When Hub went to work for a start-up, I knew we would be giving up family dinner for a few years. He doesn't mind. I hate it. Lucia is in bed by 5:00 pm every night. Even without daddy and sister, I try to give Elsie a proper family dinner by sitting down with her to eat Mommy-daughter. Often, it is excruciating and boring to sit there and try to teach her to be a lady as she drags out her meal over two hours. But it's better than nothing.
I recently read this inspiring blog post in which a family hosts weekly pasta dinner parties. I LOVE this idea, and bounced it off of Hub as soon as he got home. He cringed. I knew it wouldn't be his cup of tea, his introvert to my extrovert but I was surprised he found it CRINGE-worthy!
"Won't that be an awful lot of work?" Whined the man whose additional burden will be exactly zero if we eat off of paper plates. My 2014 New Year's Resolution was to entertain more, and I have not. With only a few months left to make good on 2014, fueled by the glory of that Friday-Night Meatballs essay, without the support of my husband, I decided to get started.
I invited Elsie's friend to come eat with us. L is four and lives next door. She's the youngest of three, and her face positively lit up when she realized she was going to get a dinner invitation FIRST -- independent of her older siblings.
When her eight-year-old brother, G, heard that it was chicken for dinner, he hung around.
"I LOVE chicken" he confided. So I invited him, too.
"Is it ready yet?" L asked me every five minutes.
"I've just started cooking." I told her. "It will be ready in 45 minutes or so."
"Is it ready yet?" She asked, five minutes later.
***
I cooked a simple recipe. Potatoes, sliced thin, in the bottom of the pan, topped with boneless chicken thighs with a sprinkling of cardamon and a drizzle of honey. Kids love cookie spices. On the side, I made zucchini, the way my grandmother always did. Saute the onions in olive oil until they start to caramelize, then add the zucchini (the smallest ones you can find), sliced thin. Saute a little hotter than other veggies, and cook them until they look burnt. They taste amazing that way.
The neighbor kids oohed and ahhed over my dinner. "I love these potatoes!" Said G.
"I like this green stuff!" Raved L. "Elsie, why don't you eat the green stuff? It's soooooo good!"
"I only like the chicken." My daughter replied. But she held her complaints.
I can't tell you how much I needed the ego boost of somebody appreciating my cooking. Those kids are welcome here any time.
Aww. I wish I knew anybody who appreciated zucchini like I do - child or adult! nice!
ReplyDeleteI read the link about Friday Night Meatballs, and that's wonderful. My parents never really liked having visitors while I was growing up, always felt too self conscious about the house. but I had great experiences with friends' families, I always wanted to have that sort of welcoming household myself.
This has probably occured to you before, but maybe have one or two friends over for the day? I really only have one close friend with young children - and her husband is away for most of the week, so she is often alone too - and I am always thanked for coming over, playing with the children, eating dinner with everybody. (For the record, I also only ate family dinners with only my Mom and sister while my Dad worked, and I still value them as quality family time.) I might add too, sometimes my friend's daughter seems a little more willing to eat her dinner because "Mommy's friend likes it", and it's a nice break for my friend. As you mentioned sitting through a 2 hour dinner is sometimes dull day in day out but since I'm not mom it's "cuter" to me and it goes faster having both adult conversation and interaction with the kids.
Great and thought provking post as always.
-K