Every day I make an effort to read an article in The Atlantic. I have a paid subscription, selected a few years ago. The choices tend to be top-heavy with political themes, many reasonably compatible with my own world view, often assessing the boundaries of propriety. Those are sometimes what I read. More often though, I select the daily reading outside the political realm. One on the evolution of family supper caught my eye. My supper has evolved considerably over my lifetime, though not in parallel with the historical approach taken by the author.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/10/work-its-whats-for-dinner/599770/
Currently, American adults span a lot of variants. I am an empty-nester couple. My son is a well-paid professional with homemaker wife and infant child. My daughter is a single mother with an infant child on maternity leave. I live in suburbia; they live in central cities. I have great fondness for my kitchen and what it enables me to do. So does my son, though he lives a brief stroll from a street with five restaurants on each block, all of which will deliver. Other than an occasional pizza delivery, I've never ordered a prepared meal delivered to my home, let alone the ingredients to make it myself. As a kosher consumer, my options center around availability.
In childhood, my home in the 1960s had a nuclear family. Wage earner father, homemaker mother who took charge of meals. We also had kosher takeout as a treat, living in an area of many kosher homes. Mother shopped, made supper, which we mostly ate together, though that was also the era of TV dinners consumed on snack tables in the family room. Supermarkets had far fewer selections than the megamarts of today. In that era, a few families became unexpectedly wealthy, or, more accurately, high-income from salary or commissions. When profiled, they seemed to select eating out more as their reward for more discretionary income. We rarely ate out, other than an occasional pizza or going out for ice cream.
College brought me mostly to student cafeterias. In medical school I had an apartment with a kitchen. Studies took a lot out of me. Not having a car my first two years limited what I could obtain from a supermarket, though that expanded greatly in my more mobile junior and senior years. I ate supper with other classmates at an affiliated hospital the first two years, then mostly my own kitchen. Restaurants were rare, but not absent. I took a particular liking to a vegetarian place near my apartment, often a Shabbos dinner treat.
Upon marriage to a graduate student shortly after receiving my degree and beginning residency, her university offered us a small apartment with a kitchen nook. I had income for the first time, not a lot but mine. The major university sat near trendy shops. In my wife's years there, she had collected her favorites, still within an easy walk from university housing. Her schedule being more predictable than mine, she handled meal preparation, but I did the shopping as the one with the car. Meals became hybrid, our kitchen mostly, a favorite evening out once or twice a week, depending on my call schedule. My final year and beyond to me to apartments and soon a house with real kitchens and much less convenient access to alternative places to eat. My schedule and my wife's had some predictability. By necessity, she got a car. Our two children arrived, changing meal responsibilities.
Though our circumstances changed, so did the world around us. A few entrepreneurial types saw the opportunities that dual-income couples with much of their days out of their personal control might bring. We never sought fast food, but casual eateries, Sunday brunches, pizza chains, and eventually brew pubs became part of our supper options, though we never compromised on eating as a family. We made few exceptions. Having to tend to critical patients or late consults sometimes kept me away. Kids had rare school activities that kept them from our supper table, whether at home or an evening out. Supper had been allocated as the time when we assembled, as it is today. When we visit our children in different cities, supper remains communal in their homes.
As my children progressed through childhood and beyond, not only did options of where to eat expand, but what could be accomplished in my own kitchen also evolved. I took a liking to preparing meals, designing from simple weeknight to elegant Seder for many. Borders Book Store z"l had endless books on their discount tables that I purchased. Cable TV entered my home during the 1980s. I gravitated to the Cooking Channel or Food TV. In its early days, the shows demonstrated master chefs or food journalists helping interested folks like me to get more creative and proficient. The endless competitions that replaced them would not come until much later. The internet brought food sites, Kosher and beyond, all searchable by menu, cuisine, ingredient, though they did not make cookbooks with explanatory chapters obsolete. Meals became a gathering time, but also a challenge to assemble and satisfying when done. Convenience came later, but I had already spurned fast food. As my skill and interest in making my own meals expanded, and they kids moved to adulthood, the need to delegate meal preparation to somebody else largely disappeared. And the few places I sought out, largely brew pubs, have gone bust.
Meals today for me, now a Senior, remain a home obligation. My wife and me, who even in retirement spend our daylight hours pursuing our individual interests, eat together. I do not have snack tables to eat while watching TV. Indeed, as televisions have gotten grander and less expensive, and channel options exploded, my wife and I watch different televisions with very different shows. But we assemble for supper, which I prepare most nights. I shop for ingredients at a megamart and at Trader Joe's. I know I will need to have something a little special each Shabbos. When I shop, I look for things that make easy weeknight meals. Garden Burgers, pasta that can be boiled and doused with jarred marinara sauce and sautéed vegetables, potatoes white and sweet that can get shoved into an oven with an hour's neglect, frozen soups that heat in boiling water, tomatoes or cucumbers for slicing, vegetables that can heat in boiling water. I rarely depend on a microwave. Each night we have an entrée, a starch, and a vegetable of some type. Rarely wine or soda. Occasionally beer for me. Simple meals, occasionally elaborate with guests. Always with my wife. She's the centerpiece.
So, as The Atlantic essay noted, meal patterns have varied with technology, culture, and personal obligations. While mine have taken a trajectory over time and circumstance, it was not that large a trajectory. My household's supper still has elements of my childhood suppers but its share of advancements. What we eat has shifted in small ways. Who shares the table and which table really has not.
No comments:
Post a Comment