Quotes & Sayings About Eating With Family

As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible. — Mario Batali

Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by our rulers. The pleasure of eating an ice cream cone may be minor compared to the pleasure of meaningful, autonomous work, but the former is easily available and the latter is not. A poor family would undoubtedly rather have a decent apartment than a new TV, but since they are unlikely to get the apartment, what is to be gained by not getting the TV? — Ellen Willis

If you can eat with mates or friends or family, I mean, it's such a brilliant thing isn't it? If you feel really rubbish and you have a nice bit of food it makes you feel good, you know?
— Jamie Oliver

When faced with choosing between attributing their pain to "being crazy" and having had abusive parents, clients will choose "crazy" most of the time. Dora, a 38-year-old, was profoundly abused by multiple family perpetrators and has grappled with cutting and eating disordered behaviors for most of her life. She poignantly echoed this dilemma in her therapy:
I hate it when we talk about my family as "dysfunctional" or "abusive." Think about what you are asking me to accept - that my parents didn't love me, care about me, or protect me. If I have to choose between "being abused" or "being sick and crazy," it's less painful to see myself as nuts than to imagine my parents as evil. — Lisa Ferentz

Take, for instance, studies from the past decade examining the impacts of exercise on daily routines.4.10 When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It's not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. "Exercise spills over," said James Prochaska, a University of Rhode Island researcher. "There's something about it that makes other good habits easier. — Charles Duhigg

According to the American Psychological Association, the most effective stress-relief strategies are exercising or playing sports, praying or attending a religious service, reading, listening to music, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside of ra walk, meditating or doing yoga, and spending time with a creative hobby. (The least effective strategies are gambling, shopping, smoking, drinking, eating, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and watching TV or movies for more than two hours. — Kelly McGonigal

Babcock knew no Southerners personally but he had seen them in court often enough ... and Ed's manner and appearance said Dixie to him. He imagined Ed at home with his family, a big one, from old geezers to toddlers. He saw them eating their yams and pralines and playing their fiddles and dancing their jigs and guffawing over coarse jokes and beating one another to death with agricultural implements. — Charles Portis

5. Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being, and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films, and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society, and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger, and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I think in times of bizarre strangeness, what you can and should do is spend time with your family eating lunch or dinner. And if you can do that, you will restore us to the peace. — Mario Batali

Eating The Bones
by Ellen Bass
The women in my family
strip the succulent
flesh from broiled chicken,
scrape the drumstick clean;
bite off the cartilage chew the gristle,
crush the porous swellings
at the ends of each slender baton.
With strong molars
they split the tibia, sucking out
the dense marrow.
They use up love, they swallow
every dark grain,
so at the end there's nothing left,
a scant pile of splinters
on the empty white plate. — Ellen Bass

You hurt her by starving yourself, you hurt her with your lies, and by fighting everybody who tries to help you. Emma can only sleep a couple of hours a night now. She's haunted by nightmares of monsters that eat our whole family. They eat us slowly, she says, so we can feel their sharp teeth. — Laurie Halse Anderson

I deserve this shrimp. Born to people who clearly shouldn't have reproduced, I date my best friend and turn him gay, date another man who doesn't know he's gay, almost have dinner with a third man who's more interested in his reflection than me, and land on a yeti who turns out to be a millionaire playboy.

"I lost the man I thought of as a father, had my thirtieth birthday party minus any family, and now I'm being dissed in the gossip rags. I am only human and I can take no more, so, yes, I have consumed my body weight in wine and I plan on eating this whole goddamn plate of shrimp. — L.A. Fiore

When our boulevards are lined with an infinity of bad eating houses filled with dead-faced people placed like mute beasts in their stalls; today, when one out of every three marriages ends in divorce ... It seems incredible that normal human beings not only tolerate the average American restaurant food, but actually prefer it to eating at home. The only possible explanation for such deliberate mass-poisoning, a kind of suicide of the spirit as well as the body, is that meals in the intimacy of a family dining-room or kitchen are unbearable. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

When the topic of food comes up in conversation with family, friends or casual acquaintances, it's fascinating to hear the litany of rationalizations, knee-jerk defense mechanisms, self-limiting belief statements and general confusion or ignorance from otherwise intelligent folks when it comes to eating healthfully. But then again, Conventional Wisdom has often led even the best and brightest minds in nutritional science astray. — Mark Sisson

