We live in a quite demanding world (this I am sure comes as a shock to no one), where most of us are juggling career, family, and friends, filling up our plates with way more than we can "eat." Often the thing that winds up being sacrificed is time together in the kitchen and at the family table. What I appreciated about last night's Top Chef episode was the reminder of the joy it can be to cook with kids. It gets them involved, gives them confidence, and the passion for a potential career (I know many chefs who fell in love with cooking by learning from their mothers, grandmothers and yes, fathers, too), and it creates a bond between parent and child, and a time for just being together and enjoying each other and then sitting down to a meal together at home. I think that's so valuable. I am not saying it has to happen every night; life's responsibilities may not make that an option, but wouldn't it be nice to have it happen every Sunday or on weekends?

I am not a parent (though I hope to be one someday), so I may be talking out of school here, but I know some of my fondest memories as a kid involved food -- recipes my parents, who were divorced, made for us every night of the week. My mom was working during the day and going to school at night and yet she made time to cook for us and eat dinner with us every night. My dad, a cancer surgeon who had us several nights a week and lived in Manhattan, took us out to dinner some nights, but on weekends we cooked together. His repertoire of recipes was small, but I will never have omelets like the ones he made us for breakfast (fluffy and stuffed with cheese), or chicken cutlets better than the ones we made together for dinner in the tiny windowless kitchen of his small one bedroom apartment.