Grow Food, Cook Food, Share Food: Perspectives on Eating from the Past and a Preliminary Agenda for the Future

Third Course: Share Food

| 47 47 third course Share Food When my wife and I decided to have a family, I said I would let her make all the rules as long as I was allowed to make one that could never be broken: that we would always eat together as a family. When my children got older, if someone didn’t want to eat what I was cooking, and admittedly it was sometimes strange, that was fine. I was happy to cook whatever anyone wanted, as long as we sat down at the table together and ate. Sometimes I regret offering choices, especially when I end up cooking several different meals in one night, and then having to eat the same leftovers several days thereafter. And I will admit, sometimes the rule does get broken nowadays, when someone has a play rehearsal or some other activity going on in the evening. Sometimes one of the adults is away for work, usually me. But the rule still stands. I also have to admit that it isn’t always pleasant. My two sons fight all the time, and the table is often the place where all the frustrations and anxieties of the day are gathered and then taken out on everyone else. The reason for this rule is really not a fundamental belief that family meals somehow make families stick together, which in turn makes communities cohere, which instills values in children, lowers crime rates, and maintains the order of society. There is a lot of ideological baggage associated with family meals, or the supposed breakdown of them. Some people see the demise of the family meal as the cause of the erosion of the traditional family itself, and as the root of all of society’s evils. Sometimes they go so far as to blame women who work outside the home—if only those 48 || third course wives and mothers would get back into the kitchen and cook for their families, everything would be right again. I don’t agree with this simple equation. Pathologically criminal people who eat with their children are going to mess them up. I don’t think a family meal magically makes everything better or upholds traditional families. Nor would historians agree that there ever was such a thing as a “traditional family,” meaning two heterosexual parents with two and a half children (I always felt bad for that half a kid). Single parent households, extended households including relatives—a whole variety of different forms have been common through history, sometimes very effective at instilling positive values across generations, but not always. Nonetheless, I am going to argue for the importance not only of eating together as a family, but the importance of sharing meals communally, with neighbors, colleagues, fellow citizens. I will draw examples of food rituals from history, and offer a kind of typology of how sharing food functions socially. First, I should point out that my original motives for making a family dinner rule in my household were purely selfish. I grew up mostly eating alone in front of the TV. That was never an intentional plan, but in suburbia, the commute for my dad into the city became more and more congested and stretched from an hour to more than two, so by the time he got home it was very late. It made sense to feed me earlier. My siblings are much older and left for college when I was still quite young. So, it was usually just me for dinner, plus Gilligan and the Skipper, Ginger and Mary Ann . . . There is no doubt that eating with other people serves a social function within families and groups. Getting together with others is almost unthinkable without food being involved in some way. Sharing in and of itself, giving of one’s labor for the sustenance of others, is inherently pleasurable. I always think the more work someone put in, the more they made the food their own, the greater it should be appreciated. If a cake is homemade, it Share Food | 49| 49 49 means more than one that is purchased. Assuming there aren’t mitigating circumstances that everyone deals with now and then, the store-bought version says, “I don’t care enough about you to put time into preparing something good; I have more important things to do, so I’ll just go out and buy any old junk, and you...