When Katie Workman isn't dishing it out at ParentDish, she's the editor-in-chief of Cookstr, a site filled with great recipes from the chefs and cookbook authors you love and trust.

Yes, yes, the economy is in fact in the toilet. The options seem to be:

a) place remaining cash under mattress, draw blinds, crawl into bed, and wait for things to improve.
b) get on with it, and find different ways to make lemons into lemonade, literally.

You know those ads, where an entire family is sitting around the dining table, smiling and sharing their day's highlights, the mommy carving a perfectly cooked roast? Sometimes my house looks like that at dinnertime ... but more often than that it doesn't. Kids dragging to the table, poking at their food, having sword fights with their forks. And then it's time to find ways to shake up dinner.

A few years ago, we came up with the idea of restaurant night. We pretend our house is a restaurant, and take turns playing out different roles guest, waiter, cook ... well, I'm always the cook, but my husband and the boys get to mix it up. The little guys love it -- it's always one of the best meals of the month. And it's extra exciting when real guests are coming over. We started it just for fun, but there are also some cool life lessons that I think are being absorbed (hospitality, manners, patience, kindness, and sometimes math).

Here are some ideas for setting up restaurant night in your own house. If you give it a try, I'd love to hear how your family did it.
Choose roles. There has to be at least one guest, and one kitchen staff member -- more people, more possibilities for roles! (Note to self: invite enough people to designate a sommelier).

Create a restaurant theme and a menu. Menu???? No, no, don't panic ... here's another good part. You now get to divest yourself of leftovers! But now they're not leftovers, they're menu choices! Jack and Charlie often name the restaurant something like Good Chefs, or Super Cooks (and sometimes simply The Star Wars Restaurant), then basically I stand in front of the fridge and call out all possible menu items: "Chicken legs, olives, hard boiled eggs, carrots...". And of course they add anything I am actually cooking that evening (which gets promoted as the Specialty of the Day, of course, and I nudge any real guests in that direction. Not that they need so much nudging. The day-old half of a tuna sandwich usually isn't much of a contender).

Prepare the scene. Let the kids set the table (bonus!), and also decorate the place if they want.

Stay in character. To start, the guests must actually exit the house or apartment and enter in character, as a customer. Maintaining your role as much as possible throughout the meal makes it much more fun. The waiter(s) show the guests to their table, bring the menu over, pour water, and take drink orders. One of the funniest moments in our house was when Charlie (5 at the time) took the drink orders from my husband and Jack, came into the kitchen, and said while jerking his thumb back towards the dining table, "The guy wants a beer, and the kid wants a milk."

Serve something special. This one's optional, but pretty funny. I will often at this point send over a little appetizer (an "amuse bouche" is the fancy french term), mostly because it just cracks me up to see Charlie bring it over to the table, place it down solemnly and say -- as instructed -- "a little something from the chef." Oh, it kills me every time.

Have everyone do his/her job, just like a real restaurant. The waiter(s) takes the orders -- either verbally or in writing, depending on age and ability and willingness to write things down -- and conveys them to the kitchen. The cook heats and plates up the food. The waiters serve the meal, clear the table, take dessert orders, and make sure the guests have everything they need. Sometimes while the "customers" are eating, I let my kids eat at the "staff" table -- otherwise known as the coffee table -- by themselves. This is so they don't have to break character to eat with the "guests" (eg, Mommy and Daddy). In our house, I am allowed take a break from the chef role to eat -- my children are too good to me.

Present the bill. If you wish, you can assign costs to the dishes on the menus. You can handle this as you see fit: pick small amounts (35 cents an entree) and explain to your kids that these aren't the costs of real food in a restaurant, but you're encouraging them to do math by creating a "bill." Or make the cost of the whole meal $1.00. Or skip the money part altogether.

Bon Appetit! Let me know what else you come up with! My friend just brought us used plastic menu covers from a real restaurant supply store. They kids love them.