Rediscovering the family dinner
Ken Lashley’s family has always gathered around the table for dinner each night.
But with their calendars wiped clean by social distancing measures related to COVID-19, he and his wife and two teen daughters have time now for more than just a quick bite.
“These dinners can go on for like an hour, especially now when there’s no need to get up and get out of there,” said Lashley, an artist from Mississauga who works in the comic book and film industries.
In ordinary times, Kennedy, 17, and Emmersen, 15, would be rushing off to activities or meeting friends to go to the movies. Now they’re at home “and they just have to hang around.”
“I know this sounds horrible to say, but I’m kind of thankful because it has really slowed down everything,” he said.
With their pre-pandemic commitments, and especially the girls’ social lives, Lashley said he couldn’t “even imagine having an hour-long conversation every night with my children.”
“Those moments at dinner time are really like a town hall,” said Lashley, and they’ve made space for both laughter and exploring important issues. Those include George Floyd’s death beneath the knee of a police officer in Minneapolis, Lashley’s own experiences with racism as a Black man and the implications of all of this for his daughters, who are of mixed race.
The Lashley family is one of many that are taking more time for meals these days. The COVID-19 crisis has impacted so many aspects of everyday life, including family dinner. Most concerning, of course, are those whose access to food has been negatively impacted by the virus, either through unemployment, or through disruption to school-based nutrition programs and other initiatives that address hunger.
But the pandemic has also made time in many people’s lives for more routine gathering around the table. For parents who have subtracted an office commute, plus things like sports practices, parent council meetings and music lessons from their schedules, there’s been more time to spend together around the table and more capacity for cooking.
That’s certainly been the case for Robin Stevenson in Etobicoke.
“I’ve tried more new recipes in the past three months than I have in the past three years,” said Stevenson, who lives with her husband and 16-year-old daughter, Charlotte.
Stevenson says she’s never been enthusiastic about cooking — “I’m a reheater” — but that being home more has prompted her to expand her repertoire.
Once she wasn’t rushing home from work and could start thinking about dinner earlier in the day, she started to crack open her cookbooks and meal plan.
“It was also the fact that I was only going grocery shopping once a week,” she says.
With COVID, it’s become ill-advised to pop into a grocery store after work to get whatever the family feels like having that night.
“I’ve had to put a little more thought into what we eat that week.”
As a result, Stevenson has made chicken soup from scratch for the first time, including making the broth from a chicken she roasted. She’s used rhubarb from her mother-in-law’s garden as a topping on a coffee cake and learned to make zucchini fritters after googling to find a way to use the vegetable before it went bad in the crisper.
“I make prime rib now because you can’t go to the Keg to get it.”
Chef Bashir Munye, a food advocate and culinary professor at George Brown College, welcomes this new-found enthusiasm many people are finding for making meals memorable and less rushed.
But the father of three is also deeply concerned about how the pandemic has cut people off from their food supply in ways others may have never considered. “When George Brown College closed, we had forgotten that many of our students really depend on the food that is offered in school as well,” he said.
“Many of those students are also unemployed now, and food insecurity is something they may not have experienced before,” said Munye who is also working on a master’s degree in environmental studies at York University, with a focus on food that’s more socially and environmentally sustainable.
The college, in partnership with Food Share, was able to raise funds to have Good Food boxes delivered to the students.
That’s just one of many forms of food insecurity Munye said he hopes have become more visible during this time and that are addressed moving forward.
“I really hope that our norm becomes something different … The norm has been something that hasn’t been good for most people. The type of life many people have to endure, or have endured all this time, has never really been good for most people when it comes to food.”
For those privileged enough to rest easy that they’ll have food to put on the table, Munye said he hopes they’ll continue to give family meals the time they deserve after physical distancing measures are fully lifted.
“For me it has been great to be mindful and present at the table because before, I’m as guilty as many other people: While I’m having dinner and we are talking, I’m also thinking about the classes that I have to teach, the assignments that I have to submit …”
Munye, who grew up in Italy, recently got to meet Italian master chef Massimo Bottura, whose words translated — including “cooking is an act of love” — have really resonated with him lately.
“There (are) so many things rushed in life, but the act of love that somebody made for you and put on your plate, you kind of have to pause for a second, reflect on it and just take that love that is being given to you,” he said. “So I think that such a beautiful gesture cannot just be rushed away.”
The pandemic has reminded us of the fragility of our time together and Munye said he hopes that inspires us to savour moments together around a table.
“If anything happens in life, how long does it take to have a meal, 15 minutes?
“Let me just be present in these 15 minutes and be able to eat my food, and then I can carry on with other things in life.
“I really hope for a lot of people to really make the time and say, you know what, cooking together, eating together, is the greatest joy that we can have.”