The Absolute Value of a Chocolate Chip Cookie

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, it has no survival value — rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

— C. S. Lewis

"This is the best restaurant ever!" So said the four-year-old, offered his second chocolate chip "tookie" at our dinner table Sunday night. The ten (yes, ten) of us were crammed into our dining room, talking about our favorite books, confessing our most challenging character traits, and telling our kids the story about that one year in college when Jason basically lived in a closet behind a bathroom in an apartment above 8th Street downtown Holland. 

We shared a great meal (main course, salad, veggies, cheese, bread) and excellent conversation, which is all you really need for it to count as a Sunday supper. But there were also cookies, which strike me as one of those things, not strictly necessary, that add unmeasurable value to a meal. We try not to be a family that expects something sweet after each meal we eat; less sugar is better for everyone, after all, and of course we're technically all set nutritionally after the actual meal itself. But there's a reason that birthday parties and celebratory meals don't quite seem right to me unless there's a little treat: a chocolate, some homemade butterscotch pudding, a tiny dish of the very wonderful blueberry ice cream Jemma chose at the market on Friday afternoon.

Dessert adds that kind of special dimension to the moment. It says: this is lucky; this is worth noticing and enjoying; this is not necessary for survival but it gives value to survival -- much like fresh air on a sunny day, a good song playing in the kitchen while you cook, laughter from your daughter's bedroom just before bedtime, great stories, friendship, philosophy, art. And this dimension has been our greatest return on investment after six months of Sunday suppers. Yes, we've seen some tangible rewards: strengthened relationships, more time in the kitchen and around the table, a chance to model hospitality and generosity for our kids, a bunch of delicious food to nourish us at the start of each week. But six months in, it's things like a four-year-old's exclamation over cookies that make this endeavor worth it. It's the hugs at the back door when old friends leave, the stories we've heard from grandparents that we'd never heard before, the way Jemma takes care to put the napkin on the left and the fork on top of the napkin when she sets the table now. It's time at the sink for me and Jason late on a Sunday night when the house is quiet, the dishwasher is humming, and we're just drying the last of the pots and pans. It's the satisfaction of having spent our Sunday doing something intentional. It's knowing that nothing about this experiment in rest and connection is necessary to our survival, acknowledging that the prep work is sometimes a pain, making one more trip to the grocery store on a Saturday because we're out of an ingredient -- all because, six months in, we're 100 percent sure that the practice is making our life quietly better.

So, six months in: Sunday suppers are the cookies of life. Not strictly necessary for survival. But possibly necessary for making life worth living. 

Signature Chocolate Chip Cookies

For at least ten years, these have been the only chocolate chip cookies I've made. I love to bake, and I've tried two different bran muffins, a dozen versions of apple crisp, lots of brownie recipes, banana bread three ways, and more chocolate cake variations than I can count, but I'm never even tempted to stray from this recipe. It's adapted from The Common Grill Cookbook, and I make it almost as written there except for one thing: I always, always use a mix of chocolates for the chocolate chips. I can't remember why or when I started doing this, but it's the secret to making these really good. I usually make up the 2.5 cups of chocolate chips with about 2 cups of semi-sweet chips and 1/2 c. of a dark chocolate bar, cut roughly into chunks, though I've also subbed in white chocolate and even dried cherries and pecans -- whatever you use, it just needs to total 2.5 cups of mix-ins. This week, though, when I made them for Sunday supper, I used equal parts Guittard milk and semi-sweet chips, which I stumbled across at the local grocery store. Totally worth the splurge on the fancy chocolate. 

• 1 stick butter, softened
• 1 c. brown sugar, packed
• 2 eggs
• 1 T. vanilla
• 2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1 t. salt
• 2 1/2 c. chocolate chips, a mix of semi-sweet, milk, and dark to taste

In large mixing bowl cream the butter on medium speed until light and fluffy. Continue mixing slowly while adding the brown sugar. Batter should be light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and mix. Gently fold in dry ingredients and chocolate chips.

Drop 1 generous tablespoon per cookie onto a cookie sheet, spaced an inch or two apart. Chill cookie sheet for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 300. Bake for 13-15 minutes or until golden. Makes 2 dozen large or 3 dozen small cookies. Can be doubled if you're making Wednesday treats for the entire elementary school staff.

A Cake for the Generations

As parenting milestones go, a pretty good one for me happened in December. I know, the days of official baby-book moments (first step! first word! first lost tooth!) are long over, but I think this counts just the same. A few weeks ago, the girls baked a cake all by themselves while I drank my coffee.

(Yes, I loitered around the kitchen enough to snap a couple photos, which I dutifully posted to Instagram with the hashtag #winning.)

Even better: the cake they made is an old family recipe from my paternal grandmother, given to me when I got married, and the girls were baking it for a Sunday supper with my parents and my maternal grandfather. According to my mom, this particular cake was a regular at many family gatherings back when she and my dad were newlyweds and my dad's side of the family hadn't yet grown to the size it is today (where it would take about ten of these cakes to feed the crowd). There are many things to love about it -- you'll likely always have all the ingredients on hand, it's quick, it makes the house smell amazing -- but what I think the girls loved best is the magical way pouring a cup of hot water over the dry ingredients before baking creates a pudding-like, gooey chocolate bottom layer you discover when you flip the slice out of the pan and top it with whipped cream.

I can't remember what else we served for dinner that day, but I do remember what we talked about. Table Topics came through, true to form, with a question that seemed too perfect to be true for the occasion: "How was your grandparent's childhood different from yours?" (I swear we didn't stack the deck!) My grandpa reminisced about working as a golf caddy at the country club at a really young age; my mom talked about the way she was allowed to join in sports and games in the neighborhood but not at school, where she had to wear a skirt every day; my dad talked about growing up above his family's little country grocery store and tending to the horses his grandpa kept across the street, and the many things he and his siblings were not allowed to do on Sundays. 

