The Magic of Eating Together

This month (August) marks two years we've lived in New Orleans. For the first eight months we lived here, I was miserable.

My husband worked odd hours. Sometimes, he'd come home at 11:00 at night, and I'd wait to eat dinner with him. We'd eat quickly, then I'd go to bed around midnight, and get up early to go to work the next morning. I cooked, yes, but we usually ate in silence. My husband was too tired to talk about his day, and I was usually pretty irritated that I was eating dinner late. Not to mention, at the time, I was extremely homesick, and I didn't have very many friends in our new city.

Flash forward a year later, and I couldn't imagine living anywhere else. It wasn't anything about the city, necessarily, that compelled me to stay. However, it was the friends that I've made since I've lived here.

I met Cutie, Kay, and Kara through church. Cutie (Tara) and Kara are mother and daughter, whilst Kay just moved to New Orleans from Australia with her family, though they originally come from Arkansas. Cutie and Kara are natives to southern Louisiana, though they aren't from New Orleans; they come from an area known as Lower Plaquemines.

I met Cutie and Kara first, and they quickly became my closest friends. Kay and her family came a year later. Since meeting them, and developing a relationship with all three, I've quickly discovered how wonderful it is to have friends you can depend on.

All of us cook often. We also have our own specialties. Cutie and Kara make a gumbo and a banana cake that are out of this world. Kay's chocolate pies and biscuits have us all showing up whenever she says she's making some. Me? It's definitely the Chicken Paprikash.

The thing about it, though, is that we eat at each others houses throughout the week. Sometimes (like right now), Kay and her family open their home to all of us. Other times, it's me, and then we spend the evening around the fire pit (okay, it was really only once, but Kay's young son has been raving about it forever).

What I've noticed, over the past few months, is that there is a magic in eating together. There is a special kind of bonding that occurs over paprikash and chocolate pie, or brisket and baked beans, or kalposzta and pierogi, that can't occur anywhere else. There are plenty of articles, like one from Cody Delistraty for The Atlantic, that talk about the benefits of eating together as a family. However, I haven't found too many articles about eating together with the family you make when your own is too far from you.

The magic doesn't necessarily come from the food; it comes from a toddler who waits eagerly for a spoon and the tub of sour cream while Aunt Manda and Aunt Cutie make pierogi. It comes from welcome home dinners when Kay and her family return from Arkansas and we spend most of the meal so happy that they're all home. It comes from a celebratory lunch after Cutie's husband delivers a wonderful sermon on a Sunday morning. While yes, I'll admit, I think the group of us are fantastic cooks, slowly it becomes more than food. It becomes a way to bond, and in the process, you restore the bond of community that has been lost in the hustle and bustle of American culture.

We spend so much time eating fast food, eating out of our cars, and eating alone that food has become just a necessity to keep going, rather than a time to reflect and bond. We don't make food to nourish; we prepare what's barely passable and then we wonder why we hate to cook. We eat alone, and we wonder why there's no joy in dinnertime anymore.

Since "the gang" got together, I've noticed I'm a lot less irritable. I've stopped looking at living in New Orleans as a prison sentence and I'm a lot happier now. I owe it to our dinners; food brought us together, but the bond is what keeps us all coming back.

Soon, I'll be home again and I'll be eating dinner with "my" people. I can't wait.

-Amanda

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