"What's for dinner?" 

Busy moms everywhere hear it every day and if you're one of them, you know the question can induce a panic attack.  After a full day of work-- whether at home, in an office, or in an office at home-- the pressure to produce a perfectly nutritious, tasty dinner for the family can simply be too much.

White Plains working mom Julie Trelstad knew the problem well; she lived it.

  "It was always a struggle to get dinner on the table.  It can be paralyzing," said Trelstad, the founder and owner of Plain White Press, a four year old publishing house of books written by moms for moms. 

"Cookbooks didn't have the answers and I saw a need for a book that did." 

Trelstad reached out to working Larchmont mom, author and freelance writer Jeanne Muchnick. Together, they cooked up Dinner for Busy Moms, described by Muchnick as a "Dummy's guide" for moms.  

Muchnick had suffered from the dinner dilemma for many years and told me it wasn't until about eight years ago that she finally figured it out and was excited to be able to help other moms do it too.  

"Women always tell me it's nice to know they're not the only ones who struggle with this. We're just not as good at making dinner a top priority and don't give it as much importance as we do work deadlines and getting kids to after school appointments. We pressure ourselves so much it actually prevents us from putting dinner on the table," she said.

One of the first steps, Muchnick told me, is to let go of the guilt and let good enough be enough.

"Dinner is about connecting with your family not about what you're serving," she said.

 Rather than trying for perfection and dinner together seven nights a week, Muchnick suggests setting a goal and sticking to it even if that means that sometimes its breakfast for dinner or a call for Chinese take-out.   As long as you're eating as a family it counts.

"I wrote a strategy book, not a cookbook; I'm not a nutritionist or Betty Crocker. What's most important are the memories you are creating," she said.

Muchnick concedes that we don't want to resort to frozen pizza and take-out all the time and provides a start to finish approach to buying, preparing and putting a well balanced meal on the table.  Served up with a hearty helping of humor and bits of advice from other moms, her strategies include: treating your pantry like a clothes closet so you have what you usually use when you need it, using technology to your advantage by keeping the shopping list on your computer and planning for leftovers and  freezing and labeling your own made TV dinners.

Many studies have proven that time spent together at the family table has benefits ranging from improved grades and decreased delinquency to strengthened family unity and cost savings, but Muchnick says it can't happen overnight. 

She said, "It takes practice to get into a new mode and you have to keep trying but it's worth it.   Dinner together feels like a warm hug at the end of a crazy day."

Jeanne Muchnick invites other busy moms to take a break and celebrate the publication of her book on Thursday April 8^th at Vino 100 in White Plains.  The event runs from 5:30-7:30p. 

Proceeds from the book sales profits will benefit Family-to-Family.org (www.family-to-family.org), an organization that helps feeds hungry families, founded and run by Hastings mom Pam Koner.