My mother's side of the family is Methodist, which is how I was raised. It was conservative in that I had strong values - sitting down and eating with the family every day, listening to authority and going to church every week and having perfect attendance at Sunday school. — Jonathan Groff

I don't like giving or receiving gifts because I don't like that initial reaction. Although I do enjoy the love and the family aspect of Christmas, and I love eating with my family and friends and reconnecting with them. — The Miz

I just asked you, Alan, what was your opinion about the trend towards modernisation in the performance of the classics?" Larry's dad said, with his lip curled up all funny.[ ... ]
"I think it's okay. I don't think you should diss actors just 'cause they can't afford proper costumes."
Then Larry laughed, but his family all looked at me like I had sauce all over my face or something. So I wiped my mouth, but it was clean anyhow. But I made sure I was extra careful eating after that, just in case. — J.L. Merrow

That time period is clearly a season of holidays. A holiday season. No matter what faith you belong to or what tradition you follow, everyone is partying. You're shopping, you're cooking, you're getting together with family, you're eating food that's bad for you, you're eating more food that's bad for you, and of course you're eating food that's bad for you. — Jim Gaffigan

It wasn't easy being single and pushing forty in a big family group, and he guessed that's what was eating at her. He knew how it felt. He slept alone and he ate alone. He watched television alone and, when he was reading a book and came across an exceptionally good passage, he had nobody to share it with. — Shannon Stacey

I think I've lost my appetite," she said. "Nah," he laughed. "I didn't do anything scary. I didn't threaten or beg. I offered help. We've had a few rough spots, but we have good rapport. Abby, I really want to be part of this. You're awful special to me. Keep eating and tell me about those fireflies you caught as a kid. Tell me about going to the lake with your family." She — Robyn Carr

Good Viking genes, being vegetarian and having rowdy dogs and kids definitely keep me in shape. Not eating meat gives me the energy I need to keep up with work, family and travel - I'm very active. — Pamela Anderson

A recent wave of research shows that children who eat dinner with their families are less likely to drink, smoke, do drugs, get pregnant, commit suicide, and develop eating disorders. Additional research found that children who enjoy family meals have larger vocabularies, better manners, healthier diets, and higher self-esteem. — Bruce Feiler

Blest be those feasts, with simple plenty crowned, Where all the ruddy family around Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale. — Oliver Goldsmith

I am running on fumes, so it's time to get centered again. I start with eating healthier and cutting out caffeine - at least cutting back on caffeine. I exercise and get outside to play. I reconnect with my spiritual practice, which is daily meditation and prayer. Most importantly, I reconnect with my family and friends. If all else fails, a few deep breaths. — Amber Valletta

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. — Jacques Pepin

I've gotten to the point where I'm not even a little apologetic about this business of not eating stuff that's bad for me. No one else has to live with my fat, work through my energy and mood swings, pay my doctor bills, fight my cravings, for face my family history of diabetes and cancer. If people insist, I can get a little testy. — Dana Carpender

I have mostly been terrified of listening to scary stories around a campfire. We camp a lot as a family, and at night my dad would try and tell us scary stories. This made eating s'mores difficult. The story would start with something like ... 'and the old man who lived in these woods ... ' I would then run back into the camper terrified. — Willow Shields

Despite the chaos, our family had a solid routine. Weekends were spent at the cabin where we enjoyed the quiet. A few times a week, Raven and Lark trained at Big Bob's. My kids and I cawed for mommy during games. Once a week, we dropped by Cooper's new house to add to his chaos.
At least twice a week, we lived at the bowling alley. All the kids loved the game and River was quite talented like his pop. Our youngest Nevaeh even enjoyed bowling before she was born. Every time we were at the alley, the baby would kick the hell out of Raven. My woman responded by eating nachos. While I never understood the plan behind dosing our unborn kid with cheese, who was I to question her tactics? — Bijou Hunter

I've spent a lot of Thanksgivings on the road with my band, so anytime that I can spend Thanksgiving with my family in a traditional aspect, eating sweet potatoes and cranberries and stuffing and all the trappings of Thanksgiving and then get on a treadmill the next day extra long, I'm happy. — Richie Sambora

You can't save the whales by eating whales, but paradoxically, you can help save rare, domesticated foods by eating them. They're kept alive by gardeners who have a taste for them, and farmers who know they'll be able to sell them. The consumer becomes a link in this conservation chain by seeking out the places where heirloom vegetables are sold, taking them home, whacking them up with knives, and learning to incorporate their exceptional tastes into personal and family expectations. — Barbara Kingsolver

