Does one person take responsibility for getting dinner on the table in your house? I love to cook, so that's how it used to be around here. That changed when I started tutoring in the afternoons/evenings almost a decade ago. I never sat down to map out a new plan, but one evolved.
Monday is my busiest day: I grocery shop and write/edit in the morning, tutor at my house from 12pm to 5pm, then leave for the evening at 5:30, dropping Olivia at her three hour swim practice on my way to a writer's meeting that usually ends around 9:15.
Here is how this past Monday night's dinner found its way to our table:
On Sunday night, I marinated a flank steak and stuck in the fridge for overnight. When I finished tutoring at 5pm the next day, I chopped up some bok choy and garlic and left them in a bowl next to the stove. Then, just before leaving with Olivia at 5:30, I put millet on the stove to cook and left Gareth to watch over it. Gareth did his homework on the bar in our kitchen so he could keep an eye on the pot. When the Millet finished cooking, he took it off the heat and carried on with his homework.
Steve arrived home thirty minutes later, grilled the marinated flank steak, put it in the fridge, then left with Gareth to coach Gareth's soccer practice. When we all arrived home at 9:30pm (egad!), Olivia set the table, Gareth poured drinks, Steve cut the meat, I sauteed the bok choy and garlic, someone served the millet and voila!– dinner was served.
Craziness!
If you're thinking we're insane to dine so late, you're right, but we do it on some nights because it's the only time we can eat together. And if my Monday night sounds like a logistical nightmare, I should tell you I didn't plan it.
It just happened.
I do try to plan simpler dinners on crazier nights, but as to how it gets prepared? I wing it. It's just a matter of doling out responsibilities according to skills and availability. And all kids have skills. They can wash, peel and chop vegetables, cook rice or pasta, stir soups, baste meats, start the grill, and wash dishes.
You'd be surprised, even the littlest fingers can peel garlic, which happens to be the most annoying job in the kitchen! Olivia has peeled piles of it for me over the years, usually while sitting in front of her latest show. I send her off with a whole head and she comes back with this beautiful pile of shiny cloves. Just don't ask me where all those papery skins end up.
Through this process of sharing responsibility, we discovered that dinner is not one job, but many. And the cook? Not one person, but one family.
Tag-teaming dinner has more than practical benefits. Cooking teaches kids that we all need to take responsibility for the food we eat (mom is not the de facto cook in the house unless she chooses to be). It also teaches hands-on that high quality healthy food doesn't come out of a plastic bag or a box--it comes from raw materials. And of course, cooking teaches cooking! If our kids go out into the world knowing how to cook, they'll be more likely to eat healthy meals made from whole foods when they are adults.
That all sounds great, but I don't want to mislead you into thinking I have miracle children. While Steve and I almost always tag-team dinner, the kids don't help every night, and I'm sure you can imagine the freak-out that occurs on the nights when I do ask. The outrage, the indignity, the affront!
Still, of all the chores we might coerce our kids into doing, this one offers the best kid-friendly payoff. They don't care about the urine on the base of the toilet seat or the dust on the television. But they do care about food. You want cookies? Melt some butter. You want homemade ranch dressing? Get out the mayo and go cut some chives.
Of course, like anything, cooking has a learning curve. Years ago I left Gareth to cook a chicken while I went to tutor. I'd cleaned and prepped it, so "all he had to do" was put the bird in the oven at 5pm then set a timer to baste it every 20 minutes. He didn't have to worry about when it would be done because his dad would be home in time to take it out of the oven.
Simple, right?
When Steve arrived home at 6pm and checked on the bird, he discovered an ice-cold chicken shivering in an ice-cold oven, it's little wings tucked in tight against the frigid air. Gareth had dutifully basted a raw chicken every twenty minutes for an hour without ever turning on the heat! When I asked him if he noticed the chicken hadn't cooked he said, "I thought it just took a long time."
