CHLOE SHORTEN’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT: advice and recipes to bring families together
Hectic schedules and busy lives have cut short the time families have to eat meals together but, says Chloe Shorten in an extract from her new cookbook, shared meals are a vital part of family life.
Every Saturday for the first 20 years of my life, my family sat down to lunch together. Whatever we were into – dance, sports, drama or just sleeping in – all seven of us would gather in the kitchen of our parents’ home in Brisbane and squeeze around the table.
Those meals were rarely anything fancy. We might share fluffy bread that you could rip apart instead of slicing, cold meats, cheeses and salads. We kids would help Mum [Quentin Bryce] prepare the meal, set the table and tidy up afterwards. It’s the togetherness I remember most about these meals. I knew this was my tribe. They were helping me grow up and I knew they were there for me through thick and thin.
Breakfast was a less rigid affair, but it was still an important meal. Mum would be at the kitchen bench making cooked meals a few mornings a week: eggs, sausages, bubble-and-squeak (cabbage, mashed potato and cheese – yum!), homemade hash browns, baked beans, bacon, cooked tomatoes with oregano.
There would be kids coming in from swimming, netball, lifesaving, judo or rowing training, as well as sleepy ones still in their PJs. I have no idea how she managed to fit that culinary start into her busy days when I often just manage to get cereal, fruit and lunches organised for my own family.
Growing up in a big family, it was at mealtimes we stitched our experiences together, like one big quilt. It was the everyday ritual of gathering together around the table that helped us understand what it meant to be a member of the family. Whenever Mum arrived home in her suits, always elegant, one of us would be dispatched upstairs to take her things to her room and she would slide on an apron and get down to making the evening meal for us.
“Growing up ... it was at mealtimes we stiched our experiences together.”
Family meals are becoming less common. Talking to friends and people I meet about family mealtimes has made me realise they are a key part of how I keep my family going in good times and bad. It’s made me reflect on their importance to me.
Meals together can be a significant and relatively easy ritual to slip into family life. Lunchtimes, dinnertimes and the mad rush of breakfast bring families together, often across generations, making common memories and imprinting a sense of belonging. At the heart of these important exchanges the focus is food: planning it, preparing it, devouring it. Noisily and together. It was for me growing up, and so it is still. Now, I see the real work going on beyond what is being eaten.
Even with a short 20-minute window, mealtimes are important times for families, be they two people or twenty, to check in with each other, exchange information, share warmth and affection, establish connections and, yes, even set boundaries. These are all key predictors of happy children.
At our place we aim for three dinners together a week, and on the nights Bill [Shorten, Opposition Leader] is away I will eat with the kids, Gigi, Rupert and Clementine, when they aren’t at their various rehearsals, sports practices or performances. It is always worth arranging these precious windows of time. Cooking together, eating together, being together is worth the effort.
This is an edited extract from The Secret Ingredient: The Power Of The Family Table by Chloe Shorten, published by Melbourne University Press, on sale April 2.
“Meals can be a significant and relatively easy ritual to slip into family life”