family dinner

Photo by theloushe. Pizza dough recipe from Giada De Laurentiis.

Our family shares this weekly (when we're organized) tradition with another family. It's often complete chaos as we juggle dinner prep and spouses' work schedules and kids' appetites and bedtimes and block forts being built under the chefs' feet, and almost always end up eating in shifts so that the grownups can (maybe) talk. We have this dreamy notion that someday teenagers will skulk off to a basement hangout while we have hours and hours to drink wine and finish conversations. For now we're just starting them, and it usually feels like enough.