Family dinners... A ritual?
Can your everyday family dinner be considered a ritual?
Dinners look different at every household, this is something I knew, but recently I started to think about the "meals" I ate at Wheaton. Rarely did I go to Emerson either alone or with friends for dinner. For some reason I could not necessarily break away from what I believed was a family dinner. This was not to say I had the same exact family dinner every night while I was at home, but there was something about them that made them a ritual for me.
When I think about sitting down for dinner this is the face I would like to have every single night. I want to prepare food that can not only give me the substance that I need to live but that will also put a smile on my face and the people (family) I am sharing it with. Some people sit down every night to eat dinner because they have to, they are not excited by their food, personally I think this effects the overall tone of the dinner. If people are not excited about/ proud of the food they are serving/ eating the whole atmosphere changes. When eating is more of a task there is less conversation.
because it brings people together. For me dinner was not always the same, sometimes I shared it with my Nonna and Nonno, others with my mom, and some with my dad. Coming to Wheaton I realized I lost interest in sitting together at the dining halls for meals because I had no interest in the food. We would sit there and complain about how awful the food was and how miserable we were to eat it and we left with that same very attitude.
In my own life I have turned dinner into a ritual, even though it is not sometime I am able to do every night here at Wheaton it is something I know I will implement in my life post graduation. The dinner ritual starts with the people. Who are you sharing your meal with? This then dictates the menu for the dinner, if it is with my dad (which is rare) it will be something "bad" such as a homemade corned beef sandwich, with homemade fries, and a kosher half sour pickle. We take the time to boil the corned beef, so while it boils we catch up on life. The dish is easy to prepare once everything is prepped so we can quickly sit (each of us at our own 'assigned' spot) to enjoy our meal, but since it is mostly finger foods we have time to take pauses and talk throughout the meal. Since it is a meal we both thoroughly enjoy we will certainly make comments about it, the last time we shared it together, and other memories it brings up.
For some reason, no matter who the company is a dinner meal at these locations is not palatable for me. So instead of sulking, this year I have made sure I take the time at least once a week to implement my new type of 'family dinner'.
Although it may be simple, on a Friday night I gathered my roommates for some 'authentic' grilled cheese sandwiches. Everyone was involved in preparing the meal. We sat together heating up the iron, buttering the bread and slicing the cheese, all excited about the meal we were going to prepare. The funny thing is that the excitement and good mood began before the meal was even served. All day we were talking about hanging out and cooking together for our 'roomie date,' we made the meal turn into an event, which did not end after we finished eating.
Pasta has always been something that brings people together in my family. And although I offended Joe over at emerson, making this dish that I normally share with my immediate family every Sunday for my roommates is a new ritual for us. At least every other week I made a couple lbs of pasta for our suite. The sauce and sides, even the people may differ but the happy faces I see when I come back upstairs with pasta dishes and a surprising new sauce combination is an unreal feeling.
But I also learned this year that I do not necessarily have to be a part of the process of preparing the food for it to be considered a dinner ritual. When I first went to visit my boyfriend at Rutgers Law School all I wanted to do was cook for him, because I thought that was the only way to keep with our dinner rituals. Taylor made me see that the process of going to a restaurant, and helping each other order food, and share different things can also be part of the dinner ritual because there is still the pre-dinner excitement, dinner excitement, and post dinner excitement. I believe dinner can end your day in the perfect way if you make it into some sort of ritual for yourself.
It seems like a common theme throughout your blog is how important the company is when you are eating dinner. Why do you think it is so important to have the right company when we eat, especially a meal that we put so much importance on, like dinner? Do you think that you learned that dinner was an important ritual from your family? or as a means to compensate for the terrible food at wheaton?
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