The Family Meal, Reconsidered

Grace here from my kitchen, reflecting on the beautiful mess that is the family meal...

I’ve always thought that the idea of “family meal” is misleading because it conjures up a Norman Rockwell-seque image of everyone seated around the table at the same time, willingly eating the same things, and having pleasant conversations about their day. If this describes your household, congratulations. For the rest of us, well, that’s not quite the reality.

There’s no avoiding the busy schedules — one kid has hockey practice and another has band practice — that pull us away from the communal table. And getting everyone to eat the same meal — when everyone is actually at the table together — can be tricky.

But when I think about what I’m grateful for, it’s not those picture-perfect meals, if they ever really existed in the first place. It’s all the time we’ve spent together in the kitchen making them.

I’m grateful for my family that cooks together — for all the chopping, stirring, tasting, reaching over one another, and occasional disagreements about the right way to do something. I’ve learned to back off and let others lead the way, which is actually really quite liberating.

Cooking together gives us something that sitting down to dinner doesn’t always manage to do: it gets us talking, laughing, teaching, learning, maybe a little (or a lot) carping, but always working toward something together. 

Children are naturally curious about food when they’re allowed to get their hands into it, and I’ve found that they’re more likely to eat something they’ve rolled, folded, dipped, or otherwise had a hand in making. It’s not foolproof — kids have a real knack for proving their parents wrong. But giving them some ownership of dinner certainly improves the odds.

I started cooking with my own kids when they were little, and now both of them are restaurant chefs, so you never know. You don’t have to raise future chefs, of course. Just enlist their help. Give someone a salad to toss, a sauce to stir, some cheese to grate, or a piece of fish to debone. Teach those skills early and your efforts will be rewarded for a long time. 

Of course, cooking with kids takes longer, makes more of a mess, and requires that you throw any idea of perfection out the window. In fact, tuck your hands in your pockets and leave them there until you’re asked for help. It hurts much less than biting your tongue. 

With that in mind, I pulled together some of my favorite assembly-line recipes — the kind that are more fun, and somehow taste better, when you make them together.

My sushi rolls and Vietnamese summer rolls are natural starting points because everyone can choose what goes inside and nobody needs to care how perfect it is. In fact, it’s the imperfections that make the process feel more authentic.