Mealtime Rituals Quotes

This is what a family is all about - one another, sitting around the table at night. And it's very, very important, I think, for the kid to spend time not only around the table eating with their parents, but in the kitchen.

My family, they're story tellers. My mom is Irish, and my dad is Italian. In my family, we weren't allowed to watch TV while we ate - we had to sit around the table and tell stories about our day.

My husband is Dutch, and his family, when you sat down to eat food at the table, you never left the table until you ate living bread and drank living water. They never left the table until they'd read Scripture together. So morning, lunch, suppertime, Scripture was always read at the table, and then there was prayer to close.

This thing happened where I noticed anytime I got together with four friends or more, the conversation goes to food.

Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.

I didn't grow up in a traditional family, and I never had a family dinner around the table, so whenever I actually had a dinner 'plan,' it meant a lot to me; it made me feel excited and safe.

For my parents it was all about getting a deal, my dad came to America and he heard of this concept of brunch. He didn't quite know what it was. And he thought it was this other meal that existed between breakfast and lunch. He was kind of like - I remember he sort of was like America has so much food that between breakfast and lunch they have to stop and eat again. They have brunch. It was completely legal it was, like, a legal meal that you could have. I mean, clearly it wasn't the only reason he came to America, but I think it certainly sweetened the pot for him.

Growing up at my grandmother's table, she always had rice. She might do something as exotic as potatoes or spaghetti, but there was still always rice, just in case you needed a little rice fix.

Everybody has heard that family dinner is great for kids. But unfortunately, it doesn't work in many of our lives.

My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.

As I was growing up, all meals, including breakfast, were family occasions, and you all sat down to eat together - and you had to finish everything as well.

I find it beautiful when we're in Italy that everybody sits down at the table together. My mother-in-law is like, 'It doesn't matter what's going on in the house, who is fighting, who is upset, who has appointments, you sit down at that table at one o'clock.'

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.

Cooking and eating are among the most important ways we weave days into lives.

Food tells you everything about the way people live and who they are.

Family dinner in the Norman Rockwell mode had taken hold by the 1950s: Mom cooked, Dad carved, son cleared, daughter did the dishes.

I love watching people enjoying food. It's very relaxing for me to cook.

When I'm home, the heart and soul of our family is in the kitchen. Growing up, my parents both worked, so dinnertime was for family - the TV was off. I think it's important to grab that time and really make it special, even after a tough day.

The most conventional customs cling to the table. Farmers who wouldn't drive a horse too hard expect pie three times a day.

My husband and I have a deal, which has worked out well: He cooks one Sunday, I cook the next. The kids set the table, and we eat in the dining room together, just as I used to do as a kid.

I like being home for dinner.

Sitting down at the table is a sacred event. It's the heart of the home. People have ginormous homes or crappy little homes, but the kitchen is where we always end up sitting. It's where the stories happen, the family happens.

My mom was probably the biggest influence. She cooked dinner every night. We sat around the table every night. It was a very traditional family.

My dad loves to cook. I'm half Thai, and growing up, that's all we ate in my house. My dad was very big on the idea that dinnertime and cooking time was also family time.

When my children were growing up, we began every family meal - which included breakfast and dinner every day - with a prayer. We are Jewish and so it was the prayer over bread, when we were having bread, or the catch-all prayer for everything when we weren't.