The Paradox of The Party is Over

A friend complained that I’d hidden my book announcement last week. I don’t think it was hidden, but to appease her…Feast on Your Life is out 12/2/25! You can pre-order it here!

Dear Tamar:

Three years ago my husband and I welcomed our first child. A few months ago, we added a second. We’re “in it.” But we’re cooking on a regular basis, with occasional takeout for sanity. My issue is: we’ve fallen into a pattern of kids’ dinner at 6 (usually a sad beige meal for a picky toddler) followed by a more inspired meal that my husband and I eat around 8 or 9.

I’m beginning to feel adamant that we sit down as a family for dinner. (Reasons: I think my kids would be inspired to be more adventurous eaters by watching us, it’s time for us to connect as a family, I think it would help us adults get to bed earlier). That said, I’m completely stumped as to how to pull this off: it needs to be something that can be largely prepped in advance or require little cook time (we both work full time) and be palatable to both us and a child. Any ideas? Is this even possible?

-The Party is Over

Dear The Party is Over,

Years ago, a friend of mine heard the Dalai Lama speak. At some point in his speech, the Dalai Lama began to cry. A reporter asked why. The Dalai Lama answered: “I cried because you are all so violent to yourselves.”

I related this in a silly essay I wrote a decade ago for Yoga Journal. I rediscovered it in search of a reference I’d made in it to a sutra of Patanjali. It was 2:46: Sthira sukham asanam. A generic translation is: The right posture is done with steadiness and filled with ease. I had a yoga teacher who insisted, based on sutra 2:46, that if one struggled, one was not doing yoga, that if one got injured, one was not doing yoga—that yoga meant a union between body and spirit so complete that no back-and-forth, no struggle, no pain, no violence were possible.

What does this have to do with your desire for a not-sad, not-beige meal eaten together? It hinges on a few words, as does the philosophy of yoga laid out by my long-ago teacher. The words are: “sit down as a family for dinner.” At first glance, the phrase is self explanatory, as is the phrase—”steadiness and ease in posture.” I invite you to look again.

I can imagine this getting tiresome. I’ll try to be brisk. The three elements of your phrase are: 1) “sit down” 2) ”as a family” and 3) “dinner.” My theory is that once you’ve articulated what you mean by each, you’ll find that not only is your imagined nightly meal possible, but that you already know what to do.

I can’t guess your definitions of the three parts. I’ll use mine as an example.

I take “sit down” literally when it comes to meals at home. I don’t like serving meals from the stove while everyone else is sitting. Except for the rare instance when I’m making pancakes or crepes for a crowd of children, no food served in my kitchen can require finicky, last minute cooking. This is limiting. Anything that would keep me from sitting with my family or guests will have to be found by eaters out in the rich, wide world beyond these walls. Most of my meat is roasted, boiled, or braised, in large, forgiving pieces. Starches are the kind that can sit: polenta, rice, farro, beans. I rarely serve pasta to a group larger than four. No matter how much I like them, I don’t serve filets of delicate, quick-cooking fish, or tartare. Your own “sit down” might be different. Whatever yours is, stick to it and let it create firm boundaries for your choices—at least until you change your mind.

The next phrase is even more important. Your younger child is small and new. But the older has been around long enough for you to have at least an inchoate sense of what it means for you to do something “as a family.” I have an almost-nine year old, and I know how we do things: We don’t abide stress, or snipping. We slip, one of us getting short-tempered. Another of us points it out. As a policy, we don’t tolerate a loss of perspective. It’s lucky to have dinner, lucky to have each other, lucky to have the opportunities to mess up, be late, burn the toast, etc. The way we are “as a family” is to remember or to remind each other that it’s all gravy. We, “as a family” aren’t excited by packaged or processed foods. In my view, these limitations help: My son doesn’t yet like strongly spiced food. I don’t like to cajole or negotiate or…add stress to time at the table. I reserve most spice for my condiments. There are hundreds of salsa and hot sauces and chili oils etc. in the world. I relish exploring them. I serve almost everything at room temperature. Hot-hot is too stressful. I also would rather have a basic meal of bread and cheese and a vegetable or two than anything cooked in a factory. This is how we are and what we do. How are you, “as a family,” and how do you want to be? Decide and don’t waver, until you want to.

“Dinner” seems easy. It’s an evening meal. Now modify it with your understanding of “sit down” and “as a family.” For me, dinner is an evening meal that I make, during which I sit with my family and rebuff avoidable stress. I’m content with, as I said, bread and cheese, or beans and rice (even if my son only eats three beans), or scrambled eggs, or sausages and corn bread, or nachos with black beans and cheddar cheese. When my husband worked in the city, I was happy with sourdough waffles; my son and I ate Northwind Farms hot dogs (a convenience food!) once a week, with olive-oil dressed lettuce alongside. I’ve always served variations of Nicoise salad for which the one constant is boiled eggs, and the rest is just a selection of some tinned fish, a few cooked vegetables, and some olives. Fin.

Lest I sound intolerably soft: There are fronts of life on which our family-way is to push, to struggle, to test. We aren’t especially gentle about physical discomfort. We are all always trying to hike longer, ski harder, do things we fear. We set out to learn new languages, to expose ourselves to all kinds of unfamiliarity. Maybe this is why it matters to me so much that when we sit down as a family for dinner, it’s a home base. This may be a different configuration than you choose. Perhaps the table is where you’re all at your most striving and experimental. Perhaps it’s all about exposure to new horizons. Perhaps it’s where you teach/learn to face adversity.

Dear cook, once you know what sitting down as your family for dinner means to you, you will find the start of your path. It will look like a slew of compromises and realizations—there may be more sandwiches, or more rice, or more repetition, or more nachos; I eat far less broccoli raab than I used to—and faith that the only constant is change. If you find that you’re fighting, or staying up too late, or working too hard, picture the Dalai Lama crying. I have a feeling that once you’ve gotten the hang of it, you’ll look back on this time as the era when the party was just getting started.