Celebrations

Come to the Table: A Celebration of Family Life
by Doris Christopher

Chapter 1

Like most people my age, I have a hard time remembering what it was like to be six. I have an equally tough time recalling how it felt to be four, or eleven, for that matter. But ask me what it was like to turn six, and it's a whole other story. On the topic of my sixth birthday, I can go on at great length.

I can tell you, for example, that on June 2, 1951, at my request, I had calf liver for dinner. And, much to their dismay, so did my two older sisters, having failed to talk me into asking my mother to make something-anything-else. Since I wouldn't eat a piece of liver today to save my life, I suspect I chose it precisely because my big sisters opposed it so violently. When you're the baby of the family, moments of power are rare. They're also addictive: I requested the same exact menu for the next three birthdays in a row.

We still laugh about my "liver years," my sisters and I, but in retrospect I think those dinners speak volumes about what it was like growing up as the junior member of the Ted Kelley family in Oak Lawn, Illinois, during the postwar years.

Birthday memories are like that. They're shorthand, in a way, for a bit of our personal history, a blast from our own distant past. A faded snapshot is all that's required to send us hurtling back through the decades. To this day, I can look at a picture of my family taken long ago and re-create my place in the universe as a child. It may have been at the bottom of the pecking order, but it was a wonderful place just the same. It was there that I learned all I needed to know about security, love, and belonging. It was there that I learned who I was.

The universe of my childhood no longer exists. But bits and pieces of that lost world remain with me: the meat grinder I inherited from my mother; my Aunt Anna's recipe for baked beans; the sense of well-being that still warms my heart at the sight of my family gathered around the table.

And when I close my eyes and let my mind wander into the past, I can picture us still, drifting one at a time on a cold winter evening into my mother's kitchen, five separate souls merging into one family, in a timeless celebration of what it means to belong. Back in my "liver years," of course, family meals weren't endangered. They were simply what families did. Whatever else our lives brought, here was something to count on, something to anchor the day. These celebrations of kinship and closeness always started with blessings and ended with sweets. Casual interruptions like phone calls weren't acceptable, either, although the phone seldom rang. When it did, my family would be startled, bewildered. Now who could that be, at this hour? It was suppertime, after all.

For the most part, the suppers of my growing-up years were fairly routine. We took our seats at the table between five and five-thirty and shared the events of the day over practical, easy meals that were hearty and economical, if a bit unexotic. Mind you, nobody ever complained; our daily bread was satisfying and tasty. But on birthdays and other special occasions, we would take a welcome break from our routine. On those evenings, "supper" became "dinner," a fancier-than-usual meal made all the more festive by the addition of a guest or two, along with a tablecloth and maybe even some hors d'oeuvres beforehand. The mere act of eating these tidbits in the living room, a place where food and drink normally were forbidden, heightened our anticipation, setting the tone for the dinner to follow. Our conversation was more animated and our laughter more frequent. We ate later than usual and we lingered a bit longer. Tomorrow, we all knew, we'd be eating Swiss steak off our everyday Melmac. But now, over roast beef and pie, we were happy to bask in the glow.

Those were among the memories I grew up with, of good times I hoped to re-create with my own children, who were born during the seventies, when shared meal times were still a fixture of American life. But during the eighties, as women, including myself, entered the workforce in record numbers and children's schedules became busier, things began to change. As a result, the family dinner hour seemed to be going the way of unlocked doors and bacon-and-egg breakfasts.

Nowadays, getting everyone to the table at the same time is easier said than done, especially when one child's soccer practice follows another's violin lesson, to say nothing of the nightly challenge of feeding a family made up of one vegetarian, one dieter, and a carnivorous teenager or two. And how do we cope when our schedules are at odds with our appetites-when the kids want to eat at five-thirty, but Dad won't be home until eight? What about the nights we're delayed at the office, and our good intentions all go up in smoke?

It is possible to reconcile today's hectic pace with our need to celebrate and connect with our families. What most of us need is a starting point, some means of taking that first, wobbly step toward the fridge and that vaguely familiar appliance, the stove. Let go of unrealistic expectations and impossible standards, and the side dish of guilt that goes with them. Times have changed; things are different. About the only things that haven't changed are our need to celebrate and to spend time with our families. And while it may no longer be realistic to expect the whole clan to march into the kitchen at five-thirty sharp every night, that isn't to say we can't get it together three nights a week, or even one. Don't view this tradition as a chore, but rather a celebration.

You can make the times you do come to the table as a family memorable. A few festive touches added to your family's meals can go a long way toward boosting everybody's enthusiasm. Along with improving your odds of getting things off to a good start, you'll also create some new ways to celebrate in the process. After all, when you stop and think about it, most families have a great deal to celebrate not only birthdays, but weddings and anniversaries, new babies and new jobs, good report cards and graduations, promotions and winning sports teams. Celebrations are a great time to bring the family together. And, a good time to begin a few new family traditions.