Later, after the girls had squirmed away from the table, my grandpa talked about how comparatively little stuff everyone had, and how, even if you were pretty poor, you didn't really know it; the variation between you and everyone else you knew was quite small, and you were generally happy if you could provide food on the table and a roof over your head. Your world was small, you had the simple pleasures of weekends together, and you were very clear about the differences between needs and wants.

That Sunday night was one of those serendipitous moments that I always hope will happen when we gather around the table, and I wish a videocamera on the ceiling had been taping the whole thing: my grandpa telling stories, the girls listening raptly, my gratitude at four generations of people I love spending a couple hours together, the loveliness of my girls proudly serving a cake they made all by themselves and knowing the recipe has been in my family for longer than I've been alive. Already, just a month or two later, I've forgotten some of the details, but the lesson stays with me: less stuff, more time. And, now that no-treat January is over, more chocolate cake.

“The problem is not simply that we work too much, the problem is that we are working for the wrong reward. We are paid in the wrong currency. We reward the fruits of our labor and the sweat of our brow with money, good, and services. We need to seek instead a more fertile, healing balance of payments — some of our pay in money, and some of our pay in time.”

— Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in our Busy Lives

Chocolate Upside-Down Cake

for the cake:

• 1 C. flour
• 2 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. salt
• 3/4 c. sugar
• 2 T. shortening or butter (I use butter; my mom uses shortening)
• 1/2 c. milk
• 1 t. vanilla

Cream together sugar and butter. Add milk and vanilla and blend until mixed well. Add flour, baking powder, salt and sugar, blend well, and press into a greased 9x9 pan.

for the topping:

• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/2 c. brown sugar
• 1/4 c. cocoa
• 1 c. very hot water

Mix sugars and cocoa together, sprinkle over cake evenly, and slowly pour hot water over all. Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes. To serve, cool slightly, cut into squares, and flip squares over as you remove from pan so the chocolate layer is on top. Top with whipped cream. To double, double all ingredients and bake in a 9x13 pan.

On Limits

“I think that this may be the truth of these technologies that we carry around: We film and post and read social media constantly in order to capture something, some exciting moment or feeling or experience that we are afraid to miss, but the things about life that we most want to capture may not be, in the end, capturable.”

— Katherine Losse, The Boy Kings: A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network

This last week was a long, busy one for our family, even though the school/workweek was technically only four days long. Come Friday morning, my brain was fried, Jason wasn't feeling well, and -- bonus! -- the girls had the day off school. What had initially looked like a prime opportunity to sneak away for a day to practice our newfound skiing skills as a family slowly ebbed into a day where, by noon, I had only really conquered work email and none of us were dressed. In spite of my occasional declarations that "We should really go do something," what ended up happening was that we never left the house and the girls, whose during-the-week screen time is essentially zilch, spent untold hours playing Wii. 

To nobody's surprise, by the time 5:00 rolled around, everyone was cranky. Instead of feeling lucky that they'd gotten away with bursting all previous screen-time records, the girls were fractious and bickering, Jason and I too lethargic to figure out what to cook for dinner. It was not our finest moment as a family, but it did confirm a suspicion I've had for a while now about happiness and screens.

I know screens are pretty much universally bad for kids' brain development. And our family is, frankly, usually too busy during the week to even consider getting close to the national average, which is reported to be between three and seven hours per day. So those have always been my reasons for no screens during the week and very limited iPad, Wii, and television on weekends: it's bad for your brain, and we're too busy doing other things (piano practice, reading, sports, homework, and actual playing outside in our neighborhood, luckily). But it turns out studies are starting to show excess screen time has a negative effect on health and happiness even as it increases feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Hmm. What might this have to do with Reclaiming Sunday Supper? I thought about this connection a lot as I read the book The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter by Susan Pinker. The book's chapters range widely, with one delving into the longevity found in a cluster of remote Sardinian villages and another summing up research on long-term survival rates in breast cancer patients. But the chapter that interested me the most was "Who's Coming to Dinner," a survey of the available data on the ways communal eating influences obesity, racism, and friendship. Pinker finds that brain imaging studies show that the neural mechanisms activated by the act of sharing food in person -- not via Skype, though -- are key to feeling pleasure. She also digs into the reasons behind the now-well-known mantra that eating family dinner can be key to better outcomes for kids.

"Research shows that skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic, academic standing in high school, scores on college entrance tests, and much more besides -- all are linked to sitting down to family dinner," Pinker writes. Why does eating together regularly increase academic performance and decrease depression, drug use, sex, suicide, and eating disorders? Pinker -- and the researchers -- thinks it's a bunch of things (family income, rituals, a sense of belonging) but mostly this: "Sharing meals is an intimate act, an expression of the closeness of our family bonds. It's also a way for kids and parents to check in daily and connect."

If spending time together with the people we love -- friends, family, neighbors -- boosts our happiness and our success, why are we doing less of it and not more? In his book In the Neighborhood by Peter Lovenheim, he writes, "According to social scientists, from 1974 to 1998 the frequency with which Americans spent a social evening with neighbors fell by about one third . . . Why is it that in an age of cheap long-distance rates, discount airlines, and the Internet, when we can create community anywhere, we often don't know the people who live next door?"

I hypothesize it's this: We've been fooled into thinking that we're just as connected to those we love when we like their Facebook status or send them a fun text as we are when we hug them hello or clink wine glasses together across the table. But it's clearly not true. I saw it on Friday; a day spent largely tethered to technology and screens left us feeling grumpy, empty, dissatisfied -- and that's the opposite of the way we felt last Sunday night as we bid farewell to the fun couple we hosted for Sunday supper.

