Gigi Centaro!

Dinnertime isn’t like real estate.  It’s not location, location, location.  Dinnertime is an attitude.  It’s bringing your family together with time and your undivided attention.  It’s making each member of your family feel important.  Dinnertime as an event can happen anywhere—the table, in a restaurant, at the park, in your car.

My favorite memory of my mother that involved dinnertime happened when I was 10 or 12 years old.  My mother was a marathon shopper.  Her favorite stores where an hour and a half away from our home and she liked to get to the stores at 9:00 AM.  I had to get up at the crack of dawn and she would shop all day long.  By 6:00 PM I was tired, grumpy and starving.   It was a hot, muggy day in August in upstate New York.  My mother never took me to a restaurant.  It wasn’t in her budget so a quick burger was out.  However, she knew she wasn’t going to get me home without feeding me something.

So she pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store and told me to wait in the car.  She came out with a half-gallon of heavenly hash ice cream and two plastic spoons.  As we ate that delicious ice cream in the car, we laughed, talked, and shared.  I had my mother’s undivided attention.  There were no phones ringing, no TV and no radio.  Both the food and the memory were heavenly.

Dinnertime is an attitude and it can happen anywhere you share a meal with your family and give them your time and undivided attention.  It’s making your family the center of your universe and making them feel important.  It’s easy to do and the payoff is huge.

The cookbook, Let’s Cook Tonight, is a two-time award winner.

Let’s Cook Tonight was the winner in the cookbook category for the 2011 San Francisco Book Festival awards.  The San Francisco Book Festival is an international festival that honors the best books of the spring.

Let’s Cook Tonight also won best cover design at the Arizona Book Publishing Association’s 2011 Glyph Awards.

Copyright ©2011 by Gigi Speaks, LLC. All Rights Reserved.