The author of this site, Monika Callin, is a project manager, wife and mother of 3 boys. Growing up, her mother, a schooled cook and baker from Germany, instilled the ‘good food’ experience within the family. So strong was her influence that since the age of 10 Monika has been an active cook.

Good food and sharing good food with family and friends has been a passion throughout her life and this site shares her many years of experience as a ‘good cook’. More importantly, as a working mom, her cooking and recipes acknowledges the compressed day that has now become the norm for most households and tells you whether or not a recipe is weekday friendly. So not only is this a recipe site, it’s a recipe for bringing  ‘good cooking’  into a busy household.

From Monika’s kitchen on Roseberry to yours, may you too find the great pleasures that good food can bring to your home and your family.

Today’s families are busy – so busy that often the sacrifice is the family meal; one time during the day where the entire family sits down together and shares and enjoys food and conversation with no distractions (i.e. devices). It is my firm belief that sharing one meal a day with family is vitally important for building family relationships and establishing a foundation for the family.

With both parents in the workforce and lengthy commutes, it can be a real struggle to bring a good food experience to the table in a timely manner. However, with a little planning, preparation and solid meal solutions the family can be brought ‘back to the table’.

If your family is missing out on a daily mealtime then I encourage you to start your own ‘back to the table’ movement today and rediscover those that are most important to you.

In support of the ‘back to the table’ movement, this site tells you whether or not a dish or meal is weekday friendly (i.e. can be made in a respectable amount of time after you get home from work). Look to the ‘How to Make it Work” tab after the recipe instructions for tips on how to manage the preparation within a compressed day. If the recipe takes considerably longer, then this too is called out and typically I suggest that you save it for the weekend, or whenever you have a little more time in the kitchen.

For those of you who don’t cook at all or don’t cook that often, I think you are going to like this tab. Essentially it takes you through the creation of the entire meal.  Unless the recipe is a one dish meal, you need other recipes or dishes to pull a meal together. Likewise, making a recipe on it’s own is manageable, but pulling a whole meal together can be terrifying if it’s not something that you are used to doing.

In this tab, first the entire meal is suggested – the main dish and any sides that are recommended to accompany it. Of course this is based on our family’s preferences – you can always change it up. Then the meal suggestion is followed by instructions on what to do and when, or, orchestrating the cooking. So not only do you get everything cooked, but you get the completion of the dishes coordinated so that everything is cooked or hot at the same time.