At the Table

Saturday night:  I was cooking a pretty fabulous dinner.  Chicken and mushrooms were braising slowly in a rich, garlic-peppercorn sauce.  Saffron risotto simmered along, absorbing more and more broth by the cup-full.  The smell of brownies wafted up from the oven.  Then... VOOP!  The power went out in our apartment.  The sizzling sounds quickly faded to silence upon the electric stove-top.

This would have been a gastronomic tragedy; however, our current housing above the camp kitchen permitted us to transport our pots and pans downstairs to continue cooking the meal over propane.  God bless propane.  If we have a real house someday, I so wish to have a propane stove!

The other alteration to our plans for the evening was that we ate at the table, by candlelight, over a tablecloth, with clean, cloth napkins.  Our previous plan was to put food on the coffee table and hunch over it, scarfing down dinner as we continued watching episodes of Breaking Bad.

The candlelit dinner (with a nice Zinfandel) was a much better experience for my husband and me.

Sadly, the two of us often resign ourselves to eating in front of the television.  We blame our surroundings for watching television daily (our home is very remote from friends, and it is too dang cold to play outside!); and yet we look forward to beginning school next year, since our work and new friends will keep us busy.  We also talk about how we don't want to watch television in the future when we have children, and CERTAINLY don't want to eat dinner with them in the living room.

I hope to continue the tradition of family dinners.  My parents had us stop homework or tv-watching every night to sit at the table and eat together.  They'd ask us what we learned at school ("Nooothinnggg.") and catch each other up on the events of the day.  Little did I know that this ritual was the foundation of our training as civilized persons.

In our "grain-bag society," people eat anywhere, anytime they want.  It's why we have drive-thrus at fast-food establishments.  It's why people stuff their purses with granola bars and candies.  It is this ubiquitous eating that has taken away any sign of etiquette and communal enjoyment of meals.

As you head into your Thanksgiving family get-togethers, take time to appreciate the effort put into the meal by the cook, the beautiful place-settings, and the faces of those you love.  Enjoy the conversation, in addition to all that gravy!

All this has been brought to mind because I've been doing a little reading about etiquette.  A very convincing. witty book by Judith Martin has been causing me to consider the implications of a "grain-bag society," and how I'd rather implement solid training-in-eating to my future children (forks and knives, not fingers).  Read on for your enlightenment and amusement:

"Ignorance of eating skills is not a sign of lack of intelligence.  It is more likely to be a sign of the sad demise of the family dinner.  With the prevalence of refrigerator-grazing and fast-food-on-the-run among people of all ages, the skill of eating in a way that will not spoil the appetites of other diners is rarely taught.  This includes the reasonably accurate use of proper utensils, an attempt at personal comportment and an aquaintance with the rituals for different kinds of meals in a variety of settings."

Ubiquitous Eating

"Whew.  What a massive effort it took to convince people of the simple notion that courtesy limits the places in which smoking is permitted - name-calling, families divided, legal threats, bodies left dying in the streets where the cigarette butts used to be.

Miss Manners doesn't think she can live through that again.  Yet there is work to be done in enforcing the rule that food and drink ought not to be consumed indiscriminately, in any place, no matter what else happens to be going on.  There are proper places in which to eat and drink - six on eery city block, with fast-food delivery trucks running past them every minute to rescue the stranded - but classrooms, houses of worship, public transportation, sidewalks and concert halls are not among them.

One has only to point this out to raise the cry of deprivation.  (Chomp, chomp, chomp.)  We live in the era of the grain bag, when sustenance is carried everywhere.  The alternative to the-world-as-dining-room is pictured as starvation.  (Chomp. chomp, chomp.)  When was the last time you heard anyone talk of skipping eating because it might spoil the appetite?  During dinner, in reference to saving room for dessert, that's when.

In the matter of the modern smoking bans, Miss Manners can hardly claim an etiquette victory - if victory it can be said to be at this stage, when both sides behave equally badly.  There was always, and still is, an etiquette rule against smokers smoking near non-smokers without asking their permission.  There was just the small problem, for about the last three quarters of a century, that smokers refused to obey it.

So the law had to take over.  Only when non-smokers ventured the argument that vicariously received smoke was actually injurious to their health were they able to enlist the law to ban smoking from public areas.  So far, no one has been able to prove vicarious food poisoning.  Why should anyone who feels like eating not do so on thespot, just because the noise, sight, garbage or trash may bother others?

Voluntary self-restraint for the common comfort, which is what etiquette depends on (because it lacks the authority to send people to jail), is not the rage these days.  So Miss Manners has been trying to think of selfish reason to offer people for not annoying others with their eating or showing them the disrespect of divided attention:

• People who eat all day long at their desks receive no extra credit when they eat lunch at their desks.  If it were not the custom to snack while working, one could gain a reputation as a tireless worker merely by bringing in a sandwich at noontime.
• If students and workers are able to eat and drink while doing whatever they are really supposed to be doing, there is no need for the recess and the coffee break.
• The unabashed display of food and drink that people have brought for themselves increasingly appears to others to be a buffet table in which they can reasonably ask to participate.  It is true that there is an etiquette violation in sniffing around other people's supplies asking plaintively, "May I have some of that?"  Miss Manners wishes to point out that it is not quite nice, either, to display tempting provisions when other people don't have their own meals in front of them.
• Miss Manners has always been bewildered that people who discover posh restaurants are in a panic about how properly to eat in them.  It appears that eating eleven times a day does not prepare one for what is seen as an amazing trial - the ability to navigate one's way through an actual meal.
• Finally, eating when sitting down at a table, with all the necessary eating tools provided, saves dry cleaning bills.

Miss Manners has now succeeded in making herself feel very modern by arguing her case with appeals to such motives as impressing headwaiters and not having to share.  The truth is that she believes refraining from eating and drinking - and smoking - at will should be done because controlling behavior so as not to offend others is the basic step toward civilization, and the rituals of communal eating are necessary to transmit and confirm civilized life.  The rituals of eating are, as any anthropologist can attest, some of the strongest cultural bonds that a society can share."

Miss Manners' Basic Training:  Eating - Judith Martin