I suppose the moral of that story is it doesn't have to be perfect (although I prefer dinner not be raw). If you're having trouble finding time to get dinner on the table, it's okay to consider the crew of worker bees that is your family. I know the kids are busy too, so if they have a freak-out, just remind them they don't have to make the whole meal (the point is that nobody does). But if they want a decent homemade dinner in these hectic times, it takes a family.
Showing posts with label dinner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dinner. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Sunday, October 20, 2013
shout-out for family dinner
When the kids were toddlers, sitting at the table together felt like a circus. I remember mushy food thrown on the floor, shared and slobbery silverware clattering on the table, halted conversation that competed with one child who banged their sippy cup on the high chair and another who whined about eating peas. Amid the fussing and the mayhem, it's easy to wonder: What's the point? In fact, while Steve and I always sat down to eat as a family when the kids were young, it was a civilized dinner by ourselves that I really craved. THAT sounded like real quality time!
Back in those baby/toddler years, we ate together because that's how Steve and I were raised. It just felt normal. I didn't know that during those nights spent wiping sticky fingers while trying to eat our black beans and rice, we were instilling a routine into all of us that would pay off down the road.
We all know that dinner time is social---even if some nights devolve into things less civilized. But in our digital age, meal time can provide respite from phones, ipods, and other hand-held electronics. When I was a kid, the rule was, "no books at the table"--I clearly grew up in a different century-- but the idea is the same: we should talk to each other.
I've also discovered that mealtime can teach respect for food. Sitting together gives me a chance to brag about my cooking, which of course, I take full advantage of, but it isn't just self-serving. Talking about cooking can reveal its artfulness while reminding the kids that food preparation takes effort, heart and soul.
I also talk about where the food came from: how's that chicken? you know it came from Polyface Farm; or eat up your arugula - it's fresh from our co-op today; or you know that farmer with the big melons (ha!), he said these beets would be like candy. And my favorite: "how 'bout them tomatoes? You know I grew those!" --Except that latter thing happens so seldom with me being a plant killer and all.
Of course, sometimes dinner offers a chance to disrespect the food. No matter how many delicious meals I've prepared over the years, the one that lives in infamy? eggplant custard. I had high hopes when I set out to make it, but it proved a gray and slightly slimy casserole for which superior flavor could not overcome the shortcomings of color and texture. Alas.
Despite such misguided concoctions, mealtime teaches respect for the cook. The rules around our table are far more lax than the ones I grew up with (sit up straight, napkin on your lap, no elbows on the table). I can't be bothered to police the dinner table so closely, but there is one rule I especially treasure: you NEVER eat before the person who prepared your food has sat down to the table. After all the work of making a meal, this one gesture of respect and thanks goes a long way to acknowledging the effort.
This is especially fun when the kids did the work. We can honor them and also shower them with praise: Wow, look how well the vegetables were chopped; this pasta is a perfect al dente; who peeled that garlic?
If you respect the endeavors of the cook, then you are also more likely to eat the food he or she prepared for you.
Then there's respect for each other: it's boring, but it's true that you learn manners when you eat in a group. I never tell Olivia to chew with her mouth closed because her brother does it for me. Better she learn it from him than on a date with a cute guy who doesn't like the looks of her fish and broccoli in partial breakdown.
If you don't want to get kicked by a sibling, you also learn to pass food around the table after you've served yourself, to use your napkin when there's spaghetti sauce on your face, and wait your turn to tell that hilarious story from the lunch room at school.
While I saw over the years that family dinner could do all these great things: teach community, nutrition, manners, and respect, I didn't understand the value of family dinner as a sustained ritual until this summer when suddenly, Gareth had somewhere else to be every night: at Chipotle, playing soccer at the school, at the pool, spending the night at a friend's. He could easily leave in the morning and not return for days--and all that time wearing the same pair of underwear!
I was at first baffled about how to get him back. If he's welcome at the friend's house, or has already eaten out, then why should he come home? Then it hit me: family dinner! After years of eating together, it made perfect sense to him when I said, "have fun, but you have to be home for dinner." We had taught him, perhaps inadvertently, that food is more than a convenience or a pleasure. It is part of the social fabric of our family.