In a sense, we're all like little kids, so easily addicted to the little rectangle in our hand or the big rectangle on the wall that we'll use it and use it and use it until someone puts a limit on us because they know better. I have a suspicion that the Sabbath, in its simplest sense, is God putting a limit on us, not just on the number of hours we look at our Twitter feed but on the number of minutes we ignore the relationships that mean the most in favor of a laptop or a football game or a heated-up microwave meal scarfed down in front of a television show. 

“‘Remember the Sabbath’ is not simply a life-style suggestion. It is a spiritual precept in most of the world’s spiritual traditions.”

— Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives

I'm totally not anti-technology. My life wouldn't be as rich without the article I read about education in The Atlantic this morning, the Instagram feed of a dear friend who lives states away, the blogs written by women I admire, the amazing Facebook gems Anne Lamott posts from time to time. My kids use Google docs and play Wii bowling like pros, and that's fine with me. But I don't want to forget there's literally no replacement for taking time out of our week to look the people we love in the eye and share a meal together. And even though it can feel good sometimes to binge-watch old episodes of 30 Rock (I did this last night, actually), that's ultimately not the kind of rest and connection we really need. Sacred texts and traditions from multiple religions remind us, and we remind ourselves when we compare the way we feel after a day full of iPhone with a day full of rest and connection.

“Most of us not born in Sardinian mountain villages still hanker for the feeling of belonging — not to mention the extra twenty years of life — that those villages bestow. Though few of us are willing to give up the educational and occupational opportunities of the present for the inequalities of the past and the very real privations of old-style rural life, at some level we still want a piece of it. The most common reaction to a 2013 radio documentary I wrote about the phenomenon of Sardinian super-longevity was I want to live there — even from people in their twenties and thirties . . . Despite our being increasingly tethered to the devices that connect us virtually, there has not been a corresponding uptick in well-being. In fact, it’s the reverse. By and large we’re lonelier and unhappier than we were in the decades before the Internet age. ”

— Susan Pinker, The Village Effect

Little Victories

If you know me, it's no secret: I hate winter. It's my least favorite season. Once the magic of Christmas is over, I'd love nothing more than to just flip the calendar to April, bypassing all the gloomy cold and shooting straight ahead to windows-open, run-outside, daffodil-blooming days.

But I live in Michigan, so January through March finds me alternately trying my best to embrace the season (be cozy by the fire! borrow some snowshoes and traipse through the woods!) and despairing that the end will never come as I look with longing at airfare to warmer climes and, sometimes, give in to my desire to eat carbs in bed with a book for an embarrassing amount of hours in a row. (In the interest of full disclosure, I'll be sure to let you know when that happens. Give me about three more weeks and I'll probably be in a very dark place.)

I'm happy to report, though, that this weekend was pretty full of our family embracing the season. There were lots of little victories, which I'll take where I can get when it's January and temperatures are in the single digits.

First of all, we skied. Together. And there was no crying. Now, I didn't grow up skiing, so I don't know if I'll ever quite share Jason's love for the sport. So even after years of haphazard lessons and random days on the "mountains" of Michigan, after we've finally acquired all the gear by buying a friend's brother's old skis here, going to some guy in Hudsonville's garage there, and after we've packed two ginormous bags of said gear into the car and driven it up north, I still rarely feel like a real skier. There's always that moment when I have five or six layers of clothes on and I'm sweating profusely while trying to force a child's foot into a ski boot while my goggles fog up that I'm like, Why do we do this again? And there was that moment this weekend, too, but it was followed by a surprisingly sunny afternoon of the four of us laughing on the lift, Jemma skiing her first black diamond, me consistently being the last one down the hill, and lots of hot chocolate by the fire and warm baths apres ski. For once, all the logistics and gear and driving were worth it. And one morning? I really did snowshoe through the woods.

Another little victory I've noticed recently: I've basically stopped checking my email on the weekends, and it's making a huge difference in my happiness -- and in my productivity come Monday morning. It's probably one part intentional time away from technology inspired by this project and one part sheer laziness, but I've slowly realized over the last several weeks that the world does not fall apart if I don't write back to that freelancer looking for an assignment or wait one day to respond to an invitation or a question. I'm not the president of a country and I'm not an ER doctor on call, so whatever it is can likely wait a day or two. And when Monday morning comes? I actually feel rested and refreshed, ready to sit down at my desk with a big mug of coffee (please note that the January detox does not extend to coffee, though I think I have successfully weaned myself off the carcinogenic-but-delicious CoffeeMate creamer by replacing it with almond/coconut milk) and dash off a few dozen emails in a row.

To be sure, it's still tempting sometimes to pull the laptop onto the couch and "just do a few things" while Jason watches football on a Sunday afternoon. But I've found I'm happier when I don't, when I let myself stare off into space for five minutes, do one thing around the house, take a walk, browse through a cookbook, hang out with the girls, and enjoy one last hour of an above-average winter weekend before embracing work again on Monday. 

“One of the astonishing attributes of Sabbath time is its unflinching uselessness. Nothing will get done, not a single item will be checked off any list. Nothing of significance will be accomplished, no goal realized. It is thoroughly without measureable value. ”

— Wayne Muller

One last victory this weekend: cassoulet. To be clear, not the delicious, authentic, full-of-duck-confit cassoulet I ate on Saturday night at La Becasse in a pre-planned deviation from No Treat January (because when you're eating at that restaurant with good friends for the third year in a row after wrangling kids on the slopes all day, you throw No Treat January out for the night -- and you get some good Gigondas red to go with the cassoulet). I'm talking, though, about the modified, pretty-healthy-for-you cassoulet we made for Sunday supper last night when we returned. It's a Shauna Niequist recipe from her book Bread and Wine, and she cites an old Real Simple recipe as its origin, and I've modified it to make it my own; isn't that the way with most recipes? In any case, it manages to be hearty and healthy. It makes the house smell great. And one of the second-graders at the table last night had seconds. 

