a New York Times –starred chef dad and an award-winning psychologist mom, Eating Together, Being Together is much more than a cookbook. It teaches parents and children from toddlerhood through the teen years how to engage around cooking and mealtime. Each chapter offers easy-to-make recipes using fresh ingredients accompanied by thoughts and tips on using mindfulness to deal with picky eating, listening skills, academic stress, and more. This structure allows preparing and eating meals together to be meaningful, where kids and their parents, guardians, and caregivers can learn from one another and grow closer.
 
Recipes include a range of food options to accommodate varying tastes with accessible step-by-step instructions for parents and kids. Activities for each chapter tie in key themes for cooking and for life and are presented in a developmentally thoughtful way for young children, preteens, teens, and grown-ups. From eating mindfulness and having honest food conversations to building rituals that support togetherness, this book explores how the family meal, whether cooking or eating, can bring families closer together.
 
Whether it's kids sharing their feelings while they mix batter, or adults telling stories of their childhood while enjoying a favorite recipe, a special kind of bonding happens around food. Eating Together, Being Together gives you the recipes and activities for that bonding experience and helps set the table for connection.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

Published September 20, 2022

Reviews

[Kip Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m excited for this book! When you work with clients living with eating disorders, it is crucial to be able to provide resources to their families that are designed to help them support their loved one. This is one of those resources. Clinicians, relatives, people who enjoy making and eating food - I expect there will be something for each of these groups within this book. There is an open spot in my personal library waiting for it!

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was such a delight to read! It gave me great ideas for recipes and how to incorporate children in the kitchen! Best part was that the recipes were new and fun to try, that even a novice like myself could handle! Thanks for the inspiration and helpful hints!

[Joni Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely family cookbook. It reminded me of the cookbooks you would find on your grandma’s shelf. Or from a church sale. The recipes aren’t complicated so perfect for young or new cooks.

[Andrea Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eating together Being together 
Stars 3.5 

 I selected this book because, since my children were small, we've always eaten at the dinner table and caught up on everyone's day. During the quarantine, I began a home economics class for both my children to teach them important life skills, such as learning to cook and do their own laundry. So, I was curious to see how other parents adapted to homeschooling their children. 

I like how this book shows different ways to involve your children, from making a shopping list, purchasing the groceries, to food preparation and cooking. I love the author's suggestions and activities for getting the kiddos involved and fun facts or tips. This book does a good job of covering where our food comes from. I like the variety of the recipes provided; some are for beginners with room to grow to more challenging recipes. The recipes are well balanced and are both delicious and healthy-friendly meals. 

What I felt was missing from this book are some photos of the finished foods. Activities for each chapter tie to the theme, which is nice. However, I would have liked to have some space for adding my own ideas, but there's not much flexibility for change. I would have liked to have tips and facts in color post-it notes, bold lines or ANY pictures. There are many words without any breaks in the black and white pages.

I'd recommend this book for parents homeschooling their children. Or parents looking to work with their children over the summer, while teaching great life skills. This book provides a great multi-sensory learning experience, for elementary students up to teenagers, which creates stronger pathways for retaining the information. I'd rate this book 4 stars for great teaching content and suggested activities. But for the average Joe, it's just too much information and not very kid-friendly. 

Overall, this book does a good job exploring how a family dinner can bring families closer together. It just works! I have a stool in my kitchen and my kids will sit down and chat with me now that they're back in school and life is busier. 


Thanks, NetGalley and Princeton Architecture Press, for providing me with a digital ARC for an honest review. 

[MookNana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sure this was well-intentioned, but it didn't quite land for me. The introduction veered a little too close to diet talk for my comfort (lots of discussion about what foods were "good" and arbitrary labels of "healthy" and "unhealthy" when the reality is much more nuanced) and it made me read the rest of the book very cautiously.

Unfortunately, I thought it came across as judgy, prescriptive, and smug. It actually contains the line, "I bet you've never made salad dressing before." Really? As if that's something rarefied and exotic? And this came after paragraphs extolling their love of salad and how they've influenced poor, unenlightened non-believers to see the light with their example. The off-putting tone made it hard for me to connect with the substance of their ideas.

The recipes themselves were fine. Pictures would have been nice, but they were reasonably well presented, and mostly realistic for average home cooks (the need to specify "good" bread and "good" mayonnaise added to the feel of condescension. Heaven knows what the masses would have picked without that direction!) There were explicit directions for how to make an egg salad sandwich, including the crucial steps of laying out bread, placing the filling on the bread, and topping it with more bread. These instructions were helpfully repeated for tuna salad so there was no confusion.

I don't want to yuck anyone's yum. If this works for them, great. Personally, I'd probably pass and find an illustrated cookbook that didn't talk down to me.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review.

[(a)lyss(a) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was around 3.5 stars for me.

While this book focuses on meal prepping and eating with young children, it can be applied to families with kids of all ages.

The book talks about ways to involve the whole family in shopping for food, preparing food, and how to share it together. There are tips and ideas throughout the book that include activities on how to teach kids where foods come from as well as explore their own preferences and feelings about things. There are recipes throughout the book for things like breakfast and snacks to share as a family, but some photos of the finished foods would be nice.

Overall I think it's a thoughtful read about mindfully eating and connecting.

[Rozanne Gold · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book! Full of amazing recipes and sage advice, a Michelin-starred chef (dad) and inspirational psychologist (mom), team up for lessons at the stove and lessons from the heart. Both a food manifesto and parenting guide, their approach fortifies one of the most meaningful of family institutions – coming together at the table -- in the most original, fun, and delicious way imaginable. From lemon ricotta pancakes to listening as a parenting "ingredient," Eating Together, Being Together heroically lives up to its name. ~Rozanne Gold

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Co-written by a chef husband and psychologist wife as a way for families to use food, cooking, and mealtimes to come together. This cookbook/self-help nonfiction book has about ten recipes per chapter with each chapter being about 2/3 self-help advice and activities to do with kids/as a family. The recipes aren’t always kid-friendly, but some are specifically kid-friendly, too. The multiple indices in the back make it easy to find activities and recipes again.

[Stephannie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book to reconnect my teenager and I! Excellent recipes and incredible prompts for discussion. I never discourage him from eating, and want to encourage some nourishing healthy foods. This book helped us open up his taste buds and is encouraging our connection. Really enjoying using this!

[Debra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book includes thoughtful usable advice for how to connect with children by preparing and sharing meals, as well as varied and delicious recipes. I enjoyed reading how the authors have used the communications techniques with their family and about the history of the recipes. I would highly recommend this book to parents and caregivers looking to better connect with children or anyone with whom they share a meal.

[Page Koch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an amazing read! All the recipes are so tasty and fun. I would recommend this to anyone to share with their family.