Meals in residency
Supper, fasting, girl dinner, etc. etc.
One of my favorite things about being in residency at Loretto was being fed by the sisters. Not just because it was a reprieve from some of my chores, such as planning family meals, shopping, preparing food, etc., but also because I have a deep appreciation for the ways the sisters approach mealtime.
Meaning, primarily, eating a lighter meal in the evening and calling it supper, like my Papaw Farquhar did. I learned about this way of eating when I was a yoga teacher studying the accompanying (or encompassing) life science of Ayurveda, which recommends eating your heavier meal midday and giving yourself time to digest. If you must eat again, make it light - soup, fruit, or salad. Something simple, which is what my husband is always trying to encourage me to do, primarily because what he sees in the evenings is me “working hard” in the kitchen.
I can put so much pressure on myself to take care of everyone in the house by cooking a meal every night. But now that the kids are older and back in school and every single kid in our district has access to free breakfast and lunch, I am trying to go lighter in the evenings, knowing my kids had a hot meal midday. Probably not in a relaxed way, which is important in Ayurveda, but we can’t have it all.
Also, with fasting being so popular today and “girl dinner” trending, I think the sisters are onto something. I try to take inspiration from menus like this, from my time at Loretto:
To read more about integrating Ayurveda into your parenting, check out this book by Dr. John Douillard, Perfect Health for Kids: Ten Ayurvedic Health Secrets Every Parent Must Know.
For summer meal ideas of the supper kind, I appreciated this Cup of Jo post written by Jenny Rosenstrach, who publishes one of my favorite Substacks, Dinner a Love Story:
Pimento cheese supper might have been my favorite. What are you cooking these days? Is supper a thing in your family? Kids eating lunch at school?
I can’t wait for the Fall and Winter months so I can try out my grandmother’s butter bean soup recipe again. I finally found dried butter beans instead of the canned beans I had to use at my first attempt. Lately, I’ve been making salads with cherries, onions and a homemade bleu cheese dressing. Sometimes I just want to eat the dressing all by itself. Pimento cheese dinner sounds delicious.
I was just thinking of making a soup from dried beans! I have a few jars in the pantry that I had gotten from Rancho Gordo.