My Welsh Blood

Keven has been quite accommodating over the years with my insistence that food be served in serving dishes at meals. Ketchup bottles, salad dressings, butter (and it must be real butter!) have to be in or on appropriate dishes as well. Of course it means that after a meal everything has to be scraped/ funneled/poked/crammed back into whatever jar or container it came out of, but it is worth it to me because the table looks so much nicer, and so of course, the food tastes so much better. I learned this from my mother who learned it from her mother who learned it from her mother, and I am told it’s because of the wee amount of Welsh blood that flows in our veins. I really like the fact that such a tiny bit of my ancestry can have such a major impact in my daily life. It makes me wonder about all the other things I do.

Now when we sit down to a meal it is almost always just Keven, Kris and me, and we are getting used to it. It’s quite nice, really. We have some delightful meals, and eat things like salmon and shrimp and steak much more frequently than we could have while raising our family. Most of our traditions remain: we still use placemats and napkins, the phone isn’t answered, and we enjoy nice conversation and catch up on each others' day. But quite often we actually serve our plates from the stove and counter before we sit down (no serving dishes to wash!), and occasionally some things end up on the table in their original containers. It takes a lot of restraint but I don’t say a word when Keven puts the ketchup bottle or the cottage cheese container on the table. I know that inwardly he is grinning from ear to ear and shouting loudly, “I WIN!”
And that’s OK – he knows the rules when anyone else is around!