If you’ve listened to JAM for any length of time, you know that I (Renee) love food! I love to cook; I love to eat; and most of all, I love to feed people. So in this final episode of our home series, we’re going to talk about the relationship between our homes and food.
Rory Shiner at TGC wrote in a 2019 series on a biblical theology of food and eating:
The Bible begins and ends with meals. The first words of God to humans are an invitation to eat; the first conflict in the Bible is over a forbidden meal; the last act of Jesus before his death is to share a meaning-laden feast with his disciples; and the final vision of the new world is of a massive, joyful banquet.
No figure in the Bible is more associated with food than its central character, Jesus. His first miracle was in response to a catering crisis at a wedding. (The couple had run out of wine. Jesus’ response was to turn four hundred and fifty litres of water into the best wine the guests had ever tasted.)
Right through his life, Jesus seemed to spend a disproportionate amount of time at dinner parties—winning for him a bad reputation as a drunkard, glutton, and friend of the wrong sort of people. Jesus did much of his teaching as a dinner party guest. On at least three occasions, he turned into host and caterer, providing miraculous quantities of wine, fish, and bread. After his resurrection, he cooked a breakfast of fish over hot coals for his disciples. At another post-resurrection incident, his friends only clicked as to who he was when he broke bread and shared it with them at table. And Jesus invited his followers to continue to eat a meal “in memory of him”. Christianity’s founder, it seems, believed in the power of shared meals.
Feasts and food focus the full range of human experience: joy and fellowship, awkwardness and conflict, hope and longing, loneliness and sorrow, fullness and regret.
Home Cooking
At a minimum, home cooking requires meal planning and food preparation skills, access to kitchen equipment, time and money to shop for ingredients, and more time to transform a collection of food ingredients into a meal that the family will enjoy – not to mention the time and effort involved in cleaning up afterwards.
Considering the effort and expense required for home cooking compared to the convenience of commercially prepared meals, why is it that families continue to cook meals at home? What is the significance of home cooking both within families and beyond the family unit?
**Just to clarify: cooking is not a moral issue. If you can barely manage a bowl of cereal or work the toaster, you are not defective or sinning in any way. I’m SURE there are many other ways you support your family on a daily basis. To be sure, in many families, it’s the DAD who loves to cook & prepare meals. This is true for my brother, for example…and it’s more than just a “king of the grill” mentality. That’s great, too. This is not a stereotyping of “women belong in the kitchen”.
What if you hate to cook & meals still fall under your responsibility occasionally?
- Tell yourself the truth: doing things for your family when you don’t enjoy it is LOVING THEM WELL. It’s a sacrificial kind of love that is akin to Jesus’ love for us.
- Keep it simple. There was a season when I (Renee) needed to cook 30-minute meals, not elaborate ones.
- Plan ahead. You’ll procrastinate and then find yourself with no plans at 5pm. Take 30 minutes to an hour to plan and save yourself the temptation to order out.
Tips for simplifying meal prep. What did we do?
Renee: I kept a running list of family faves. “Put it on the list” was a sure sign that the kids or dad wanted to have that meal again and again. I shopped one or two weeks at a time. I did grocery delivery when that became a thing.
Bonnie: Every grocery trip, I’d make sure I picked up “the usual suspects” so I’d always have something on hand for a quick meal: spaghetti & sauce, black beans, shredded cheese, cream of chicken soups, onion, rice,…. Something to make pasta or one-dish mexican meal, for example, in case time/planning went awry. I’d make double & freeze one batch for next time.
Benefits
The Harvard Health Blog notes lots of benefits for eating at home:
People who prepare meals at home tend to consume significantly more fruits and vegetables, and less sugar and fat. People who enjoy meals at home with others, sitting together and conversing, also have reduced stress and higher life satisfaction. The more frequently families with children have meals together, the more likely the children are to eat a high-quality diet, and the less likely to be overweight or obese. There are also other benefits: these children tend to have higher self-esteem and better academic performance, as well as lower risk of engaging in risky behaviors (like drug use) or developing an eating disorder. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/home-cooking-healthy-family-meals-2018082114580
Memories
What are our favorite food memories from our childhood homes?
Renee: Hot breakfasts every morning. Eating around the formica table in the 70’s, the glass table in the 80’s, and with my granddaddy in the 90’s after my grandmother’s passing. Lots of grilled meats, fried fish (caught by Granddaddy), chocolate chip cookies, and more.
Bonnie: We had the best conversations & laughter around our dinner table. Because we lived in FL & my grandfather ran a charter fishing business, we had a lot of fresh seafood, shrimp, lobster. We’d dig for clams and have them on the grill. At grandparents’ house it was always something fresh & in season from the garden & the best Southern fried chicken & butter whipped with buttermilk.
My kids & I made choc chip cookies all the time–always in the same green bowl from the 30’s. It was one my great grandmother used, and one they each got after they got married. They each call it “the cookie bowl” and would be functionally unable to make cookie dough in any other dish.
Manners
Shiner again: Food and eating raise fundamental questions of what it means to be human. Eating is an activity we so obviously share with other animals, and yet it is simultaneously the point at which we differentiate ourselves from them.
Consider our elaborate table manners and dining aesthetics, our etiquette and decorum; our desire to wait for one another and submit our animal instincts to the higher goods of conviviality, sociability and culture. Consider our insults. We must never “wolf down” our food. We shouldn’t eat “like pigs”. We tell children not to be “like animals” at the table. At the very point where we do what animals do, we defensively assert how different we are from them.