Spending more time with friends and family costs nothing. Nor does walking, cooking, meditating, making love, reading or eating dinner at the table instead of in front of the television. Simply resisting the urge to hurry is free. — Carl Honore

There, at the top of the table, alone amongst all these women, stooped over his ample plateful, with his napkin tied around his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, drips of gravy drbibbling gravy from him lips. His eyes were bloodshot and he had a little pigtail tied up with a black ribbon. This was the Marquis' father-in-law ... he had led a ... Read more tumultuous life of debauchery and duelling, of wagers made and women abducted, had squandered his fortune and terrified his whole family ... Emma's eyes kept coming back to this old man with the sagging lips, as though to something wonderfully majestic. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of a queen! — Gustave Flaubert

Between 10 and 20 percent of people with anorexia die from heart attacks, other complications and suicide; the disease has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. Or Kitty could have lost her life in a different way, lost it to the roller coaster of relapse and recovery, inpatient and outpatient, that eats up, on average, five to seven years. Or a lifetime: only half of all anorexics recovery in the end. The other half endure lives of dysfunction and despair. Friends and families give up on them. Doctors dread treating them. They're left to stand in the bakery with the voice ringing in their ears, alone in every way that matters. — Harriet Brown

Eating at home is fine, as I can easily work around the foods that don't agree with me and still eat heartily with the rest of my family. I don't force them to follow my diet. — Andrea McLean

I just want a life of happiness, laughter and possibility,
I want a passion that I call my job, to pay my bills.
I want to spend my time, eating good food & making unremarkable memories with the family I have left.
I want friends that can be honest enough to tell me, if I fuck up, so I can fix it & also beautiful enough to know when I'm lieing in my smile.
I want a lover who isn't afraid to love me with every inch of his heart but also fearless in keeping his individual voice as we grow together.
And I will have all of it, because I believe I am worthy of it. — Nikki Rowe

The rooms of his apartment were full with the dog home again, convalescing. He was satisfied to know, even when she was out of sight, that somewhere in the apartment she was sleeping or eating or sitting watchfully. It was family, he guessed, more or less. Did most people want a house of living things at night, to know that in the dark around them other warm bodies slept?
Such a house could even be the whole world. — Lydia Millet

Connect with supportive people who empower you. The more you jump into your life, the further away from Ed you can get. Don't have a backup plan for living. Live today. [ ... ] Trust in God. Believe in yourself. Get friends and family members to stand behind you. That's the only backup you'll need. — Jenni Schaefer

Ty's knee occasionally brushed against his under the table as they ate, but the conversation died down as the food was passed around. It was an odd, remarkable feeling, to be eating breakfast with Ty and his family and feel not only welcome, but like he might belong there.
Zane — Abigail Roux

Many of the silliest ambiguities in the Internet memes come from newspaper headlines and magazine tag lines precisely because they have been stripped of all punctuation. Two of my favorites are MAN EATING PIRANHA MISTAKENLY SOLD AS PET FISH and RACHAEL RAY FINDS INSPIRATION IN COOKING HER FAMILY AND HER DOG. The first is missing the hyphen that bolts together the pieces of the compound word that was supposed to remind readers of the problem with piranhas, man-eating. The second is missing the commas that delimit the phrases making up the list of inspirations: cooking, her family, and her dog. — Steven Pinker

In the right circumstances, I'm a big fan of eating alone. Often, on a Sunday evening, I go to a yoga class whose charm is largely that it gives me an alibi to avoid cooking family supper for once. I return to have boiled eggs and soldiers in silence with a book. Bliss. — Bee Wilson

I'm eating breakfast with half the royal family, Golden Guard, and a Western noble, at the siege of Soricium," Vhalla wheezed. "And it feels perfectly normal. — Elise Kova

We had no compunction toward our enemies [the ants] and took to increasingly desperate and violent means of dealing with them. If we noticed they'd laid siege to a snack, we might trap them in a circle drawn with water and take away whatever they were eating, then watch them scurry about in confusion before wiping them off the floor with a wet cloth. I took pleasure in seeing them shrivel into black points when burning coals were rolled over them. When they attacked an unwashed pan or cup they'd soon be mercilessly drowned. I suppose initially each of us did these things only when we were alone, but in time, we began to be openly cruel. We came around to Amma's view of them as demons come to swallow our home and became a family that took pleasure in their destruction. We might have changed houses since, but habits are harder to change. — Vivek Shanbhag

