Family dinner is one of those things you don't miss until you're at college. Sure you don't have to actually make dorm food, and frozen pizzas are cheap and easy, but nothing quite compares to Mom's home cooking after a long day of sleeping through class.
In fact, the food industry spends a lot of energy trying to recreate that feeling. Olive Garden comes right out and claims that when you're there, you somehow join their family. But since I've never heard of a family that charges each other 17 bucks for dinner, I can't quite buy that idea. So as a substitute to faux family atmosphere, my roommate and I instituted family dinner night.
The idea is this: If a bunch of our friends get together and take turns cooking a big, delicious feast for each other, we'll get a solid meal every week and only have to cook once.
We have our family dinners on Thursday nights because I think it's the best way to shake off those weekday lamepants and start the weekend off right, but it could easily be a hangover-recovery Sunday if that's more your style.
You can tell a lot about a person by what they cook up for family dinner.
Complex salads with fresh vegetables are a value for some, while others prefer a hearty roast. The only universal seems to be a good beer.
Then there's always the guy from the Easy Mac School of Culinary Arts. This meal will usually consist of cheap spaghetti and white bread toast, lovingly served on paper plates. It's not that they're trying to be cheap, they just couldn't tell a saucepan from a flying saucer.
But family dinners are only as extravagant as you want to make them. If you feel ambitious and want to make a three-course meal with caviar and filet mignon, then do it.
My own culinary expertise includes the ""kitchen sink""-type dishes that involve throwing lots of ingredients into a pot and letting them hang out for a while. If you've never had my chili or jambalaya, you're hardly leading a full life.
The key is that everybody makes their own specialty dish to share with the rest of the family. It's a great way to see your friends' tastes and family backgrounds. None of us are Emeril or Giada, and there's a certain amount of charm in that. The best part of being American is that we have such an eclectic cultural mix, which makes for infinite possibilities for blending cuisines in the kitchen.
The one rule we try to keep is that the TV can't be on during dinner. The conversations we've had during family dinner are some of the most hilarious banter around, especially when you can get the lightweight filled up with enough glasses of red wine. For some reason, our conversations usually end up on the subject of strippers, but that's another topic altogether.
Regardless of the subject matter, after enough gatherings you start to see that spending time with friends over a good meal is much better than a meal-out-of-a-box alternative.
Sometimes it's hard to fit it in with everyone's schedules, but if you can figure it out it's a blast. Just remember I've got dibs on the first helping.