So this is me, writing from the cold of January, reminding myself to enjoy these freezing cold weekends while they last, to keep ignoring my phone on the weekends except perhaps to use its camera, and to make more cassoulet. Nobody is ever sorry about cassoulet.

Easy Cassoulet

• 1 T. olive oil
• 1 lb Italian turkey sausage, casings removed
• 1 c. chicken broth
• 1 onion, diced
• 3 carrots, diced
• 1 large parsnip, diced
• 1 tomato, chopped
• 1 T. tomato paste
• 1/4 c. red wine
• 2 15-oz. cans cannellini beans, drained
• 1/2 t. salt
• freshly ground pepper, to taste
• 5 sprigs fresh thyme
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 c. panko breadcrumbs
• 2 T. butter, melted

In a large, oven-proof dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium heat and cook the sausage until browned, breaking it up with a fork. Remove to a plate; do not drain the drippings from the dutch oven.

In the same pan, saute the onion, carrots, parsnips, tomato, tomato paste, half the garlic, salt, and pepper for 2-3 minutes, stirring. Deglaze the pan with wine, and when it's cooked off add the chicken broth, cannellini beans, and sausage back to the pot. Add the thyme and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about one hour, until vegetables are tender. 

Meanwhile, heat oven to 425 degrees. Melt the butter and combine it with the breadcrumbs and the remaining garlic. Sprinkle evenly over the cassoulet and place cassoulet in the oven, uncovered, to bake until the crust is golden brown, about 15-20 minutes.

Resolved

I know New Year's Day was last Thursday (though details are blurry), but for working adults and parents of school-aged children alike, today really seemed to me like the fresh start. Maybe it's because we snuck in a few more days of celebration and debauchery right up until the evening of January 4, and maybe it's because this morning found me throwing out all the treats in the house and buying great quantities of citrus fruit, kale, and sparkling water while the kids straggled back to school and the work emails began coming in fast and furious, but I'm going to say today's still legit as far as fresh starts and resolutions go. 

Other than the aforementioned scaling things waaaaay back in the food and drink department at the start of a new year (this month is formally known in our house as "No-Treat January" -- ask my kids about it; they love it (sarcasm)), I tend to make very few formal resolutions. One year I resolved publicly to do a triathlon, which I did, but other than that I can't remember any big proclamations. I do try to sit down and jot down a few ideas, habits, or little goals. They're small shifts, usually -- course corrections, I like to call them. Here's what I wrote at the close of last year:

“Next week, we’ll all dive back in to our crazy schedule and I’ll dive into a much-needed detox from alcohol and red meat and sugar, and before I know it we’ll be hauling out the porch furniture again and sleeping with the windows open. But I do hope 2014 holds more of the same (professional challenges, family time, travel, music, great food) and a few new opportunities, too. I hope for lots of small-but-wonderful moments. I hope for balance, and more vegetables, and spontaneous adventures, and meaningful service, and deepening friendships, and a better handle on my DSLR, and better posture. I hope we find a church that makes our whole family feel at home. I hope I remember that I only have this one wild and precious life and to seize the day with as much grace and good humor as I can muster.

No resolutions for me. Just pointing my compass in the right direction, fortifying myself with some green smoothies and hot yoga, and jotting down a list every night before I go to bed.
”

Last January, I also made a simple "More/Less" list, which, shockingly, did not disappear completely in the scary piles of paper that live on my desk. It's sitting right next to me just this minute; here, I'll tell you. In the "more" category I wrote: DSLR photography (fail); scheduled one-on-one time with each kid (meh, sort of); vegetables (nope); yoga (yep); church (yes!); time with siblings/parents/cousins (yes again); creative writing (see this very page); new friends (hmm, a few); and service (working on it). In the "less" column, I wrote: Instagram (nope; totally addicted); wasted weekends (doing pretty well); meat (probably not); lazy workouts (what did I even mean by this? sheesh); procrastination (lifelong habit, getting better); and living in "the bubble" (excellent progress there).

I know this is probably interesting to nobody else but me, but I bring it up here to say that, even though I haven't looked at this list every day, I have referred to it here and there, and just the act of reflecting and writing a few things down ended up changing the course of my year in ways I couldn't have imagined back in January of 2014. I hadn't even dreamed up Reclaiming Sunday Supper yet, we hadn't yet found the church we'd end up joining, and I hadn't even applied -- much less been accepted -- into the leadership program I've been a part of since September. Looking back on 2014, those three things have easily contributed to me achieving about half of my little goals for the year. 

Which brings me to today, January 5, my self-declared New Year's Day for work-at-home moms everywhere. I haven't made a list or written down any small ideas, but I have recommitted to focusing my energy here a bit more, though other things constantly clamor for my attention. Just as our family has found we never regret making time for Sunday supper with family or friends, I never regret parking myself at my laptop for half an hour with a glass of wine (or, in January, sparkling water with lemon). I miss it when I'm not here, the way we missed the one Sunday we had to cancel Sunday supper because Jemma had the flu. And even as the event itself becomes more casual (I could barely imagine changing out of my sweatpants when our friends came yesterday, so I just didn't) and it comes to feel like more of our regular Sabbath routine than something novel we're trying on, I keep finding tidbits in the world everywhere I look, reminding me why resolving to spend more time resting and connecting around the table with people you love is always a good thing.

One of my Leadership Grand Rapids classmates shared this quote with our group in December, and it's echoed in my head ever since. It's from Thomas Merton, and I think it's worth considering if you're still mulling over your own goals and resolutions for 2015.

