Sunday dinner paradigm shift.

Have I really not ever written a whole post about this? I can't believe it. I must have put everything on Facebook. Well, going to do it now.

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Sunday afternoons wipe me out. If we don't have a planned family fun activity scheduled, I will often wander upstairs right after lunch, lie down for "just a few minutes," and the next thing I know it is 4:30 and I feel like I have been run over by the special truck that comes on Sunday afternoons just to run me over.

And then, of course, it is time to get dinner on the table.

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I like being in charge of cooking. Really, I do; one of the things that makes our life so lovely is that I enjoy cooking, never really get tired of it; I achieve moments of flow in the kitchen, chopping and stirring; I love trying new recipes; I like eating, so it's nice for me that (being the cook) I get to make whatever I feel like eating; I like choosing menus that will fit into our week. The only thing about it that isn't much fun is trying to make the grocery list and menu plan when I am feeling rushed, because then I know I will make suboptimal or boring choices and that makes me less happy than everything being interesting and well-chosen, but it is still okay.

Mark is capable in the kitchen if necessary and has his own little repertoire of things to make when for some reason I am unable to make dinner. Which is great. The kids like his stuff (chilaquiles, bacon-vegetable-tomato spaghetti sauce, the rarely seen lasagna) and so do I.

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We used to use Sunday afternoons for Mark to catch up on household projects and for me to plan my school stuff for the week. Then a few years ago Mark had a sort of -- I don't know -- head-of-household conversion experience and started working on remaking our Sundays to be more restful with more family fun time in them.

This has been a slow change, but it has made a big difference. Saturdays are more busy now -- I do my school planning in the afternoon on Saturdays, and often we have a big housecleaning binge from everyone -- but Sunday afternoons are truly more fun and family-focused. We don't clean the house, just the necessary dishwasher-loading and the like. We take walks sometimes, or naps while the kids do their own thing. I have learned to suppress my inner busy person and just enjoy hanging out, ignoring the sword of Damocles which is things I could be doing right now so that I could relax LATER even BETTER when the things are all done.

Because you know what, the things are never done and if I am going to be restful I have to seize it from the jaws of things that are not yet done.

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Sunday dinner was a sticking point, though. Because you have to eat, and making the dinner was my job.

I remember once (I was pregnant, which is probably definitely relevant) walking into the messy kitchen about 3 pm and bursting into tears because Mark had been insisting that we all relax and have fun on Sunday because it was Sunday and as a result no one had cleaned up anything in the kitchen all day and now I had to MAKE DINNER in the MESSY KITCHEN and everybody got a day of rest but MEEEEEEEE and I don't remember how that ended but I think takeout was involved.

But it all changed soon after the 15-month-old was born almost a month early and just a couple of days before New Year's Eve. We felt deprived of a party, so when I was just starting to sit at the table for dinner again -- maybe 10 days postpartum -- Mark went to the store to buy festive food. He remembered how after a previous birth, his parents had sent us a gift basket from the fancy grocery store, and he bought the kinds of things that were in that basket, and things that pregnant women are supposed to avoid these days. Lox, and several kinds of crackers, and good runny cheese. Cut vegetables with some kind of dip. And fancy salami, maybe proscuitto, and some sweet things too. Party food! We sat around the table, a brand-new family of seven, and devoured cheese and crackers. Probably there was good beer, or maybe some bubbly. It was great. Satisfying. Festive. Special.

And -- this is crucial -- almost no work at all.

It was sitting around that table with the new baby that we had the epiphany we had been waiting for. This was how Sunday dinner needed to be, for as long as we were busy raising young children. It was the solution to the puzzle that had eluded us for so long.

Making food from scratch is not restful enough. Leftovers (at least on their own) are not feast-ive enough. But bought hors d'oeuvres -- enough for everyone to get their fill -- are both festive and easy! Problem solved!

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Now Sunday dinner prep looks like this: At least two kinds of crackers (even if it's just saltines and Triscuits) are set out in bowls, and sometimes a take-and-bake baguette is popped in the oven and sliced. Someone slices salami (or summer sausage); someone arranges 2 or 3 kinds of cheese, usually a mix of fairly inexpensive cheddars and goudas appreciated by the kids, with one good cheese appreciated by me. If we have leftover deli meats of other kinds, those go out as well. (An alternative to the sausage-and-cheese platter: lox and cream cheese on cocktail rye. Mm.) We keep a small stock of jars and cans of fancy olives and preserves and spreads and pâtés and things, which we add to whenever we happen to see something interesting while out and about, and one or two of those goes on the table. We cut up peppers and celery and carrots and radishes, and put them out for dipping, either with bought hummus or with good olive oil, salt, and pepper -- a trick we learned in Rome. We open wine or beer, and the kids may have juice boxes or soda if they have some. It takes maybe 20 minutes to put on the table and is not hard to clean up.