I have the best memories as a kid eating ice cream. It was a family tradition that I had with my father. It was nice. — Michael Strahan

Mohandas's marriage, which was arranged when he was thirteen, lasted for the next sixty-two years. Despite his enduring reputation for living a life of simplicity and self-denial, he did not come to this easily and struggled in his youth with uncontrolled appetites, both sexual and gastronomic. In violation of his family's religious code, he experimented with meat eating, hoping it would make him large and strong like the carnivorous English. — Mark Kurlansky

We love to be with our family and friends and I can tell you that lots of eating will be involved. — Julia Barr

Suppose you had said to my hypothetical family of 1800, eating their gristly stew in front of a log fire, that in two centuries their descendants would need to fetch no logs or water, and carry out no sewage, because water, gas, and a magic form of invisible power called electricity would come into their home through pipes and wires. They would jump at the chance to have such a home, but they would warily ask ho they could possibly afford it. Suppose that you then told them that to earn such a home, they need only ensure that father and mother both have to go to work for eight hours in an office, travelling roughly forty minutes each way in a horseless carriage, and that the children need not work at all, but should go to school to be sure of getting such jobs when they start to work at twenty. They would be more than dumbfounded; they would be delirious with excitement. — Matt Ridley

Growing up, dinner was when we would sit down, the whole family, and we would talk about our days and just create memories with one another. Now some of my favorite memories are eating and making food with my son. — Tia Mowry

My father sits at the head of a table before the carcass of an enormous American turkey. What he is ashamed of is the one act of decency I have yet encountered in all the tales of our family's past. A young boy with a dead father and a dead friend bends down before a country dog and feeds it his butter sandwich. And I know that sandwich. Because he has made it for me. Two slices of that dark, unbleached Russian bread, the kind that tastes of badly managed soil and a peasant's indifference to death. On top of it, the creamiest, deadliest of American butter, slathered in thick feta-like hunks. And on top of that cloves of garlic, the garlic that is to give me strength, that is to clear my lungs of asthmatic gunk, and make of me a real garlic-eating strong man. At a table in Leningrad, and a table in deepest Queens, New York, the ridiculous garlic crunches beneath our teeth as we sit across from each other, the garlic obliterating whatever else we have eaten, and making us one. — Gary Shteyngart

Being Latina, I'm super close with my family. I love them, and I love spending time with them. I love being at my grandma's house and eating her food. — Emeraude Toubia

But when she saw her eating with her hands, incapable of giving an answer that was not a miracle of simple-mindedness, the only thing that she lamented was the fact that the idiots in the family lived so long. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The most important form of selfishness involves spending time on your fitness, eating right, pursuing your career, and still spending quality time with your family and friends. — Scott Adams

You're shopping, you're cooking, you're getting together with family, you're eating food that's bad for you, you're eating more food that's bad for you, and of course you're eating food that's bad for you. Holidays are also an opportunity for — Jim Gaffigan

Typically, people who exercise, start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. — Charles Duhigg

I enjoyed coming home to Crown Heights. There was a certain order to life there. You know, Shabbos, spending time with your family, eating and being in 'shul.' Prayers at nighttime, prayers in the morning. Everyone knows everybody; you walk your kids everywhere. — Matisyahu

There are big parts of my life that I don't share. I don't share myself eating dinner with my family. I don't talk about who I'm dating. That's private; that's me. — Ansel Elgort

My parents allowed their two sons to be individuals. My family was a wild and wonderful place, with lots of friends and neighbors visiting and talking loud and eating loud and nobody telling the children to be quiet or putting them down. — John Cassavetes

Eating a huge home cooked Christmas dinner was his personal favorite. Evan would look around after each Christmas Day was done. There were empty dishes, and torn up wrapping paper on the ground. Monty was passed out on the couch stuffed with food. Evan would close his eyes and hear the day. He could feel the memories that were just made. — David Rangel

When I was growing up in Mississippi - it was good Southern food ... but I also grew up with a Greek family; when other kids were eating fried okra, we were eating steamed artichokes. So I think it played a big part in my healthy cooking. — Cat Cora