So in that "less" column: less frenzy, less activism, less overwork, less commitment, less contemporary violence. And, if I may humbly suggest, more good conversation around the table, more Sabbath in your life, more permission to rest, more imperfection, more radical empathy. I'll just be looking forward to more Sundays around our big farm table, and to quietly showing up here to tell you about it. 

Happy New Year.

These Are Great Days

Pinned to the bulletin board on the wall above my desk is a birthday card a good friend gave me a couple of years ago. On the front, there's a drawing of a tire swing and the words, "Those were the days . . . and so are these." Gosh, I love it. It captures so much of what I feel about this stage of life -- and so much of what our family is trying to do with Reclaiming Sunday Supper.

Already, just a few years since receiving that card, I'm looking back fondly on earlier years with the girls: their cheeks, so round and rosy; their voices, so high-pitched; their world, almost entirely of my making (their need for me, basically all-consuming . . . let's not forget that part, shall we?). But I'm noticing that these are the days, too -- right now. That old "witching hour" hell of 4:00-5:00 p.m. whining and melt-downs and literally counting the moments until Jason walked in the door has been replaced by a new, sweet, after-school time of day, when the girls are pretty self-motivated to sit down with their homework at the dining room table, one using her Google docs to create a slideshow on Ecuador, maybe, while the other one practices her piano. They help set the table for dinner. They ask me about my day, or they ask how many centuries it's been, or they talk about which friend scored which part in the school play. 

When it comes to Sunday suppers, I'm definitely not trying to white-wash the past and get all nostalgic for the good-old, simpler days, when every family sat down for a big meal on Sunday after church, come hell or high water. That was a great tradition, to be sure, and we're trying to make it work for us today, but I don't imagine that things were perfect during the sabbaths of the 1950s any more than they are perfect around our dining room table in 2014. Has this experiment changed our family in the last few months? I think it has: we're practicing the values of hospitality and generosity, we're working rest and connection into our Sundays, and we're strengthening relationships with our family and friends while reaching out to new people. But it's a far cry from the strict church/dinner/nap/church my parents and grandparents grew up with, and that's OK. Last week Sunday it was literally take-out pizza, veggies, some ugly homemade gingerbread cookies, and screw-top wine with the neighbors. We're making it our own.

In her book The Blessing of a B Minus: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Resilient Teenagers (raising a tween or teen right now? I recommend), Wendy Mogel writes:

“There was a time when a young person rose when an adult entered the room, would not consider calling adults by their first names, and automatically came to the door to pick up a date. I am not nostalgic for this time. Socially acceptable behavior also included discrimination of every sort, sweeping family problems under the rug, and establishing household order through intimidation and submissive deference to Dad the All-Knowing Patriarch.”

Things in 2014 seem messier, more complicated. Parenting feels high-pressure, Pinterest is lurking in the background trying to make us all feel inadequate, schedules are tight and the news from the outside world seems at times insurmountably awful. It's definitely NOT the 1950s anymore, is what I'm saying, and I don't especially think it should be. Because here's the freedom we have today: We get to make up our own rules as we go. We get to ask the big, tough questions. We all have a bit more freedom to make our life look the way we want it to. We get to start our own traditions, sabbath and otherwise. We get to, as my dear, smart, strong yoga instructor reminded me this morning, both believe there is good in the world and BE the good in the world. 

Next week Sunday will be the darkest day of the year. Every year I note the Winter Solstice with a tiny bit of relief, reminding myself that the days only get longer, brighter, warmer from here (though it often doesn't seem so in February -- or, here in Michigan, even necessarily in April). And last Sunday at church, the sermon was partly about darkness. During Advent, those themes of darkness and light, with the promise of the star above the manger, are the ones that stick with me the most.

Next week Sunday, we'll be here, around our table with some friends, believing that taking the time to share a meal is a little bit of light in the darkness. When things seem dark, hard, overwhelmingly impossible (cancer, Ferguson, poverty, violence, raising teenagers), I try to remind myself that these are great days. Not because the impossible things don't exist, but in spite of them and right alongside them. And my favorite reminder for this is the quote in the hallway of our house.

Churchill, for some context, didn't say this when the war was over and The Allies had prevailed. No; he said it in 1941, deep in the awfulness of World War II, just as the enormity of the situation was becoming obvious. I look at that every time I come in our house, and I think, well, if Churchill declared it under those circumstances, then it must be true today. 

Ten Signs You Need More Sabbath In Your Life

1. You wake up on Monday morning, already tired before the work week has begun.

2. When someone asks you how you are, you say, "Good - busy!" like it's all one word.

3. You actively fantasize about a short hospital stay (nothing serious, of course), or about holing up in a hotel room alone where nobody can find you.

4. You're a caregiver for needy little children or elderly family members, or you're in charge of a bunch of people at work. (Bonus reason: You're the default parent.)

5. You nod your head along with this quote from the book Blue Mind by Wallace J. Nichols:

“Too many of us live overwhelmed — suffocated by work, personal conflicts, the intrusion of technology and media. Trying to do everything, we end up stressed about almost anything. We check our voice mail at midnight, our e-mail at dawn, and spend the time in between bouncing from website to website, viral video to viral video. Perpetually exhausted, we make bad decisions at work, at home, on the playing field, and behind the wheel. We get flabby because we decide we don’t have the time to take care of ourselves, a decision ratified by the fact that those “extra” hours are filled with e-mailing, doing reports, attending meetings, updating systems to stay current, repairing what’s broken. We’re constantly trying to quit one habit just to start another. We say the wrong things to people we love, and love the wrong things because expediency and proximity make it easier to embrace what’s passing right in front of us. We make excuses about making excuses, but we still can’t seem to stop the avalanche.”

6. You have a love-hate relationship with your phone, full as it is of texts, work emails, carpool schedules, and Instagram photos of people doing fun and amazing things.

