Family Dinner
Recently when Taylor and I were watching Andy Griffin on TV land , I saw an ad about the family table project On September 26, 2004, there is a project to get families to sit down to dinner all together at home for an enjoyable meal. There are studies that have indicated that families who consistently eat meals together have teenage children that are less likely to get in trouble. Now I am sure it is not the eating that does it but that correlation comes from the involvement of the parents in the child's world.
The idea of parents nor eating with children on a regular basis is hard for me to believe even though when I was in high school this was the case a majority of the time. Now, I understand not always eating at home. We ate out atleast half the time when I was pregnant with James. I definitely understand not always cooking at home. That is a struggle for me currently.
During my early childhood, I always ate "supper" with Grandmamma and Grandaddy, almost always Mama, and often with my cousin Jimmy. We always had a full meal with several side dishes and vegetables, meat, bread and dessert. Those experiences helped develop my love of food especially comfort food. Then once a week just like in the popular movie "Soul Food", we had Sunday dinner (lunch in our case) that my grandmama cooked. Grandmama Moffitt never went to Sunday school or church that I can remember because she stayed home and cooked lunch after she had already cooked pancakes-our traditional Sunday breakfast. Oh I could go on and on about the food, ham, roast beef, fried chicken, homemade yeast rolls, fresh veggies and usually one of Mama's cakes. Yummy!
Those meals not only left me with memories of good southern home cooking, but also left me with a tradition of eating dinner together that I automatically applied to my family even before the children. For the entire year when James and I worked split shifts switching off with Taylor @ 2:30 every day, we never ate together during the week. Not one meal! Sometimes we would instant message each other as I was eating my TV dinner at home and he was eating his at work. It was a rough time being apart. Now that we are all home at night it has been a struggle to eat together every night with James putting in long hours at the store and juggling Taylor and baby's schedules. We manage. Even Baby James is starting to eat his cereal and juice with us at supper time in his high chair. Last night, James had some last minute work to finish up and would not be home at his regular time so instead of waiting we ate without him. It just doesn't seem right when one of us is not there. So when daddy came home, he didn't want us to starve or anything but he still asked "Did you guys eat yet?" and then he ate "warmed-overs".
I know we are lucky to spend that time together even though our evenings seem like a race every night during the week.
The idea of parents nor eating with children on a regular basis is hard for me to believe even though when I was in high school this was the case a majority of the time. Now, I understand not always eating at home. We ate out atleast half the time when I was pregnant with James. I definitely understand not always cooking at home. That is a struggle for me currently.
During my early childhood, I always ate "supper" with Grandmamma and Grandaddy, almost always Mama, and often with my cousin Jimmy. We always had a full meal with several side dishes and vegetables, meat, bread and dessert. Those experiences helped develop my love of food especially comfort food. Then once a week just like in the popular movie "Soul Food", we had Sunday dinner (lunch in our case) that my grandmama cooked. Grandmama Moffitt never went to Sunday school or church that I can remember because she stayed home and cooked lunch after she had already cooked pancakes-our traditional Sunday breakfast. Oh I could go on and on about the food, ham, roast beef, fried chicken, homemade yeast rolls, fresh veggies and usually one of Mama's cakes. Yummy!
Those meals not only left me with memories of good southern home cooking, but also left me with a tradition of eating dinner together that I automatically applied to my family even before the children. For the entire year when James and I worked split shifts switching off with Taylor @ 2:30 every day, we never ate together during the week. Not one meal! Sometimes we would instant message each other as I was eating my TV dinner at home and he was eating his at work. It was a rough time being apart. Now that we are all home at night it has been a struggle to eat together every night with James putting in long hours at the store and juggling Taylor and baby's schedules. We manage. Even Baby James is starting to eat his cereal and juice with us at supper time in his high chair. Last night, James had some last minute work to finish up and would not be home at his regular time so instead of waiting we ate without him. It just doesn't seem right when one of us is not there. So when daddy came home, he didn't want us to starve or anything but he still asked "Did you guys eat yet?" and then he ate "warmed-overs".
I know we are lucky to spend that time together even though our evenings seem like a race every night during the week.
posted by Thalia @ 11:20 AM
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