Making Meals Social

One of the principles of Celebrate Every Day is that meals can be social. But making meals social is a challenge if you live alone or if the nest is empty. Sometimes even preparing meals beyond heating up a frozen dinner or ordering take out can be a struggle.

Everyone, including those who live alone and families with children, can make meals more social from time to time. By extending the table to include those beyond the home, we not only increase the number of people celebrating, we increase the celebration itself.

Here's one idea.

Sub Night

We have several close friends we used to see at least once a week, until we moved an hour away. A few years later, another couple moved an hour away in the opposite direction. In order to keep the bonds of friendship strong, we decided to get together approximately once a month. And to make our gatherings easy on the host, we have Sub Night.

The point of Sub Night is not to have a gourmet meal, but to celebrate together. Sub Night is a social meal made easy. The host is responsible for beverages, appetizers, and dessert. Each person is to bring his or her own main course, usually subs.

We skip some months. Other months the host decides to cook for the entire crowd. But whatever form it takes, Sub Night has helped our group of friends stay close for more than a decade. While devouring hundreds of subs, we have celebrated with each other the addition of a new baby and consoled each other through divorce. We are at different stages of life; our ages span from early 40s to early 80s, and one couple’s grandchildren are older than our son. But because we take the time to have social meals together, our bonds of friendship have remained strong.

More ideas for making meals social will come in the near future.