Emily Post’s Everyday Etiquette has been updated to suit the times. Here is her list of table manners for the family: https://emilypost.com/advice/top-10-must-know-table-manners
- Chew with your mouth closed.
- Keep your smartphone off the table and set to silent or vibrate. Wait to check calls and texts until you are finished with the meal and away from the table.
- Hold utensils correctly. Don’t use your fork or spoon like a shovel or stab your food.
- Wash up and come to the table clean. Don’t groom or attend to hygiene at the table.
- Remember to use your napkin.
- Wait until you’re done chewing to sip or swallow a drink.
- Pace yourself with fellow diners. Cut only one piece of food at a time.
- Avoid slouching and don’t place your elbows on the table while eating (though it is okay to prop your elbows on the table while conversing between courses, and always has been, even in Emily’s day).
- Instead of reaching across the table for something, ask for it to be passed to you.
- Bring your best self to the meal. Take part in the dinner conversation. (Table Topic cards)
Feasting / Celebrating
Shiner again: The Old Testament was full of feasting. There were several formal, God-ordained feasts each year. And there are accounts of many spontaneous feasts as the people come into good fortune and favor.
Feasting is associated with God’s blessing, his forgiveness, and the abundance of his love, just as fasting is associated with sorrow, with guilt, and with atonement.
In times of exile and judgment, feasting was not possible. Through the prophet Amos God says, “…you will be among the first to go into exile; your feasting and lounging will end.” Exile, the time of judgment, is the end of feasting.
And salvation is pictured as a feast in the presence of God. Isaiah says:
On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines
When Aristotle dreamt, he dreamt of reason and restraint. The Buddha dreamed of the end of desire and the dissolution of personality. But when Israel dreamt, they dreamt of rich food, big crowds, and fine wine—a feast before the Lord.
From a Western perspective, we tend to display wealth with homes & cars–things visible from the road. You can drive through certain neighborhoods (without ever speaking to or interacting with the residents) & know that those who live there are wealthy. It’s independent & set apart. In the Middle East, by contrast, wealth is displayed by having great feasts with 3x the amount of food needed to satisfy the guests. It’s a communal experience & display of status—I have all this bounty and I am able to share it with others. I’ve invited you to share it with me.
(This SHARING is part of why I love the concept of planting a garden at home. Even if you do a square foot garden –fairly small– you’ll always have more than you need. Gardens (& the food produced from them) are made for sharing. You’ll always have way too many tomatoes at some point. Way too many zucchini or more sweet potatoes than you could ever eat. Throw some zinnia seeds out & they’ll bloom with enough abundance that you can give a friend a colorful bouquet. )
NOW I think when we have people over, we DO try to serve something decent—it’s not a couple of brown bananas and a hotdog. But we’re not doing it to show off with filet mignon and the finest French dishes.
The finery of the meal isn’t the point AND we don’t want to be misers. We don’t want to be miserly with our affection, attention, encouragement, or belongings. We can be tight-fisted and small hearted, jealous of our own space/peace/order/routine…. God has given freely to us. WHOM has He given it to us to give to? Share a meal with another family, slow down & have some conversation & forget the usual Monday night routine for once.
Jesus
Jesus came eating and drinking. He did not do so in a vacuum. Feasting meant favor. It meant the forgiveness of God.
The problem with Jesus was focused on whom he feasted with. “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” (Luke 15:2). Eating is an act of fellowship. The root of the word “companion” comes from the Latin, meaning literally to “bread together”. A companion is one with whom you break bread. Which is what Jesus is doing with sinners.
How to host well:
Hospitality
Which brings us to hospitality.
It’s helpful to think of hotels and restaurants as a starting point toward understanding hospitality. You don’t know anyone there, but they welcome you in, serve you food and beverage, attend to your needs, give you a room full of amenities to enjoy, and a bed to rest in overnight.
Peter writes that we should “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” 1 Peter 4:9–10
In addition to wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, prophesying, serving, and others, hospitality is a spiritual gift. It is given by the Holy Spirit, by God’s grace, and it’s used to serve others. Each Christian is given a different gift, and that is what enables the church to function and care for the needs of its members.
Rachel Jankovic muses that gratitude is the foundation of all Christian hospitality. Before we learn how to cook for a crowd, set the table, find extra seating, or whatever, the first thing that needs to happen is gratitude. We’ve already been given gifts of shelter (however humble), food (however simple), water, taste, hunger…. How can we glorify God with our stove?
Add an extra measure of gratitude to your prayer before meals as you talk about HOW your food got to your table. What had to happen for the farmer to grow those beans? How did they get to the store? How did that pineapple get all the way from Hawaii to the grocery store shelves? How many bees had to pollinate the strawberries? Who picks the apples off the trees?
Isn’t it interesting that God made us all HUNGRY? Babies are birthed with the basic suckle reflex to find FOOD. It’s probably no accident that He made hunger a metaphor for spiritual satisfaction. It’s why fasting is a spiritual discipline. With every meal, God gives us the chance to live out his kindness to us, to reflect His love to those at our tables.
The time we spend preparing food for our families means our prayer for “daily bread” has been answered. Viewed this way, the opportunity to cook is an answer to prayer!
Every meal we put on the table is a small picture of the feeding of the five thousand. (Sometimes it actually feels that way when we’re standing in front of the refrigerator at 5 pm wondering what we can do with an onion, half a red pepper, and some frozen-solid chicken breasts!!) When we look at it that way, those of us who cook meals at home are miracle workers! We display our love and with God’s bounty, look what happens! Macaroni & cheese!