Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Sharing the same meal reaffirms kinship.
We all need to start making some changes to how our families eat. Now, everyone loves a good Sunday dinner. Me included. And there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is when we eat Sunday dinner Monday through Saturday.
Shared dining fortifies us.
When I cook a meal, I like to serve things one by one and keep them separate. I get that from my father - he's such a purist. Some people even put their desserts on the main plate. It's just wrong.
A perfect dinner for me is being with people I really want to be with. It starts and stops with my company and my family.
Back in the really olden days, dinner was seldom a ceremonial event for U.S. families. Only the very wealthy had a separate dining room. For most, meals were informal, a kind of rolling refueling; often only the men sat down.
But, you know, they don't enjoy the dinner hour together. It's just not as much of a ritual at night and it's interesting. I think the ritual is taking place perhaps more in the morning.
I consider a good dinner party at our house to be where people drink and eat more than they're meant to. My husband is a really fantastic cook. His mother is Italian and if you walk into our house, we assume you're starving.
Somewhere in the back of their minds, hosts and guests alike know that the dinner party is a source of untold irritation, and that even the dullest evening spent watching television is preferable.
Serve the dinner backward, do anything - but for goodness sake, do something weird.