And it feels like Sunday.

We call this kind of dinner "plate," borrowing a word from the family of a friend. I think smorgasbord would be a better word, but plate has stuck.

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We can't keep the work at bay forever. After dinner on Sunday it's back to the grindstone, cleaning up and prepping for the week. But I feel like we've finally hit the sweet spot.

A lot of "wow this is the best solution ever to our problem" doesn't stick. I post about my life-changing new idea with enthusiasm, my readers tell me I am a genius [polishes nails on lapel], and then after a month or a season or a new baby I give up, slink away, and never speak of my formerly great idea again.

i have a feeling this one is robust enough to stick, at least as long as we can afford cheese and crackers.

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Comments

[Kelly]

"the sword of Damocles which is things I could be doing right now so that I could relax LATER even BETTER when the things are all done." <--This is so me.

[Kristin]

I'm liking this idea. I detest making two meals on Sundays!!

[Jenny]

I like the idea of Sunday as a day of rest, but every Saturday that isn't scheduled away with activities finds me mostly comatose and Sunday is filled with all the things I didn't do Saturday. I can't figure out how to not crash on Saturday. Well, maybe one day. The sword of Damocles regularly visits my house as well.

"so when I was just starting to sit at the table for dinner again -- maybe 10 days postpartum"

I am intrigued by this. Do you just eat in bed or something? Is it a conscious decision to stay away from the table or is that just when you feel well enough to sit on a hard chair? The more I hear about what other women do postpartum, the more I think I haven't given myself near enough latitude. I am pretty sure I got out of bed and ate lunch at the table about 2.5 hours after having M.

[Amber]

"A lot of "wow this is the best solution ever to our problem" doesn't stick. I post about my life-changing new idea with enthusiasm, my readers tell me I am a genius [polishes nails on lapel], and then after a month or a season or a new baby I give up, slink away, and never speak of my formerly great idea again." I often wonder how often this happens all over the internet. I often feel paralyzed in posting something about a neat thing I'm doing because I don't want to have that record of it when I've stopped doing it months later. Like I'm never supposed to change my mind or have to drop something because my life has changed. Anyway...

I think is a fabulous idea, and I'm trying to figure out how to adapt it for my Paleo-eating husband. Setting out bread, cheese and crackers just seems mean. But I love the idea of this kind of meal, and doing this kind of meal on a Sunday so that I'm not faced with all the cleaning and cooking. I'm going to have to keep thinking about how to adapt this for my home!

[bearing]

Amber --- really good cured meats or fish, and tasty vegetables, and maybe nut-based crackers?

[bearing]

Jenny - in bed the first few days, then I move to a comfy chair downstairs.

[Christy P.]

At our house there would also be cut fruit.

Like guacamole, too. I buy it in packets at Costco to keep in the freezer. It's not as good as fresh guacamole but way better than no guacamole at all and also makes a good dip for cut veggies.

I like to add to the festivity of such events by busting out The Good Dishes or colorful but mismatched serving pieces. Will admit to putting a piece of parchment over the wooden cheeseboard to minimize cleanup.

[bearing]

Sometimes I do fruit, but I'm trying to encourage vegetable consumption and the kids will happily eat cut raw vegetables. Whereas I don't need to encourage them to demolish fruit -- it all gets eaten up without putting it on the dinner table (although sometimes I'll add it for lack of other options or because it goes well with our dinner, e.g. sliced oranges with Mexican food).

I don't actually have "good dishes." Mismatched serving pieces is all I have! And I don't have a wooden cheeseboard either, though I like your parchment idea quite a bit. If I needed to have one for a sudden fancy party, I would be forced to use a pizza peel, which might possibly read as quirky and creative rather than "the old wooden board warped years ago and it was declared from upon high that only dishwasher-safe cutting surfaces would darken our kitchen door henceforth."

Guacamole in the freezer is a tip I learned from you, but I don't think anyone but me accepts that vegetables may be dipped in it. The presence of guacamole causes people to go hunting for a bag of chips.

[Rebekka]

We do this on days when we get home right before dinner for one reason or another. Right now on Mondays we have school garden, (they give the extras to the under-6 set), so we get home about six or a little past, and we usually eat at six or a little before. Crisis! (At least with toddlers, although they are full of crackers at that point.)

I can confirm your thoughts on the smorgasbord, although we usually eat ours on Scandinavian rye bread (looks like pumpernickel, no caraway). In Danish it's called smørrebrød as a genre, and each little oven-facet sandwich is a "mad" (both a collective and singular, in the collective it means food). Our toddlers eat liver pate or salami, and I usually make a cream-based salad for the adults, like tuna or hot smoked salmon stirred up in cream cheese, this can be done the day before.