Around the Kitchen Table...

Our kitchen table is a sanctuary, where we end our day as a family, not everyday, but as often as we can.

Our farm table provides the perfect surface for enjoying morning coffee while catching up on the news, emails and writing my blog. Oh, it sees many uses from craft projects, to homework, jigsaw puzzles to board games. But for me, the table’s best use is as the setting for a casual family dinner of simple home cooked food. It is worth the effort to slow down, connect with my children and husband, and just be together for a short time. Once dinner is over, we sometimes(but not often enough) linger over tea and dessert, sharing in love, laughter and conversation until the sighs begin and off we go to resume our busy schedules.

Years ago, my sister-in-law gave me a beautiful book entitled Mrs. Sharp’s Traditions, by Sarah Ban Breathnach. I have referred often to this book when trying to make special holidays and events, especially the Christmas season, even more memorable for my children. Simple ideas, such as bringing back the ritual of a Sunday meal, I took to heart. I serve a special brunch for my family and an ever-changing guest list. I’ve tried any number of recipes for French toast, quiche and omelettes over the years, but the children love “The Big, Fluffy Pancake” best. Remarkably, they still get excited as it comes out of the oven, puffed up like a soufflé. Some have gotten absolutely enormous!

If you’d like to try this pancake, CLICK HERE for the remarkably simple recipe. Be sure to let me know how yours comes out and how it is received. Even better, send me a photo as it emerges from the oven!

This blog isn’t about simple nostalgia for a time past, but a forum for thinking about how to renew traditions that seem almost lost, but which updated to suit our contemporary lives, could enrich our families enormously. It’s about creating new traditions that help bind family and friends – and maybe even live on in the lives our children make for themselves.

The Ties That Bind…

Every December, my family engages in a favorite holiday tradition – the Chowder Fest.

It all began with a little fish, the smelt, which is most readily available in our local supermarkets during the early winter months. My cousin loves to eat this little fish, and my father loves to oblige him by breading and frying them.

Not everyone is a smelt fan, however, so the menu grew to include seafood chowder, and now not a holiday season goes by without about 20 of us gathered around festive tables, feasting on the nutty tasting smelts, thick seafood chowder made with lobster, clams, scallops and haddock, warm rolls and salad.

Preparations begin days before as my father heads to the markets to find the freshest smelts – and he knows smelts! As a boy in Nova Scotia, he would catch them while ice fishing and sell them to the local fish market.

He and Mom also hunt for the best ingredients for their famous chowder. I, as always, help with the table arranging; preparing a table for the adults, one for the teens and a small round one for the youngest cousins. The tables are all set with linen tablecloths and napkins, Limoges china, sterling flatware, water goblets, wine goblets and tapered candles. On the adult table, the ivory English Titianware soup tureen serves as the centerpiece.

The evening is a time for us to gather with cousins, aunts, siblings and parents, and share with our children the ties of tradition that bind our family from generation to generation.

After bowing our heads in thanks for our blessings, the chowder tureen is filled with the thickest, creamiest, tastiest seafood chowder yet. Heaping platters of fried smelts arrive from the kitchen, where Dad presides over the frying pan. We toast to another year gone by.

If you’d like to try my father’s recipe for smelts and their recipe chowder, which could win an award in any contest, click here.

Every family has their special traditions. I know of one family that spends the afternoon of Christmas Eve wandering downtown Boston, buying last minute items and waiting for the lights to start twinkling. My sister’s Puerto Rican friends have their coquito (a coconut eggnog) and musical parrandas.

What about your family? What makes your holiday celebrations distinctive? Please share them with us in the comment section of this blog.

Welcome to "The Art of Gracious Living"

This is my first post on our new

 “The Art of Gracious Living” forum. I am looking forward to our sharing ideas about holiday traditions, celebrations and bringing civility and graciousness back into our daily lives.

Perhaps, like me, you feel the world has gotten a little coarse, a little too rushed and way too anxious. Maybe you would like to reflect on what our mothers, grandmothers and great aunts did to create sanctuaries for their families despite the challenges of the world outside.
When I was a child, I was always eager to help my mother set the table for a holiday meal, birthday or any other occasion. I loved taking out the Limoges china, only used for these special gatherings, and arranging each place setting with the crystal wine goblet, water goblet and the silver plate flatware, polished to a high sheen. I arranged two to three different forks, placed on a carefully folded linen napkin and the knife and teaspoon carefully around each plate. The gravy ladle, butter knives, flowers, candles, sparkling crystal condiment dishes and salt and pepper shakers, gravy boat, covered vegetable dishes to keep those mashed potatoes and creamed, pearl onions warm. The olives even had their own special fork!

With a gleaming setting like this, you couldn’t help but dress up a bit and remember to place your white crisp linen napkin on your lap before the first bite! Children, including me when I was small, were always on their best behavior, careful not to drop food on the brilliant white tablecloth and asking for dishes to be passed rather than using the “boarding house reach.”

I love this time of year at my shop, because our customers are as interested as I am in setting a beautiful table. Cut glass pitchers, wine glasses and water goblets; silver platters and vintage linens are purchased almost daily to take a star turn during a holiday gathering. I know these elegant vintage treasures will be cherished for years and meals to come.

I don’t think holidays should be all about the menu, do you? Please tell me your stories of holiday table settings. Do you have a special item that you lovingly take out for special occasions? What are your fondest memories of family dinners? Help us celebrate the holidays with your comments and photos that tell the story of how you express The Art of Gracious Living.

I hope that you, no matter your age or experience, will share in this conversation.

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