This year I actually came up with something other than "surprise me", which of course is the least favorite answer I could give. On the menu for this Saturday:
Santa Maria Tri-Tip
B-B-Qed Beans
Guacamole
Chips
Salsa
Chocolate Chip Cookies and Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream
All of this will be prepared by my wonderful spouse who really does enjoy setting the table and dressing it up so to speak. She loves to cook and bake, and as previously noted, not to clean. I'm looking forward to the dinner and family that will accompany all of this.
Tonight, before a fabulous dinner of pasta w/tomato, peas and pancetta, my wife dropped the dreaded secondary charge. "We want to take you OUT to dinner tomorrow night. You need to choose where." I like choosing what restaurant to eat at as much as I like dragging myself to work with a cold.
I love food. That is not the problem. In fact there are plenty of places that I can think to go to. The problem is always two-fold, the kids and the bill. Although my kids eat fairly well, their choice in food can usually be summed up as brown. Pasta no sauce. Chicken nuggets. Pizza. Occasionally a cheeseburger (plain nothing on it) and every once in awhile the actual theme of the restaurant we go to. The second issue is the bill. No way around it, even if it is a "gift" it is still going to come out of my pocket. As the bill payer in the house that means I see the total, tax and tip no matter what.
When I was growing up this was not the custom. I was greeted with a meal (always homemade) and usually a sheet cake. Once again, eight hungry mouths, you do what you can, when you can. When I got into the high school/college years birthdays usually revolved around a liquid consumption rather than what you actually ate. You would always remember what you ate later; it had a way of coming up, if you know what I mean.
My wife has always lived with this tradition of being able to go out and choose where to eat. It happened with me as soon as I became part of the family. It is an amazing feat to watch the birthday person announce their intentions to the rest of the crowd and watch for the winces, or shoulder hunching, or just out and out NO's (usually reserved only for my father-in-law and most often from my mother-in-law).
I've always thought about the food aspect and not the more important reason behind all of this. The meal is important from a gastronomic sense. We have seen the best meals (I remember going to Fleming's for my mother-in-law's birthday and having one of the kids puke on the table) and the worst (Hometown Buffet thanks to my son) cross our plates. What really makes the difference is not the meal, because if it were just that I'd ditch the kids and go somewhere really nice ($450 is not too much to pay for a meal and wine if done correctly). The idea is that it is just good to get together and celebrate around an occasion or a meal once every so often. I think that we forget that.
I think the fact that I cannot remember very many times when I did not sit down to dinner with my folks while living at home (and watching the local and national news, including the three weather forecasts) makes this such an oddity to me. I love the fact that my family eats together, not always what I want them to eat, but we get that celebration everyday of the week.
No comments:
Post a Comment