Parade Magazine had a front cover story Food, Family & Fatherhood, by Bruce Fieler, who talks with Chef, John Besh, and garners his thoughts on What’s for Dinner Dad?

Good article. Honest and relatable. Although the statistics have it that families who eat dinner together make for better children and happier families, it isn’t always easy to do. I applaud the mom of the Besh household. Being a mother myself, it requires a lot of energy to raise kids these days who are involved in everything from collecting litter to saving the animals to soccer.

Author, Fieler, depicted how both parents, John and Jennifer, had grown up eating dinner with the family. And, what struck me was their epiphany that “To reclaim their past, they needed to update old customs to meet their new reality.”

Our contemporary life of today only appears to conspiring against family time togetherness but it is amazing how many novel ways we can buck the façade and find a strong family structure.

We don’t need to romanticize a past. It is futile to wistfully try to belong to the past, or even to try to reject belonging. Reclaiming the past isn’t reclaiming a materialized situation but an idea: Family time togetherness.

The idea is important. I remember turning off my cell-phone and the radio in the car while driving with our children to sports activities. It was great time together. We cooked and baked together, while laughing and tasting the batter. When our children were older they got me to try recipes from different cultures. The family time togetherness continues.