Dining Room Dillema

"This is NOT my dining room - I wish it was though!"

Day 27 Post-Op


I am officially an awful person. What have I done that is so distressing? Well, yesterday I informed my beloved that as of Thursday evening we would be eating our evening meal at the dining table in our totally misused dining room. Truly I am an ogre ;)

As do many people, Jack and I have gotten into the habit of eating our meals either:

a) On the settee in front of the telly.

b) At the desk upstairs in front of our computers.

c) In bed(!) alone whilst watching a different TV channel to the person downstairs.

We have a lovely little dining room with a table that is currently used as the dumping ground for our work bags, our car keys and the post. Not forgetting that the coats / hats / scarves are conveniently hung on the back of the chairs. The irony is that we have to walk through the dining room with our meals on route to another part of the house.

The only time we ever sit at the dining room now is when we have friends over for dinner. It’s not a particularly sensible situation.

The dietician first suggested that, post operatively, I should establish a routine of eating meals at the table. Actually that’s a big, fat fib. My mom ALWAYS lays the table to eat – even if she is eating alone. When Jack and I first went out together we would always eat at the table, light candles and listen to music. It’s shameful that we have gotten so slack about it.

Anyway, I was reading a book recently that devoted a chapter to ‘disappearing dining tables’. The book is called, ‘Bad Food Britain – How a nation ruined its appetite’ by Joanna Blythman . It’s a great read and this chapter gives a particularly compelling argument as to why we should devote more time to sitting down to eat together. I’m going to sum up the main points that fascinated me.

1) In 1997 a poll found that two-thirds of British families had given up traditional dinnertime for eating in front of the television. By 2004 another study found that 20% of families ate together once a week or even less.

2) 1999 Oxo admitted that the image of a family sitting down to eat was no longer appropriate. Britons in the 21st century did not sit down to eat at the table anymore and, “the idea of preparing a roast dinner from scratch was considered by most advertisers as a bridge too far for the majority of modern Britons”.

3) One in four homes does not have a dining table.

4) 75% of French people eat their lunch and their dinner at the family table.

5) Nearly half the meals eaten in the UK are now eaten alone. Once upon a time this would be considered sad, now it is considered normal.

Blythman says, “We choose food that is quickly prepared and eat it just as quickly, so missing out on the ceremony and ritual of the table and the conviviality and companionship of eating together. And when we start feeling like eating some more food a couple of hours later, it rarely occurs to us that this is a sort of psychological hunger, an expression of the emotionally unsatisfying and solitary way in which we have eaten.”

Blimey! I had never really considered just how important eating together can be. When I lived in shared houses / flats with friends, the table was the focal point of our home. We would sit at it to have a cuppa, to eat and to socialise. I haven’t lived with friends for 5 years. Whenever we get together, yep, that’s right, we end up in the dining room – not the lounge. Whenever I binge I am on my own and in front of the telly. Umm, beginning to see the link now.

So as of Thursday, the day when I will be starting my ‘puréed phase’ and I can cook the same meal for us both (mine being whizzed up though), we will be eating in the dining room. I’ll put on the fire, light some candles and put on some cool tunage. It will not be like the dining room scene in American Beauty though – lol, I’m not that much of a control freak. But the ground rules are going to be; the evening meal will be eaten in the dining room and dinnertime will last at least half an hour. Seeing as I cook in this house, I feel it is only fair that I decide where we eat it. You listening Jack???

"Dining American Beauty Style"