Looking back, I can see the seeds of that idea in bloom. Before we eat, we usually wait for everyone to be seated, but it's not always easy to get everyone to the table. Have you ever called a child to dinner forty-eleven times and gotten no response? When one of our darlings just cannot tear themselves away from Breaking Bad, or Switched at Birth, or whatever other internet/cable sensation has captivated them, we begin our meal without them.
With the other child sitting gleefully at the table with us, we chew quietly and smirk at each other while we wait for the offending family member to notice the silence in the house: the lack of clattering pans in the kitchen, the absence of a bouncing soccer ball in the dining room (no balls at dinner unless they're collard balls!), the long period of time since anyone yelled, "Dinner!" He or she will inevitably come bolting into the dining room: "You ate without me!"
Yes we did.
It surprised me the first time this happened to see how much it mattered to the kids. I suppose no child (or parent for that matter) wants to be cast out of a family ritual.
Rituals bring families together--something about the obligation to one another, the predictability of repetition, the knowledge that we can count on each other to show up, and for dinner: the responsibility of getting the food on the table together (who's turn to set the table? who's getting drinks? someone get those potatoes out of the oven please).
Good or bad, there are things we can count on about dinner: Olivia will never stop talking, then will complain that we never let her talk. Steve will ask us to comment repeatedly on the part of the meal he prepared, regardless if it only accounts for 10% of what's on the plate; Gareth will put ice cubes in his soup even if I tried to let it cool; I will huff when people use salt.
None of that is to say we haven't had some bad times around the table. Who could forget the animal-shaped napkin rings we couldn't use because the kids nearly tore each others' eyes out fighting over the rocking horse?
And that doesn't rival the night when a cabbage roll inspired the debate: is 'frickin' a cuss word.
To make it work, family dinner doesn't always have to be pleasant (but I can say we've definitely laughed more than we've fought); it doesn't have to be fancy (eat cereal together if you have to), it doesn't have to be every night (we have dinner some nights at 9pm and others not at all because of soccer and swim schedules), it just has to be.
As we transition through these teen years and the kids become more independent, I hope that our determination to eat with the kids while they were young will perhaps inspire our kids to eat with us when we're old.
I know I wouldn't mind the company.
Back in those baby/toddler years, we ate together because that's how Steve and I were raised. It just felt normal. I didn't know that during those nights spent wiping sticky fingers while trying to eat our black beans and rice, we were instilling a routine into all of us that would pay off down the road.
We all know that dinner time is social---even if some nights devolve into things less civilized. But in our digital age, meal time can provide respite from phones, ipods, and other hand-held electronics. When I was a kid, the rule was, "no books at the table"--I clearly grew up in a different century-- but the idea is the same: we should talk to each other.
I've also discovered that mealtime can teach respect for food. Sitting together gives me a chance to brag about my cooking, which of course, I take full advantage of, but it isn't just self-serving. Talking about cooking can reveal its artfulness while reminding the kids that food preparation takes effort, heart and soul.
I also talk about where the food came from: how's that chicken? you know it came from Polyface Farm; or eat up your arugula - it's fresh from our co-op today; or you know that farmer with the big melons (ha!), he said these beets would be like candy. And my favorite: "how 'bout them tomatoes? You know I grew those!" --Except that latter thing happens so seldom with me being a plant killer and all.
Of course, sometimes dinner offers a chance to disrespect the food. No matter how many delicious meals I've prepared over the years, the one that lives in infamy? eggplant custard. I had high hopes when I set out to make it, but it proved a gray and slightly slimy casserole for which superior flavor could not overcome the shortcomings of color and texture. Alas.
