Last night, we had several members of the extended family over to the house to have dinner. This gathering of the troops has been an on-going weekly affair started by my wife’s relatives in the early 1990’s. One evening each week, the whole family (about 10 to 16 people depending on availability of some of the college-aged children and occasional outlier attendees) gathers together for a meal, the location of the gathering rotating among five different households.
A list is created at the beginning of every calendar year that lays out in black and white where we meet each week. This is serious business in our family. I can tell you in January where I will be having dinner on Wednesday during the second week of November. It’s already on the calendar, and God help me if I forget about it and make plans to be somewhere else that day. No one has been physically harmed yet, but I don’t want to be the one they decide to make an example of.
It is an interesting dynamic that I married into. While growing up, I saw my aunts, uncles, cousins and more distant relatives about once every five years during one of our sporadic Wilbanks family reunions. I would spend the day trying to remember the names and faces of the people that claimed they were related to me, then pass the next few years forgetting them all over again. In my wife’s family, the gatherings are slightly more frequent, and they have been happening consistently for over 20 years.
So, how do they work? I’m glad you asked.
When it is your turn to cook, the host fixes a full meal, usually including hors d’oeuvres, a main course, and dessert. (Dessert? Desert? I hate this word. I’m never sure which one you eat, and which one is the sandy hot place where scorpions kill you.) The host prepares the food, serves the food, and cleans up the mess when the meal is over. The rest of the locust … er, family … simply show up, eat, enjoy copious amounts of alcohol and lively conversation, then leave.
The menu can be anything from burgers and dogs off the grill, to crab and rib-eye steaks. I have been treated with fish, fowl, beef and pork in various soups, casseroles, stews, and pastas. Side dishes of veggies, potatoes, salads, rice and beans have also made appearances. On occasion we have been surprised with more exotic fare such as Pad Thai, handmade spaetzli, crepes, or spicy gumbo. Dinner, at times, may also be pizza delivered from the local pizza shop because someone just didn’t have time to prepare a meal that week, or else a more creative endeavor went completely sideways and ended up being tossed out into the yard in a moment of frustration.
It is a lot of work planning and executing dinner when it is our night. The tradeoff, of course, is that every Wednesday night for the next four weeks I get to go somewhere and be catered to without ever having to lift a finger. If I want seconds, I get seconds. If I spill a drink, someone else mops it up and refills my glass. If I set fire to a bread basket because I pushed it too close to a lit candle, I only have to sit back while the host puts out the flames and brings me more bread. (True story … unfortunately.)
It’s like going to a really nice restaurant with attentive staff, and not having to pay for it. There is no valet service at the end of the night, but hey, no situation is perfect.
I know this tradition is an odd one. Most families don’t do stuff like this, choosing instead to find excuses to avoid relatives rather than invite them over to the house. Our weekly meal is a rarity that even caught the attention of the Sacramento newspaper back in 2001. On January 21, 2001, they published an article about my family called “A Meal to Remember.” It was actually a very nice write-up and you can still find it online in the Sacramento Bee archives. It will cost you three bucks to pull up a copy of it, so you may want to just take my word for it. Or not. It’s your money, spend it however you please.
Today, the house is still a bit of a wreck. I haven’t finished picking up cups, beer bottles, and stray napkins. There are still some dishes on the counter and in the sink, but I will get to them eventually. That’s the bad news. The good news is next week, dinner will be at “not my house.”
The week after that, it will be at “not my house.”
The week after that …. Yeah, you get my point.