When Sammy Werner's T-ball team won its championship, his mother, Claire, used simple food coloring to turn her family's supper into a tribute. The Werners ate orange mashed potatoes washed down with blue milk, in honor of Sammy's team colors. "Food coloring is fun, inexpensive, and easy," says Claire. "And it adds interest to foods kids won't otherwise eat. It amazed me how fast that blue milk disappeared!" These days, eight-year-old Sammy and his five year-old sister, Ellie, never know what rainbow shades they might find on their plates. Claire added purple coloring to the vanilla cake mix for Ellie's Barney birthday cake. And green pancakes have become a weekend staple at the Werners' house.

As the Werners' story shows, kids love the little things that turn "ordinary" into "special." There are as many of these as there are families, and they needn't be costly or elaborate. The happy truth is, it takes surprisingly little to elevate a humdrum meal into a festive one. Chocolate milk in a wineglass. Ice cream sundaes for dessert. A special plate to mark special occasions. Celebratory traditions can be as easy as swapping seats, thereby giving the all-A student or Most Valuable Player a spot of honor at the head of the table. Families with round tables can accomplish much the same thing by serving their MVP first.

In the Christopher household years ago, celebration dinners were officially designated by the use of the colorful place cards my daughters made. We still use them for special occasions, even when it's only the four of us. My husband, Jay, has one decorated with a drawing of a necktie, and Kelley has one with a beer mug, a humorous nod to her college days. Julie, the shopper of the family, has an American Express card on hers. Mine has a house-our house bright and welcoming, beneath a blue sky with white, puffy clouds. More than silver platters or crystal goblets, these little cards make us happy. They remind us that no one knows us better or loves us more than each other.

The special dinners I made for my daughters' birthdays further reflected their personalities. Over the years, I've cooked everything from chicken fajitas to shish kebab to satisfy the adventurous tastes of Kelley, my younger daughter. But for Julie, a hamburger lover, nothing but burgers would do. One year, in hopes of making memories along with dessert, I carried this theme all the way through to her birthday cake: a dead ringer for a giant Big Mac, with green-tinted icing for lettuce, chocolate icing for the burgers, peanut butter icing for the bun, and peanuts sprinkled on top just like sesame seeds!

Unusual birthday cakes have been a Christopher tradition ever since. The year Kelley turned five, I baked fancy individual cakes for a celebration that combined elements of dress-up with an old-fashioned tea party. Kelley and her guests sipped tea and ate their cakes while wearing their moms' Sunday best, complete with high heels and hats. On other birthdays, I remember pink-and-white checkerboard confections and Winnie the Pooh cakes, but every now and then, nostalgia triumphed over invention, and I opted instead for the rich chocolate layer cake with white icing my mother always made for my birthdays. I hoped my daughters' birthday memories would live on the way mine have, and that one day, they'd look back on their own "liver years."

As the familiar, rich scent of my children's cakes filled the air, transporting me back to my youth, I lingered awhile in the kitchen reliving those celebratory dining room dinners, mesmerized once again by their spell. Long after the birthday candles had been blown out and the wishes had come true (or not), our family memories of those dinners would continue to warm us, making us feel special and loved.

The fact that we'd had fun in the process made our bond that much stronger. And one of the main reasons my celebratory dinners loom so large in my memory is simply because they were fun. An underrated commodity in today's busy world, family fun often falls by the way side, but its worth shouldn't be lost in mundane details of everyday life like household bills, disappointing report cards, and longer-than-usual work hours. Families that set aside time to have fun together are closer and happier as a result, a lesson brought home to me not just by my own parents, but also by my husband's, who believed it should be a priority all year long, but on birthdays in particular.

My in-laws, Maxine and Walter Christopher, always celebrated Walter's birthday by throwing a dinner party. Like the guest of honor, a sociable man who loved gag gifts and jokes, these parties were always great fun. The year Julie was born, we decided to turn Walter's annual party into a practical joke. The perfect vehicle for doing this was something we called a Mystery Dinner.

On the eve of Walter's birthday, the dinner guests were seated at a table set with nothing more than a centerpiece: no dishes, no flatware, no food. The puzzled guests were handed menus listing twenty items to be served in four courses. For each course, guests had to choose five items apiece. That may sound simple, but wait: every item, from flatware to apple pie, had been given a code name. To receive a spoon, for example, a guest had to order a "Fisherman's Friend," unlikely unless he or she happened to know that a "spoon" is also a type of fishing lure. "Barbells" were celery sticks with black olives stuck on either end. A "devil's tool" was a fork.

© 1999 by Doris Christopher

About the Author

DORIS CHRISTOPHER is a businesswoman, a wife, and a mother. She is president and founder of The Pampered Chef, Ltd., a business that sells unique, quality kitchen tools and specialty foods. Recognized as one of the "Top Fifty Women Business Owners" by Working Woman magazine, Christopher started The Pampered Chef from the basement of her suburban Chicago home in 1980. The company now has a loyal client base of over twelve million customers and is regarded as one of the fastest-growing privately held companies in America.