7. Oprah says you do: 

“What I know for sure is that giving yourself time to just be is essential to fulfilling your mission as a human being. So I give myself Sundays. Sometimes I spend the whole day in my pajamas, sometimes I have church under the trees communing with nature. Most times I just do nothing – piddling, I call it – and let my brain and body decompress. Whenever I’ve slipped up and missed a Sunday, I’ve noticed a definite change in my disposition for the rest of the week. I know for sure that you cannot give to everybody else and not give back to yourself. You will end up empty, or at best, less than what you can be for yourself and your famiy and your work. Replenish the well of yourself, for yourself. ”

8. You don't think you have time to rest:

“From the book Sabbath Keeping by Lynne M. Baab:

’I didn’t know I was allowed to rest.’

What’s going on in our culture, in our world, that a mother with young children believes she’s supposed to be active and productive every minute? Why is it scary to think about stopping or slowing down all this relentless activity? Why do we need to justify our existence by constant motion? Why would we think we aren’t allowed to rest?”

9. You're human.

“Yes, we are strong and capable people, we can work without stopping, faster and faster, electric lights making artificial day so the whole machine can labor without ceasing. But remember: No living thing lives like this. There are greater rhythms that govern how life grows: circadian rhythms, seasons and hormonal cycles and sunsets and moonrises and great movements of seas and stars. We are part of the creation story, subject to all its laws and rhythms. (From the book Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in Our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller.)”

10. You're still reading Reclaiming Sunday Supper even though you hate to cook. 

Old-Fashioned Conversation + New-Fashioned Brussels Sprouts

In her excellent book on writing, Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott recommends that writers who are struggling with writer's block write about their school lunches. So let's do that today, but let's write about after-church coffee instead.

After-church coffee is, I think, possibly a very West Michigan thing. My neighbor and I were talking on her front porch a week or two ago, and we agreed it may be a strange, lovely little tradition that's particular to our little corner of the world. (Are we wrong? If you're from elsewhere, jump in the comments and let me know!) But here's how it went for me, circa the 1980s in West Michigan.

After church, we'd head over to my grandparents' house -- not for dinner, but just for the hour or so between church and going home to eat whatever my mom had in the oven already. We'd walk right in, with aunts and uncles and cousins (and possibly a dog or two) right behind us. My grandparents would still be at church, but they'd be home soon, and the coffee (weak, black) would already be waiting in the carafe in the kitchen. Shoes off at the doorway, coats in the closet, and we'd gather around the dining room table in no order and with no agenda. Someone would pour coffee for the grown-ups, and my brother and I would get iced tea from a brown Tupperware pitcher in the fridge. 

There was always a little food, but not so much as to spoil our dinner: Ritz crackers with Schuler's bar cheese; maybe a little plate of Pecan Sandies or Fudge Stripes; some weeks my mom might have baked something to bring along and share. 

And for just an hour or so, we'd sit and talk. Current events, school projects, work, fishing stories, vacation photos, neighborhood dramas, weekend adventures -- nothing, really, and everything was said around that table. I remember holding my cousin as a baby around that table, and I remember bringing Jason to Sunday coffee for the first time, and I remember missing it when we moved away. But I don't really remember the details of any conversations, which is OK, because it's not the conversations but the feeling of belonging that's important. Before Facebook, before email, before texting, Sunday coffee was my family's in-person connection time. It still is, actually, and though we're a little too far away to make it a weekly event, we still pop in from time to time, and my grandpa is still making the coffee and setting out the crackers.

In the book The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age by Catherine Steiner-Adair, the author writes:

“My friend Martha remembers when she was young and visits with her grandparents and extended family included cooking together, eating together, and relaxing after the meal. In the migration from kitchen to dinner table to family room, the intergenerational conversation was continuous. The young cousins might convene a board game or maybe watch a TV show together, but family conversation wove through it all.

“We used to sit around with my aunts and my uncles and they would just talk about anything,” she says. “There was no point to it, it just went, but it had this great sort of humanizing, literary impact on you.”

The contrast between that rich conversational flow and the relatively shallow, staccato one that dominates her own household today is dramatic – and discouraging, she says. Absent the texture and cadence of old-fashioned family conversations, she believes her children are growing up in “an extremely isolated little bubble” of digital dialogue, a kind of conversational Muzak that fills the space, mimicking style but lacking substance.”

Reclaiming Sunday Supper, for me, is about trying to recapture a little bit of that kind of old-fashioned conversation (is meandering, in-person conversation truly old-fashioned?) with our own kids. Who doesn't want more "rich conversational flow" that has "this great sort of humanizing, literary impact on you"? Over the course of one meal -- or even one month of meals -- that might be a little too ambitious, but woven into the Sunday suppers and our regular weeknight dinners, I think it may be possible.

My in-laws came to eat with us on Sunday. They were freshly back from a big trip, and they'd brought pretty glass jewelry and lovely French macaroons, and we wanted the girls to hear about their travels. But one girl (who shall remain nameless) spent the majority of the meal squatting sideways on her chair like a frog, and shoved so much naan in her mouth at once that some actually fell out on the floor. It was definitely another reminder that these meals are as much about modeling good manners as they are about learning to have meaningful conversations. It was a reminder that our family needs more practice (and more patience) around the table.

After I was done shooting looks across the table, we heard some good travel stories, and we saw some beautiful travel photos, and the girls remembered to chew with their mouths closed and told stories about school projects, soccer games, and missing teeth. And by the time we were eating our apple crisp with Jeni's Salty Caramel ice cream (I'm beginning to suspect I may have dreamed up this whole Reclaiming Sunday Supper project as an excuse to bake delicious and different apple desserts every week this fall), we had, I think, captured that elusive, after-church-coffee feeling. There were no Ritz crackers, no Schuler's bar cheese, but there were three generations sitting around the table, and there were Brussels sprouts, which, in the tradition of children everywhere, the girls refused to eat.

Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta and Balsamic

These are not your grandmothers' Brussels sprouts -- or, at least, they aren't my grandmother's. I think Brussels sprouts are so universally hated because so many of us grew up eating ones that had been boiled to death and under seasoned. These are crisp, especially when a few leaves break off and toast individually, and they're full of flavor. They also play nicely with any other root vegetables you have on hand (carrots are especially good), and can be served over pureed butternut squash if you're feeling extra-fancy.

• 1 lb. Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved, or any combination of sprouts, carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli
• 2 T. olive oil
• 4 oz. diced pancetta
• salt and pepper, to taste
• balsamic vinegar, for drizzling

reheat oven to 425. Toss Brussels sprouts/vegetables with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and arrange on a sheet pan. Scatter diced pancetta over vegetables and roast, flipping vegetables occasionally with a spatula, until crisp and caramelized, about 20-25 minutes. Serve immediately, with balsamic vinegar alongside.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Sabbath

The teacher in me loves Venn diagrams, and I sketched out a quick one today. 

If you think of the left circle as "Reclaiming Sunday" and the right circle as "Sunday Supper," you can see the shaded, starred area is where the two ideas overlap, and that's where I hope to focus most of my writing: on that sweet spot in the middle, where we talk about food and recipes and the way they're so connected to hospitality and rest. But sometimes I'll want to zero in on one circle and ignore the other, and that's what I'm thinking about today.

What, in 2014, is Sabbath? When I talk about "reclaiming Sunday," what do I really mean? Does a Sabbath - a period of rest - really need to be a whole day long? Does it need to happen on a Sunday? Does it need to be religious or Christian in nature?

The answer to those last three questions, I think, is no. Sabbath doesn't need to last an entire day, doesn't need to happen on a Sunday, and doesn't need to be religious in nature. But historically, the answer to those last three questions has been yes, and that's changed in such a short period of time that I think it's worth comparing the Sabbath of my grandmother's mid-life to the Sunday of today.

I lost both my grandmothers this past year. The eldest one, my dad's mom, was 99 when she died. Her life was very little like mine: she grew up on a farm, went to school in a one-room school house and only through 8th grade, she had five children, and she lived with her family above the grocery store my grandpa ran. On the Sundays of his childhood in the 1950s, my dad remembers church, a family meal, and then church again at night. That was all. He remembers not being allowed to swim, bike, clean, play, or do anything at all except those three things. He remembers my grandmother trying to make most of the Sunday meals ahead on Saturday, so she'd just need to turn on the oven and cook what she had already prepared. 

Fast forward to my childhood in the 1980s. I remember Sundays that featured church, coffee at my grandparents', a big noon meal, naps, playing in the neighborhood and maybe some homework, and that's about it. My family didn't generally go shopping, go out to eat, or run errands, and that's largely because stores and restaurants weren't open on Sundays, but it's also because my parents didn't like the idea of supporting a culture where others had to work on Sunday. Neighbors who washed their cars and mowed their lawns on Sunday were frowned upon, and the county in which I grew up didn't sell alcohol on Sundays. We had a pool, though, and would definitely use it in the summer, and we'd ride our bikes and occasionally go to the beach for the afternoon in the summer, and my brother and dad would likely play basketball in the driveway or watch sports on TV. Throughout childhood, I played a little soccer and my brother played basketball, but I never remember either of us having Sunday games.

This morning, I found myself standing on a soccer field at 9:00 a.m. with a birthday party and a Costco trip on the schedule for the afternoon. Later, Jason mowed the lawn while I cleaned the bathrooms and did a load of laundry. The girls rode their bikes around the block and hula-hooped in the front yard. In just two generations, Sundays have become totally unrecognizable as a day of the week that used to be set apart for rest. Many people we know do go to church, but it seems that even those families have to squeeze church in among several other commitments in their Sunday: kids' sports, training for their own sporting event, birthday parties, grocery shopping, running errands, cleaning, piano lessons, social events. I get work emails all weekend long, and I know I'm not the only one. Many of our friends who travel for business have begun flying out on Sunday afternoon in order to be at their destination as expected for the 8:00 a.m. meeting on Monday morning. 

So over a period of 60 years, give or take, a day of the week that, in the Christian tradition at least, had been set aside for rest and worship for hundreds of years, has become just another one of seven weekdays, nearly as busy as the other six. And here's what I wonder: Are we OK with this? Or are we not OK with this, but we don't think we have a choice? 

Because here's the thing. I don't especially want to go back to the Sundays of the 1950s; those days of enforced church and joyless rest sound pretty grim. And having actual laws in place that forbid businesses from being open on Sundays seems like a pretty blatant flaunting of the separation of church and state. (Let's not even talk about shunning the neighbors who wash their cars and mow their lawns.) I don't presume that most of the residents of my community, my state, or my country share my faith or should have to follow any sort of religious rules. But no matter your religion or total lack thereof, don't we all want a day to just shut it down? To hang around the house in elastic waistband pants, watch mindless television, cook good food, read, hike, play? To let go of the need to be productive?

When I think about what's changed in the last few decades (and what might have caused our culture's definition of Sunday to change), a few things come to mind: more women entered the workforce, fewer people attend church, more people live in cities instead of on farms, and technology has completed changed the way we work. But I was in Paris and Vienna last summer, and those world-class European cities still close their restaurants and stores on Sundays in spite of the fact that hardly anyone in Europe cares about organized religion and the majority of women work. People sit in cafes, read the paper, walk along the Seine, play with their kids in the park -- and it's not because they're required by a priest or shamed by their mothers or neighbors. It's because they value the time away from work and school. I'm not sure why, as Americans in 2014, the voices calling for sanity in scheduling seem few and far between. I'm not sure why we aren't taking a good hard look at what we've given up since we've let Sunday become just another day of the week. I'm not sure what it's costing our kids, our health, our creativity, our relationships. But I'm curious.

