Foodwise Wednesday: Tables are Important

7/6/2016

Tables are important

Even in 1976, I had an inkling that the kitchen table was important. I didn’t have the thoughts to express it, but I knew the way a child does who returns again and again to someplace and finds her people still sitting there.
Our table was oval, formica wood-grainesque with six paisley avocado chairs. Pattern was King in the
mid-seventies. The wall to wall carpet under us a geometric jumble,

Our step dad worked for a linen supply company, so we had a weekly delivery of restaurant style pressed tablecloths and napkins in an assortment of colors. I didn’t know how unusual this was, fresh linens at every meal.
Our mother taught us how to fold them into upright waterlilies, but they were usually smacked down in a rectangle.

I’m grateful that table manners were important to my mother. Manners are a gift.
We took them for granted, and tried to give her grief, but
I understand now, witnessing the lack, how manners help keep the world afloat.
Besides, with three brothers to endure, some manners kept me from complete hysteria.

"We ate a childhood full of meals, that we thought would never end, but they did."

a Culinary Imagination

We set the table: knives, spoons and forks, needed or not, this standard of three. They were laid out with the Bachelor fork on one side all by himself, while King knife stood by his Queen spoon over on the other side of plate. Setting the table was an important part of my budding culinary imagination; romantic and filled with possibility, rarely actualized with our Corningware dishes,

and Looney Tunes glasses collected by going to the burger joint.
Seven nights a week we ate together, and here and there someone was gone, but with three boys and a girl that was fine. Dinner was at six. Dinner was at six, always dinner was at six, and it was unheard of to schedule a class or meeting during the dinner hour, it just never happened unless you were going to an event that included a dinner.

Our meals began with a blessing holding hands around the table. It was always the same prayer, and we took turns saying it, although my brothers loved to turn it into a tongue twister speed contest
GodisgoodGodisgreat
letusthankhimforourfood Amen.
I can still say it really, really fast.

Not Just Filling the belly

We said “please pass” and asked to be excused. We put our napkins on our laps, and elbows off the table. We never slurped or burped, took turns doing the dishes and clearing up, ate our food and didn’t complain, usually. We weren’t allowed to be rude or whiny and we accepted this as the way the world turned. Phone cords didn’t reach the table, TVs weren’t on at meals, no one left before the end of

the meal, and everyone ate the same food, but that’s another story….
Does this sound abnormally idyllic? Well it wasn’t, it was just life, just life as we knew it. My friend’s houses were all variations on the same theme. Although some were strikingly different, like our neighbor Mom who put dinner out on a counter and let everyone pace around the house eating from a bowl in their hands.
They were a more creative and interesting family than ours.

Take me somewhere wonderful

Readcation please

At our table, we bickered, laughed, sulked, joked, endlessly listened to banal adult conversations, and were occasionally sent away from the table for one infraction or another. We ate a childhood full of meals, that we thought would never end, but they did. I can’t say I’m sorry they ended, and I don’t long for them in the least. Who could long for the 1970s? I prefer interesting table conversation, my food, and the more relaxed atmosphere of now, but it set something important in place.
I’m not saying there’s a right way, or place to eat.There are many ways and when I grew up, and left home I witnessed and lived lots of them-- from sitting cross legged in yurts, to rocking to and fro on a boat’s bed while eating and feeding a baby. This is just my memory of one particular flavor of table. One that as a child, gave me a sense of connection, family, ritual, rhythm, security and modeled the social life of eating and communicating with others. It’s interesting to realize how objects as simple as tables and chairs can provide such a focus for human connection. That filling the belly is only one piece, in a complex of important rituals that make our lives human, personal and wealthy.

7 Comments

Author

Hi I'm Sido Maroon,
chef, food writer and culinary educator. I cook, teach, and write to bring you into the heart of the kitchen.

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7/6/2016 02:14:07 pm

That's fascinating to me because my family - parents grown in the same time and country as yours, but in two very different, very faraway places - did things in a very similar way.
There were two weekly festive meals (Friday dinner, Saturday lunch), with clean linens and silver silverware, all the other dinners were very simple, but sit-down and table manners expected.

Interestingly, as I was growing up outside the U.S., that was not at all the custom at any of the homes I knew (except for other American families).

Sido

7/6/2016 05:10:28 pm

I'm really curious now. What were the customs of the other non American families?

7/7/2016 03:12:04 pm

Some huge differences were breakfast salads (and more generally, breakfast as a savory meal with no sweetness), no desserts (although coffee with cake was a standard mid-morning or afternoon meal), and soup - so much soup. Soup every day, an important part of lunch. In contrast, I do not recall my mother serving soup for lunch any weekday, ever.

And scrambled eggs for dinner (scrambled eggs, fine-chopped cucumber/tomato salad with olive oil and lemon juice, or shashuka - a North African eggs-poached-with-tomatoes-and-hot-spices-in-a-skillet sort of thing.)

None of that was part of how we ate at home.

sido

7/7/2016 08:00:51 pm

That sounds so delicious! Soup of course is Queen of Heaven and Earth, and so good for the digestion. We eat dinner at lunch nowadays and just a snack at "dinner time" soup is often on the menu.

I've been wanting to write about the poached egg in vegetables. Have you ever heard of eggs narcissus? A Persian idea? I love living into the culinary imagination of others ways of eating.

It's interesting that your parents national eating identity went with them, do you feel like it overrid their religious food identity?

7/8/2016 12:22:48 am

Soup is awesome! And vegetables for breakfast (and a savory breakfast) are definitely a favorite.

The eggs Narcissus sound delightful (like shakshuka only without tomatoes. Yum!)

And as to the "religious food identity" - that opens a can of worms, doesn't it?
The food always managed to obey the many religious strictures, regardless of meal or content. But the style of eating varied based on the cultural and national (not religious) origin of the cooks and eaters.
There was quite a variety of traditions. And inside that mix, people's national origin was a primary distinguishing character and identity. US, Morocco, Iraq, Persia, Syria, Yemen, Georgia, Italy, Germany, Poland... there were very many, each distinct, each fascinating.

Kathy P

7/19/2016 09:14:22 am

I enjoyed this thread of family meal traditions...both within the family and the experienced cultural differences. Because I grew up in Georgia (the state of), folks make assumptions that my dinner plate included okra, collards, and biscuits with red-eye gravy. Far from it, although my mother made the best fried chicken ever. The good china, silver & damask tablecloth & napkins were used twice a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas. And those two days were the only days my family sat down together. Otherwise, we ate in shifts: the kids at 6 PM, Mama about 8 PM, and Papa an hour or so after that. There were five children...the only way our parents had private time. But they sat at the table with us, nursing their first cocktail. My father eyeballing our plates, urging us on for second helpings. (He was the main cook for our family.) Papa ate last because he drank 3 whiskys to my mother's two.

7/19/2016 10:19:37 am

Thanks Kathy, I felt like I was reading one of those wonderful pieces in Sun Magazine. We have a new food writing FB group " All Manner of Food" if you're interested. I don't think there is 'a' way to eat, but more what feeds us, when we do.