Cookstory: January 18, 2013: Family Dinners and TV Trays.

Evening

Eggs, Bacon and Toast. 

A couple of years ago, we (Laura and I) decided to focus more on the family dinner. We found ourselves falling into the ever-so-obvious trap of having more and more meals in front of the television. Because hey, we're tired ... this is easier. It keeps the kids happy. (It's not really easier; it means having to constantly remind them to eat their food because they get distracted by what's on the screen.) Laura gave me Laurie David's wonderful book The Family Dinner for Christmas, at first in the hopes that it would inspire me to cook with the kids more in the kitchen. The book didn't really do that ... but more on kids in the kitchen soon ... stay tuned.

But The Family Dinner did effectively make the case for—or, should I say, remind me—of the importance of the family dinner. And we vowed to have family dinners as often as possible, limiting dinners in front of the TV to only one night a week. We were faithful to the vow for quite some time, though it did mean making a little bit of an adjustment: I had to come up with a much larger repertoire of weeknight meals—quick to make and tasty for the whole family—and while I learned them, the new recipes often meant a much later dinner time than anyone preferred. But for the most part, that has worked out. And though we've probably slipped a bit and watch TV while eating dinner more than the original prescription, we are keeping the family dinner alive and well under this roof.

My mom was also really good at keeping the family dinner going during my childhood. I've heard stories about how intense family dinners can become for many families: heated conversations, arguments, lessons learned around the table. I don't really remember anything like that at our family dinners. They just sort of ... happened. I didn't really connect with my parents in any deep way; they weren't that kind of people. But my memory of the food is that it was delicious. And we would still do our dinners in front of the TV too—exclusively so on those nights when eggs, bacon and toast were on the menu.

Hungry Man salisbury steak. Mouth-watering!

A tremendously important element of that meal was the TV tray. These were ubiquitous in the 1970s and 1980s and stood as an early symbol of the impact of television on our home life: the depiction in print and televisual media of a family or (more commonly) a lonely senior citizen situated in front of the television, slumped over a metal surface holding a Swanson's TV dinner, was quite common. ("Hungry Man" style dinners, which were larger than the "average" dinner, were my favorite; salisbury steak with apple cobbler!) When we lived in Idyllwild in the early 1970s, the TV trays we had were made of a light metal, rectangular and pressed out in a factory that probably ran right next to the license plate makers in prisons. The bottom of the tray had four rubber "grips" into which the legs clipped in. I remember thinking that the floral pattern on Mom and Dad's TV trays were SO much more modern than, say, Grandma Albright's, which must have been from—gasp!—the 1960s!

A similar TV tray pattern to ours.

When we moved down to Pacific Palisades, we got new tables that were more sturdy, with an ovular tabletop made of some sort of quasi-Formica-like finish on them ... dark brown with faux wood grain. I loved these. The surface area was big, the legs were sturdy, in case you accidentally kicked one as you were moving around, or laughing particularly hard at a joke on Happy Days. (Did anyone laugh particularly hard at Happy Days? In truth, I can only remember watching 60 Minutes and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.)

The exact TV trays we had in the 1980s!

When I started writing this, I believed that TV trays had really become passé, that no one had them anymore. A Google search proved me wrong: WalMart and Costco both carry them, and there is (of course!) a whole market for. I can't imagine owning them anymore. Maybe that's just snooty of me.

These days, for our Friday Night Movie Nights, the girls sit at a very short table perched between the couch (for the grown-ups) and the television. This table came from Laura's childhood home, and I believe it possesses some magic, because despite the girls' amazing growth over the last eight years, they still fit perfectly at this table. Truth be told, I still use it myself on a regular basis, like when I'm cutting up vegetables for a dish. Laura and I balance our plates on the arms of the couch. And yes, take a moment to imagine the wealth of food stains. (Laura hates the couch; she so wants a new one.

Our nights in front of the television still feel very much like family dinners. I'm not advocating for more time in front of the TV, but our watching is very participatory, involving lots of discussions of what we're seeing, the morals and ethics of what is going on, and (in the case of Downton Abbey) much expounding on the finer points of turn-of-the-century English social tomfoolery. The moment they're done with their food, the girls abandon the magic table and curl up with us on the couch, and the chattering continues throughout our viewing. On cold winter nights, I can hardly think of anything more satisfying.