a love letter to dinner with friends

i had to stop myself from naming this little piece “an ode to the dinner party” because language is important. i think that most people associate parties with planning, with aesthetics. and, there’s nothing wrong with that. i love curating playlists and setting décor and establishing a dress code.

but i want to touch on the importance of just having dinner with friends in your unpolished, un-tidy dining room, living room, or wherever you eat a meal.

i am a firm believer that we shouldn’t have to put on the ritz for our friends. if my friend feels offended by the coffee ring on my kitchen table or the stained rag hanging from my oven, that wouldn’t happen because i don’t have friends like that.

we need room to actually relax, rest, and be ourselves. we must give ourselves and our friends permission to do just that.

we can set unrealistic expectations all of the time. these expectations which are not only born from social media, but from television and magazines.

i love a curated dinner. but, we can’t be doin’ that allll the time. why would we even want to keep up appearances that hard anyway? there is a time and place to impress, sure, but more than likely, your friends like you (!!) and probably don’t feel the need to be impressed by you constantly.

when my spouse and i lived by ourselves, we hosted dinners often, at least once a week. our house was nothing fancy. it had a table and a enough chairs for all for the butts. many times, we would just drop what we were bringing in a group chat, sometimes that meant individual ingredients and other times that meant fully prepped dishes.

in the photo above, we all brought ingredients and put together a ‘layered taco dip’ that was essentially just beans, rice, tomato, lettuce, and we had salsa, tortillas, and corn chips. we also threw together a salad and this delicious and nutritious meal came to fruition from each of us bringing just 2-3 ingredients. i remember how good we felt about how much food we made with little effort on our each of our individual parts, because we all worked together to make it happen. that was impressive.

our home became a casual meeting place to have dinner, make art, and watch movies, and it created an environment that made my friendships stronger. i didn’t feel the need to live up to some unattainable expectation, and they felt that same way.

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however!! i do not want to limit you to the walls of your home. have a meal on a lawn off of a bike trail. have a meal under a gazebo at a local park. have a meal at a campsite. the possibilities are endless.

many of my favorite memories involve sharing food, whether pre-planned or not. we all gotta eat, so EAT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

<3mia