Welcome! Please make yourself at home. Let me introduce myself and my family, friends, and loved ones. Let’s exchange hands and smiles. Here, have a drink and a bite to eat. Please, have a seat and visit with us…
Meet Me at the Long Table has been growing slowly in the back of my mind for a very long time. It didn’t know what it wanted to be so it remained a rather innocuous and amoebic shadow hovering at the edge of my consciousness for the past few years. It was always too much or too little; too abstract or too specific; a shape-shifter with no realized form (although it was almost a sloth, but that’s a story for another time).
As these things tend to happen, however, a few months ago at three in the morning (the so-called ‘hour of the wolf’, although this night visitor didn’t take anything, but rather left a gift) it began to take a real shape, pulling discombobulated pieces of my life into it until it took a form I could recognize and one that finally felt true. It became a long table, at which were seated all of the people that I know and love, the air humming with the pleasant sound of their voices and the table spread with the foods that nourish us, body, heart and soul.
In Meet Me at the Long Table I will introduce you to some of the lovely, interesting and wonderful people in my life. They all have stories to tell. Some are about hobbies and passions and journeys, others about love and family and friendship and heartbreak, and some about silly things and others about serious things and the rest about everything in between.
As I have always found food to be intrinsically tied to nearly every moment in my life, both the magical and the mundane, I have asked that in addition to their stories, each person share a recipe related to their tale. This is a virtual dinner conversation between each of them and me and now with you. Next week, on June 21st, 2018, I will post the first story and recipe, with others to follow on a weekly basis.
Ultimately, we are the people with whom we surround ourselves, just as we are our own stories and experiences, and as we are quite literally made up of the food that nourishes us and brings us all together.
Come, meet me at the long table. Sit across from me and tell me your stories and I’ll tell you mine. Let’s eat and giggle and share until the candles are low and our bellies and hearts are bursting – and we are all friends.
Before you leave, here’s some food to take home and a big hug and a kiss on each cheek. Come again soon. The door is always open and there is always a seat at the table for you. New friends await you at every visit.
“This is the power of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful: in a word, more alive.” – Alice Waters
I was going to leave you with just the above quote (one of my favorites by the wonderful Alice Waters), but given the recent passing of the great storyteller, traveler and chef Anthony Bourdain, I think I’ll amend this and let his words close us out:
“Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.” – Anthony Bourdain
MEET ME AT THE LONG TABLE 