Despite such misguided concoctions, mealtime teaches respect for the cook. The rules around our table are far more lax than the ones I grew up with (sit up straight, napkin on your lap, no elbows on the table). I can't be bothered to police the dinner table so closely, but there is one rule I especially treasure: you NEVER eat before the person who prepared your food has sat down to the table. After all the work of making a meal, this one gesture of respect and thanks goes a long way to acknowledging the effort.
This is especially fun when the kids did the work. We can honor them and also shower them with praise: Wow, look how well the vegetables were chopped; this pasta is a perfect al dente; who peeled that garlic?
If you respect the endeavors of the cook, then you are also more likely to eat the food he or she prepared for you.
Then there's respect for each other: it's boring, but it's true that you learn manners when you eat in a group. I never tell Olivia to chew with her mouth closed because her brother does it for me. Better she learn it from him than on a date with a cute guy who doesn't like the looks of her fish and broccoli in partial breakdown.
If you don't want to get kicked by a sibling, you also learn to pass food around the table after you've served yourself, to use your napkin when there's spaghetti sauce on your face, and wait your turn to tell that hilarious story from the lunch room at school.
While I saw over the years that family dinner could do all these great things: teach community, nutrition, manners, and respect, I didn't understand the value of family dinner as a sustained ritual until this summer when suddenly, Gareth had somewhere else to be every night: at Chipotle, playing soccer at the school, at the pool, spending the night at a friend's. He could easily leave in the morning and not return for days--and all that time wearing the same pair of underwear!
I was at first baffled about how to get him back. If he's welcome at the friend's house, or has already eaten out, then why should he come home? Then it hit me: family dinner! After years of eating together, it made perfect sense to him when I said, "have fun, but you have to be home for dinner." We had taught him, perhaps inadvertently, that food is more than a convenience or a pleasure. It is part of the social fabric of our family.
Looking back, I can see the seeds of that idea in bloom. Before we eat, we usually wait for everyone to be seated, but it's not always easy to get everyone to the table. Have you ever called a child to dinner forty-eleven times and gotten no response? When one of our darlings just cannot tear themselves away from Breaking Bad, or Switched at Birth, or whatever other internet/cable sensation has captivated them, we begin our meal without them.
With the other child sitting gleefully at the table with us, we chew quietly and smirk at each other while we wait for the offending family member to notice the silence in the house: the lack of clattering pans in the kitchen, the absence of a bouncing soccer ball in the dining room (no balls at dinner unless they're collard balls!), the long period of time since anyone yelled, "Dinner!" He or she will inevitably come bolting into the dining room: "You ate without me!"
Yes we did.
It surprised me the first time this happened to see how much it mattered to the kids. I suppose no child (or parent for that matter) wants to be cast out of a family ritual.
Rituals bring families together--something about the obligation to one another, the predictability of repetition, the knowledge that we can count on each other to show up, and for dinner: the responsibility of getting the food on the table together (who's turn to set the table? who's getting drinks? someone get those potatoes out of the oven please).
Good or bad, there are things we can count on about dinner: Olivia will never stop talking, then will complain that we never let her talk. Steve will ask us to comment repeatedly on the part of the meal he prepared, regardless if it only accounts for 10% of what's on the plate; Gareth will put ice cubes in his soup even if I tried to let it cool; I will huff when people use salt.
None of that is to say we haven't had some bad times around the table. Who could forget the animal-shaped napkin rings we couldn't use because the kids nearly tore each others' eyes out fighting over the rocking horse?
the unwitting source of so much familial strife!
And that doesn't rival the night when a cabbage roll inspired the debate: is 'frickin' a cuss word.
To make it work, family dinner doesn't always have to be pleasant (but I can say we've definitely laughed more than we've fought); it doesn't have to be fancy (eat cereal together if you have to), it doesn't have to be every night (we have dinner some nights at 9pm and others not at all because of soccer and swim schedules), it just has to be.
As we transition through these teen years and the kids become more independent, I hope that our determination to eat with the kids while they were young will perhaps inspire our kids to eat with us when we're old.
I know I wouldn't mind the company.
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