We need to give children ways to help themselves feel good," she tells me. "Parents can start with simple messages throughout the morning that children can repeat - messages such as: It's so easy to get dressed. I love getting dressed. Breakfast is always a fun time. We're all so glad to see each other. We love eating breakfast together. Breakfast makes my body feel good. "Parents can even go around the table and have each family member share one thing they love about themselves. Or they can put affirmations in a bowl and choose one for the whole family to focus on during the day. This can become a morning ritual for couples, families, roommates, and so on. Each person can even decide on one experience they'd like to have that day and create an affirmation for — Louise L. Hay

Now, now," my father said. "Let's just get the bags."
This was typical. My father, the lone male in our estrogen-heavy household, had always dealt with any kind of emotional situation or conflict by doing something concrete and specific. Discussion of cramps and heavy flow at the breakfast table? He was up and out the door to change oil on one of our cars. Coming home in tears for reasons you just didn't want to discuss? He'd go make you a grilled cheese, which he'd probably end up eating. Family crisis brewing in a public place? Bags. Get the bags. — Sarah Dessen

I thought all I had to do to get you back was kill off your so-called mother and that little girl. No, I also pondered eating you alive. I imagined drinking all your blood and swallowing you whole many times. A thousand times ... no, a million times over the past few days! I couldn't even tell apart my dreams from reality. Why are you so obsessed with your piece of shit family? They abandoned you! Why must you only desire the things I can't give you, huh?! If you have any love left to go around, then don't give it to those worthless people. Give it to me! Give me everything. I want it all, even the last speck of dust lying at the bottom of your heart! Give me everything before I lose my mind! Before I really do drink your blood and eat your flesh! Before I swallow you whole! — Hajin Yoo

At a certain point, an eating disorder ceases to be "about" any one thing. It stops being about your family, or your culture. Very simply, it becomes an addiction not only emotionally but also chemically. And it becomes a crusade. If you are honest with yourself, you stop believing that anyone could "make" you do such a thing - who, your parents? They want you to starve to death? Not likely. Your environment? It couldn't careless. You are also doing it for yourself. It is a shortcut to something many women without an eating disorder have gotten: respect and power. It is a visual temper tantrum. You are making an ineffective statement about this and that, a grotesque, self-defeating mockery of cultural standards of beauty, societal misogyny. It is a blow to your parents, at whom you are pissed.
And it is so very seductive. It is so reassuring, so all-consuming, so entertaining.
At first. — Marya Hornbacher

I love eating at Sonic with my family in Oklahoma. And no, I'm not kidding. — Kristin Chenoweth

Be patient and gentle with yourself as you continue to learn new ways of eating and living. There is no need for hard-and-fast rules or white-knuckle determination. Keep leaning forward into the positive changes you are making, and then apply that same gentleness to your family and community. There is no need to promote your ideals, but rather attract interest by being informed and interesting, healthy and robust-looking, and most of all, kind. After all, if we want to create change in the world, we have to embody the quality and character we'd like to see more of! — Kathy Freston

All of it pointed to a force stronger than the anxious formulas of religion: a radically inclusive love that accompanied people in the most ordinary of actions - eating, drinking, walking - and stayed with them, through fear, even past death. That love meant giving yourself away, embracing outsiders as family, emptying yourself to feed and live for others. The stories illuminated the holiness located in mortal human bodies, and the promise that people could see God by cherishing all those different bodies the way God did. They spoke of a communion so much vaster than any church could contain: one I had sensed all my life could be expressed in the sharing of food, particularly with strangers. — Sara Miles

The next day, eating a turkey sandwich with salt and mayonnaise, Rebecca decided Thanksgiving was the best holiday, although she had little to choose from: her family never celebrated Hanukkah but her father was militant about ignoring Christmas and insisted they spend December 25 eating Chinese takeout and going to the movies. — Anna Quindlen

She was coming over to my place and instead of us hanging with my knucklehead boys - me smoking, her bored out of her skull - we were seeing movies. Driving out to different places to eat. Even caught a play at the Crossroads and I took her picture with some bigwig black playwrights, pictures where she's smiling so much you'd think her wide-ass mouth was going to unhinge. We were a couple again. Visiting each other's family on the weekends. Eating breakfast at diners hours before anybody else was up, rummaging through the New Brunswick library together, the one Carnegie built with his guilt money. A nice rhythm we had going. — Junot Diaz