We may have our different dishes when food like rice or beans is cooked. At such times everyone had the luxury to eat at their own pace.
Sometimes, when food like pap and beans are prepared, we are served the beans on an individual basis while a bowl is used to serve the pap. Usually, the pap gets finished on time as everyone will justle to eat enough portion to get himself filled. Then, you can be at liberty to eat your plate of beans as slowly as a snail would crawl across a path.
One thing that this process or style of eating has taught me as a person is that we need to care for one another and that life is not all about us. This was learnt when our younger siblings who were usually slow to eat would be helped to scoop food from the large bowl or sometimes we help them to make the food cold enough for them to put in their mouth.
Also, I learned that in life, it is tough out there and to survive, a lot of character has to be put in place. The number of children in my family is large and as a result, our pot of soup barely lasts a day. So, we cook nearly every day.
Our food was sourced fire rly from nature. We had large farm lands and had no reason to buy some major food items like yams, potatoes, palm oil, pepper, tomatoes, vegetables, maize and garri (cassava flour). We worked very hard and eat well too. Sometimes, we go fishing for a whole day while we had little or nothing to do in the farm. We usually caught a lot of black mudfish and at other times we set straps for bush meat.
Unfortunately, that lifestyle is all gone now. I don't farm as such anymore. All my siblings and I have resorted to white collar jobs in the name of modernization and now we have to buy everything that we used to have for free.
When I got married, my wife and I ate together in the same dish. We eat all sorts of food together. She had almost the same family lifestyle that I had before we got married. So, we stick with the style. She would prepare the meal while I helped out in no little way. And when the food is done, even if I was not yet at home, she would wait till I am back so that we could eat together.
About a year after our marriage, we had our first baby who joined in the tradition when she grew and started to eat our kind of food. Today, we are blessed with two wonderful children and we still maintain the family bond of eating together. It is a tradition that has helped us maintain some level of familiarity and love.
When Dining Table In The First Place?
A modern family home has at least one dining table where everyone is expected to eat their meals. In my home, the dining table served that purpose but in a rare moment.
We use the centre table to eat our meals together. We will go round the table, take some prayers and begin to munch away at the food. I can vividly say that our centre table does more of the job of eating venues than our dining table.
It is only at such times when food like spaghetti and rice or beans and the likes are prepared that we often remember that we have a dining table in the house.
My children like to eat with us rather than eating alone. Eating together kills boredom while eating. Sometimes, the children feel like not eating at all because of tiredness or likeness for the food or otherwise but when it is served together, there is no holding back.
We also used that method to monitor the rate at which the children eat. It is a good way of measuring what each of them is capable of eating. Most times, like In the case of one of my nieces who always looked thin because a bully was forcefully taking her from her in the school.
Hence, there is no plan to stop eating together as a family because we are all good with it. My children may also continue this method when they grow older and have their own life partners.