About Me:

My name is Christina and I love eat. I also love to cook but let’s face it, eating is the best part. Cooking is a great passion of mine and I love to feed people. I am Italian after all. BK (before kids) I was the hostess-with-the-mostest who loved to cook and entertain. I would spend weeks planning a menu for a gathering, pouring over cookbooks and magazines, obsessing over every detail. These days, I entertain a little (ok, A LOT) less but the family meal has remained non-negotiable in our house.

I am a recipe developer, photographer and food writer with a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts. My recipes can be seen on Kaboose, AmazingMoms, Parents, Kids Health, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Kiwi and a host of other awesome magazines and websites.

I was on staff at the fabulous Every Day with Rachael Magazine for 5 years. After the birth of my second son, I decided to leave and focus on raising babies and my freelance recipe writing career. I’m super excited for this new chapter in my life and can’t wait to see where it all takes me.

My Mission:

It’s simple. Families that eat together, stay together. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of the family meal, it’s my whole reason for starting this blog. My goal is to help families make the family meal a reality by offering simple, healthy recipes.  Sitting down to enjoy a meal with your family not only nourishes your body, it nourishes your soul. The National Center for Addiction at Columbia University released a study in 2008 shows that teens who eat dinner with their families are less likely to take drugs and also have a lesser risk of depression and eating disorders than those who never eat dinner with their family. That’s powerful stuff! In a nutshell, there is a direct relationship between the physical and mental health of your child and the frequency of your family meals.

Life is chaotic. We have a million excuses and a million distractions and sadly, those distractions often take away from our time with the family. We owe it to ourselves and to our families to make mealtime a priority. We can’t afford not to. Sitting around the dinner table as a family opens up a line of communication that may not always be accessible during the other parts of our busy days. Our dinner tables aren’t just pieces of furniture to drop mail on. They are a meeting place. A place not only  to eat but to meet and communicate. Conversations flow at the dinner table . We laugh. We share stories. We relate, uninterrupted by the distractions of the outside world. It’s the perfect place to look into your kids eyes and ask about their day, a place to check in and see what is going on in their lives. Food relaxes us and brings us together in a way that’s special and unique.

Eating together as a family may not be simple in your house but that doesn’t make it impossible. I promise, you can find time to make the family meal a reality in you home. My hope is that this blog encourages you to find the time to Take Back Your Table.

Contact:

If you are looking for a recipe developer, recipe tester, photographer or just want to say Hello, please feel free to contact me at Christina.Stanley@verizon.net