Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Spaghetti for one

The older girls are at a church activity.  The younger girl is asleep on the couch.  And father and son stopped for burgers on the way home from gymnastics.  Which means....spaghetti for only moi.  And that's okay because my homemade spaghetti (my mom's recipe, really) is my most favorite of all comfort foods.  Not that I really need comfort today.  It's been a good day, actually.  But I'm feeling all sorts of cozy, contented and domestic as I putter around my kitchen....barefoot (but NOT pregnant, thankfully).  I love my kitchen.  It's so pretty and functional.  So when I throw on my apron so as to not get my new cute little summery sundress dirty, turn on some music (today...Claude Bolling's Suite for Orchestra and Jazz Piano) and start throwing together ingredients...it feels really good.  (Do you listen to music while you cook?  It's rare that I don't have something playing.  And though I have a fairly varied playlist...when I cook I usually prefer classical.  Well that, or Broadway show tunes.  Not sure why.)  

I've discovered something.  Maybe some of you know that cooking hasn't ever been my favorite thing.  Oh, in the past 19 years I've become fairly decent at it.  I just don't love it.  But in my quest to try and make family time an essential part of our day, I've realized that there is a difference between "cooking" and "making dinner."  Making dinner revolves around family time, not just frying chicken or mashing potatoes.  And therefore, somehow I'm finding I actually enjoy it all when it's wrapped up in the thought of serving my family rather than seeing it as nothing more than just a chore to be done.  And so it's the cooking, yes, but more than that, it's also the prep work leading up to the meal...the menu building and grocery shopping and even down to setting the table.  All of it so when we sit down together, all six of us at the dinner table I feel like we're being fed more than just physically...the togetherness being just as important as the actual meal.  Kind of interesting how a different perspective can change so much, yes?    

2 comments:

Mary said...

Hmm. Interesting. I just cook. Don't really like it. To me it seems that I spend all this time making dinner to have it eaten and done with in 15 minutes to then have to spend more time cleaning up. Maybe I should change the way I look at it...

Shauna said...

We do our meal planning as a family. Whenever possible, the boys help with food prep and getting the table ready. We all sit down together except on those rare occasions when someone has a conflict (I'm enjoying this as much as I can because I know it will get harder to do as the kids get older and their schedules get busier). A lot of times I breathe a big sigh of relief when we finally all make it to the table because it means we have all survived another crazy day. Dinner time is a good time for me. :-) And FYI, my cooking music is Vivaldi's the Four Seasons. I don't know why. It has been ever since college.