Stories are often shared over a good meal. It’s why the theme of Whisk and Dine is Every Meal Tells A Story!
The gathering place for food, family and friends is remembered through photographs and social media venues, yet the stories shared over the meal are what legacies are built on.
Food Tells Stories
Food and its preparation has a way of connecting us to our cultural roots and ancestral heritage. It has an inexplainable way of igniting memories or stories we heard while growing up, and so we feel compelled to pass those stories on.
Preparation of food also has a way of uniting us in our most favorite gathering spot, our kitchen:
- Whether it’s the children standing on a chair to involve their little fingers in what we are cooking.
- Our teens drawn in by the smell of something wafting through the house.
Kitchens are rooms where everyone wants to pull up a chair, pour something to sip on and just become a part of the celebration happening on the stove.
Gathering For A Meal
Gathering of the food becomes an important stimulation in the ritual of its preparation. Bustle of a market place. A distant drive to purchase that one unique and important ingredient.
Ingredients we have painstakingly and proudly grown to bring that extra measure of wow factor to the story we will tell when gathered around the table.
The gathering of food has always held an important place in the storytelling of a meal since ancient times.
Visual Storytelling With Food
These are things I know to be true because I have lived them. I was that two-year old, long ago, standing on a chair helping my mom knead bread, a recipe that had been passed down in her Syrian family.
That mom that enjoyed each of my four children cooking in the kitchen with me when they were growing up.
Now each of them are more than proficient in the kitchen. I am that kookie, rookie gardener that can’t get enough of my “Play In The Dirt” time.
A grandma that loves having the little one’s fingers chopping veggies or rolling out dough in my kitchen.
Every Meal Speaks The Language Of Love
The sister, woman, friend that has discovered that in life, the best stories and memories are made in our kitchen, dining over a beautiful meal, and sharing stories that will live on with those I enjoy sharing my life with.
Every Meal Tells A Story simply because it involves our history, in one way or another.
I believe the table... that place that draws people to gather, is the most powerful symbol of togetherness. All that happens before the table is set, the planning, the gathering, the preparing, are all an intricate part of the dance that create the mood of celebration to share with friends and loved ones.