bulldoze through them, licking our fingers. (Dried mulberries, by the way, are
sweet like figs but have two-thirds the sugar of raisins. And they’re a nice source
of fibre and antioxidants.)
Fresh mulberries like the ones I gathered and gobbled as a kid are tough to
find, but dried ones are readily available at many online retailers.
While we were all feasting—the meal lasted an hour and a half or so—the
kids would play hide-and-seek and the adults might play poker or some other
card game. I didn’t think about these rituals at the time. We enjoyed the food.
Nothing was expensive or difficult to make, and everything was fresh and
healthy. It was just how we lived.
Now that I’m many years removed from those summers, I look back and see
more than berries and baklava. Our eating was entertainment. Our eating was
social. Eating meant time together.
Too often these days, schedules and stress have fostered an on-your-own
eating environment, and we’ve lost this communal and multigenerational spirit.
In our house, we try to resurrect the tradition of family feasting as often as we
can, even as our kids head off in different directions with school, work, and their
own lives.
When my granddaughter, Philo, was a baby, she used to sit on my lap during
meals. Partly this was to give her mum, Daphne, a break, and it kept her from
scooping up a knife when she began to grab things willy-nilly. But mostly we
just wanted to include her in our meals instead of putting her aside while the
adults ate. Philo, now a three-and-a-half-year-old, will sometimes still sit on my
lap at the table—not because she needs my help, but because it’s one of the ways
that we eat as a family. It’s been fascinating to watch her watch everyone. When