Here's what I know for sure. My grandmother would never have found herself standing on a soccer field at 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. 

“Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I’m wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don’t know anything, and I’m the first one to admit it.”

— Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Making Time

A few things happened in quick succession this summer and together, they get the credit for inspiring Reclaiming Sunday Supper.

1. There was a hilarious Facebook meme going around, which began, "I'm so West Michigan, I . . ." and had people filling in the blank with stories about back in the day, when you could ride your bike to the corner store for cheap candy -- and buy your mom's smokes with a note signed by her. Someone in my feed, who grew up here, moved away, and is now a local media professional, wrote, "I'm so West Michigan, I can remember when you got in trouble for washing your car and mowing your lawn on Sunday." It triggered predictably fascinating comments, with those who are new to town expressing curiosity and amusement that Sundays used to be so strict around here, and those who grew up here chiming in with their own sets of antiquated Sunday rules. 

2. Our family went to the cabin for a weekend, and I brought along Shauna Niequist's wonderful book, Bread and Wine, to re-read. We invited another family with two little girls to join us, and one morning, after I'd just read Shauna's chapter about House Church (a small group of exquisitely close friends who gathered weekly in each other's homes for meals and friendship), I started a conversation about it with our friends. Was Shauna's experience really true? (They knew her tangentially, and said indeed it was.) Was this kind of committed community even possible these days, with every family we know scheduled to the minute? After we did the dishes that morning, I dangled my toes in the Little Manistee River, and I wondered.

3. A couple of weeks later, the website I manage published a fun profile of a very successful local businesswoman. She's a savvy realtor, a mother, an active community member, and a triathlete. How, the writer asked, does she do it all? Simple, she replied; if it isn't in her calendar, it doesn't happen. She explained how she schedules her life very intentionally, prioritizing time for family, exercise, and travel, then fills in what's available with work. It's not the first time I'd heard this philosophy, but somehow this time everything clicked: the memories of childhood Sundays, with their rejoinder against work; the moving description of House Church, with its unique ability to nourish and support; and the reminder that it's the busiest people who get the most done because they're so intentional with their time.

"There is NO time" is a text I sent my sister-in-law at one point this summer, and it often seems that it's true. At one point last month, I woke up at 4 a.m., looking at the ceiling and worrying in advance about what had become an insanely complicated soccer carpool schedule. (I think it's safe to say the moment you cross over from "a parent with some kids who play some sports" to "a soccer mom" is when you have more than one color-coded Google Drive spreadsheet open on your laptop and you've spent the better part of a week trying to make sense of hundreds of texts and emails about camps, tournaments, practices, and game schedules. But that's neither here nor there.) 

Nonetheless, it's September, which is the best month of the year, if you ask me, to begin again. New school year, new schedules, fresh pencils and shoes, and a renewed commitment, after the haze of summer, to bring a little more order to life. To make time for what's important.

It's true; there is still "NO time" -- or, at least, no more than there was before. But our family has been largely having Sunday supper most weeks for the last year or so. We've cobbled together some little traditions around it (all the best traditions are cobbled together ones, no?), involving the lighting of a very ugly blue glass votive candle that one of the girls chose from TJ Maxx a couple years ago and the writing in a gratitude journal about things that we're thankful for on that particular week.

And since we're cooking anyway, we may as well get some people to come sit down and eat with us. Coming off the unscheduled chaos of late summer, when things tend to fall apart and I hardly knew which day it was, not much sounds better than carving out Sundays as a day for heading to church (or, let's be honest, probably the occasional kids' soccer game), coming home to change into elastic waistband pants, and spending the afternoon reading, watching football, hiking, or playing outside while something cooks slowly in the oven. We'll see.

Why Sunday Supper?

Why decide, in September of 2014, to begin a family experiment in rest and connection around the table by committing to hosting a rotating cast of any and all interested friends and family at our Sunday suppers for a year?

Well, because we found, as our girls got older (they're seven and days-away-from-ten), our calendar was filling up with piano lessons and soccer practices, editorial meetings and dental appointments, work obligations and school open houses, and we had the strong feeling that we needed to balance six days of go-go-go with at least one day of eat, pray, love.

Because we found ourselves missing our nieces, even though they live just half an hour away, and we caught ourselves doing that thing where you see some favorite friends and yell, "Let's catch up soon!" as you're jogging past one another in the hallway or on the sidewalk.

Because we had memories of the long, lazy Sundays of our childhood, filled with only church, pot roast, and naps, and it sounded kind of dreamy.

Because we were doing plenty of the get-dinner-on-the-table-in-30-minutes kind of cooking, but hardly any of the inspired-by-a-great-new-recipe kind of cooking, and we needed a nudge to do more of the second kind, which we really enjoy.

Because we started to notice a connection between how often we checked email on our phones on the weekend and how ill-prepared we felt to plunge into another work week come Monday morning.

Because we wanted an excuse to get our girls in the kitchen more, learning to chop, stir, and measure with us.

Because so many great moments happen around the table.

Because we wanted to make more space for rest, joy, and gratitude in our lives.

Because we love to eat good food with great people.

Want in?

Good, because we want to see you at our table on a Sunday this year. If we've been meaning to "grab that drink" or "get coffee soon" -- Sunday supper. If we've been trying - and failing - to find a night to ditch the kids and have a great meal out -- Sunday supper. (Bring the kids.) If you're tired of cooking but up for telling stories around our big farm table -- Sunday supper. Pick a Sunday, invite yourself over, and bring some wine.