At the beginning of the school year and the start of lots of fall activities, I vowed to make dinners at the table a priority for our family. I have not always gotten this right, and it's easy to slip into habits where meals are an afterthought and our monthly Pablo's budget is much larger than our grocery budget! But at the end of a full and sometimes stressful day, when we are all moving in different directions or needing different things, I've found that our table is my favorite anchor place, pulling us back to each other. And when we can make an entire night of it, involving the kids and throwing pizza dough balls in the air whilst giving our best Italian accents, it's just about as good as it gets in my book.
I tell the kids that their dad and I fell in love in the kitchen together. And although it was in his smelly apartment he shared with three other guys directly next to College Hill, what sticks out the most are the small ways we made it special. The Frank Sinatra music we played, the cheap wine we drank in mismatched glasses, the pasta plates that made it all the way to this house until the dishwasher cracked one in two this past year. We learned to love the aromas of garlic sizzling in a pan, the bright red tomato sauce we fed each other with the big wooden spoon, and the extra dashes of garlic or basil or red pepper to give it a little heat. And all these years later, every time a simple marinara is prepped on our stove top, I can count on Beau saying something about how the flavors and smells make his head feel warm and bring him right back to those early years of building our new life together. The food we prepared was a currency that we shared, a way to connect and feel close and show love. Something we learned to value and desired to make real evident in our kids' lives, too.
I love that over ten years later, we continue to fall in love around food, only this time we get to invite Cruz and Mila into the magic of it all. The Friday before school officially started, we had a little homemade grilled pizza night. It was Beau's idea, and he took it upon himself to make lots of little dough balls and lots of toppings to choose from. We each got our own, took turns playing "cooking show" and created our own masterpieces. We grilled them one by one, cut them in little pieces, and sampled and critiqued in good fun all night long.
Then we had a fire, sang along to Dad's guitar, snuggled up with blankets and table topics and talked and laughed until eventually their eyes grew real heavy and we declared it bedtime. It was a simple but favorite night of our entire summer and would usher us into the school year well.
And we had so much fun with our own little pizza night that we decided to make it a fun night with friends! It was an absolute mess, but I guess the creative ideas always invite a little mess. And we had some very creative chefs around our table that night! Heart shaped pizzas and many bottles of wine later led to paper lanterns in the sky and some pretty serious moon dancing. Twas' a fun night...
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