I’ve been semi-vocal about my disenchantment with most restaurant food, and my great love for simple, healthy, delicious home-cooked meals. Guess what? I’m not the only one.

Check out this excellent article in the July issue of Harvard Magazine, “Restaurants Rampant: Dining out is surging–yet there are reservations.” In the article, even Mollie Katzen of Moosewood Cookbook (and previously the Moosewood Restaurant) fame has expressed her growing preference for home cooking over restaurant fare:

“I used to eat out a lot, and now I eat out very, very little. Eating a good, simple, home-cooked meal is almost always my preference. Every now and then I think, ‘I’ll give it another chance’—and then I do, and it confirms that I don’t want to keep doing this. If I’d eaten at home it would have been healthier, simpler, and way more what I want it to be.”

If she had me at that statement (which she did), she really had me that this one:

“I have friends in their forties who grew up right at the height of Mom never being in the kitchen. They didn’t see their mothers in the kitchen in any meaningful way—it wasn’t an integral part of life in the home. So they were opening a lot of cans, or buying fast food. …In my [baby-boom generation] family, at dinnertime, the kids would all help with the final steps: setting the table, helping Mom get the food on the table, helping clear afterwards. It was a team activity, part of what we did together as a family. My guess is that an equally, if not more, common way to gather around food now is to sit around the TV and watch Top Chef.”

Yes! Food should not be a spectator sport. Preparing a meal for yourself and those you care about is a primal, essential activity. That said, after my much needed hiatus from cooking every night (and by hiatus I mean I shifted into simple no-recipe-needed cooking instead of trying a new actual recipe almost every night), I am SO looking forward to start really cooking again! I have a few things to finish up for my summer school class when I get back for vacation, and then my summer vacation starts. I have a serious itch to make every recipe in Super Natural Every Day. Seriously. See you soon!