bringing dinner back

“This is a simple feast people.” — Sawyer to his classmates who were busting the budget with requests of raspberries and cheese on the menu

At .99 cents a head, the green leaf lettuce was the obvious choice.

I remember when my kids were in preschool and first grade at their new school, White Rock Montessori. They had an elaborate Thanksgiving feast catered in by moms who — with every good, nutritious intention — delivered the best homemade or Whole Foods-purchased organic, free-range, fair-trade, plucked-from-life-while-smiling dishes they could find. The kids set the table with fresh flowers as Montessori kids tend to do. It was adorable.

Down the road a Thanksgiving or two, it all changed. The teachers and head of school had a new idea — the Simple Feast. It started as a group soup. Each class brought elements of the soup and the kids cooked and ate together, giant family style, with tables running through the classrooms. Each year, the Simple Feast changes a bit. But the idea is to remind kids how people “feast” in many parts of the world.

Just the phrase to me is beautiful, two words that seemingly don’t go together at all yet absolutely can — and, perhaps, more often should.

This year, Sawyer was on the planning and buying committee for the meal. His class has 23 students and two teachers. The teachers gave them $6.25 for the entire meal, .25 per person (which I’m guessing is a number they got from some developing country’s daily meal average). Assuming that in a rural area they would’ve grown the barley to make their barley bread, the $5 they spent on barley flour at Whole Foods didn’t have to be included.

The shopping list with comparison prices from three stores. The barley was the only thing they could afford at Whole Foods.

After a pre-shopping outing on Friday to check prices, I took Sawyer and his two other meal planners to buy the goods yesterday: lemons, carrots, butter, lettuce, and vegetable oil. They’d wanted sea salt and flax seed, but ruled it out for budgetary reasons on Friday. In the early planning stages of the meal, they’d also ruled out pomegranate, cheese, raspberries, and turkey (although my crew did look longingly at the end-aisle display of the tightly wrapped birds). Having to buy the lettuce was a bummer. The kids were hoping to get it from their class garden, but the lettuce didn’t make it.

I expect the boys to be hungry when I pick them up from school today. Sawyer will have had barley bread and the salad with carrots and green leaf lettuce. Noah is eating with the preschoolers so maybe he’s getting the soup.

I don’t think they love the Simple Feast in practice as much as I love it in theory. Another change came when the school uninvited parents to the Thanksgiving celebration. All that baking and suffering would no doubt cause a frenzy of digital camera flashes from those of us with organic cheese, apple slices, and SIGG water bottles waiting in the car for our precious little ones.

I poke fun — at myself along with my fellow parents — not to be mean spirited. We have every good intention and reason to pack our children’s lunch boxes with our Whole Foods haul. But I absolutely love that once a year, our children get a feel for how most kids in this world live (and appreciate that Sawyer now gets how much his food costs!). I could easily spend $6.25 on Sawyer’s lunch. Boggles my mind to consider he’s trying to feed 25 people with that same amount.

The children in Congo Gorethy will feast with.

The lesson is brought home by a friend of our family, Gorethy Nabusoshi, who is headed back to her home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, in a week. I’m trying to help her gather money for Christmas presents for the orphans and brutalized women she works with there through her organization, Congo Restoration. These gifts will include shoes, clothes, and, hopefully, chicken for dinner.

“This is the only time of their life they are expecting a gift,” Gorethy says of Christmas. “It is the only time parents feel an obligation of feeding them a special meal, maybe giving them a special meat like chicken.”

A simple feast.

We will spend the next several days enjoying not-so-simple feasts. And don’t think I don’t find the irony in the fact that I’m paying $18,000 this year for my boys to do things like have a Simple Feast at their perfect little private school. And that’s OK, too. While I find it difficult sometimes to enjoy the lavish life most Americans live compared to the rest of the world, the guilt does nothing. We’ll send along some money with Gorethy to help her create a simple feast in Congo. We’ll overindulge with our families many times over the next month. Maybe Sawyer will remember having barley bread and a salad with no goat cheese in his perfect little private school classroom.

Hopefully, he will head into the holidays with an innate sense of what I wish all of us had: An appreciation of what he has. The understanding that everyone doesn’t have a giant turkey — or even a sustainable meal — on their table. And an inclination to do what he can to change that in the world.

It’s that simple.