Table Time

Ben offered to make our Friday night family dinner last week and tried his hand at brining and roasting a bird. The result was a family dinner everyone is talking about!  He even made cornbread dressing and cooked up a tarragon sauce that was passed around until the bowl was empty!  Jeremy and Michala sent chocolate covered strawberries (they now live in Nevada), and Sean is cooking our dinner at the next gathering.  This was Mother's day weekend and these gifts for me greatly pleased me for several reasons.

First, I love seeing our sons continue the practice of gathering of their family around the dining table. In our fast paced society today, it gets harder and harder to gather immediate family - husband, wife and children for even 1 meal a week. Extended family gatherings have become likely to be limited to holidays, if then. It has been important to me to encourage all of us to eat together, at the table, but also intentional times of drawing extended family to share a meal. Of course, it is more challenging when we live in spread apart areas, but even those who are able to gather physically can be present with Facetime, Skype, and Messaging or a phone call.

But I also love this  because it reminds me that all those years of letting little (then bigger and bigger) boys help me in the kitchen and get creative with making good food have produced men who are fine cooks among their other attributes. They don't just follow recipes or get ideas from YouTube.  They are chefs. They recognize the value of feeding their families delicious, nutritious, healthy food, expose their own children to this early, and create works of art in their kitchens.  I am thankful they are married to women who encourage them to do this and help.

Another reason for my gratefulness -  as I see each of my sons happily cooking good food, I also see something that is a companion to that:  growing good food. They all have gardens and use the herbs they grow in their cooking. Growing and preparing your own food is not only a pleasure but an art.

This is quoted form the About introduction for my Kitchen Keepers blog.

   Gathering around our table has been so much more than providing physical nourishment for me.  For as we gather, whatever the table shape may be, we form a circle, a place of conversation and knowing and caring.  Expressing our gratitude for the provision of food and family, giving thanks for bread and baker, we enter a sacred space

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