Marie Henderson

An Evening of Joy

After a more than a year of Family Dinners, I feel like I have a read on the kids when they show up on any given night. Sometimes you can sense their stress and they don’t have much to say. Other times they bubble over with excitement and share lively stories about that week’s adventures.Continue reading “An Evening of Joy”

Menu Debacles: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

I’m not much of a grocery shopper. Though I’d heard about curbside pickup prior to the pandemic, I fell in love with it during March 2020. Prior to that I honestly thought it was for the elderly or people who couldn’t get around the store or whatever. No. No, friends. IT IS FOR EVERYONE! That’sContinue reading “Menu Debacles: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back”

Side Dishes: My Nemesis

If you ask my immediate family, I think they’d tell you that side dishes haven’t ever been a strong suit of mine. I like making main dishes: roast, pork chops, hamburgers, pizza. That’s honestly what’s great about a casserole. I can make a casserole, open a sack of salad, maybe heat up some rolls orContinue reading “Side Dishes: My Nemesis”

Birthdays: A Family Tradition

One of my favorite things we do with family dinner is celebrate birthdays! The first one we ever celebrated was for Keyan. The girls who come to dinner with our daughter went all out. They came super-early to blow up balloons, hang a birthday sign, and fix an extra dessert (don’t worry; we also hadContinue reading “Birthdays: A Family Tradition”

The one and only

Family dinner serves exactly one dessert. One. We serve it every week. Every. Week. I’ll tell you all about it after I tell you about the one week I served something else. The one and only. The Colorado peaches truck came to town. If you’re not from Kansas, let me fill you in. Every summerContinue reading “The one and only”

Where it started…

Last year, our daughter started college at the town’s local university. She moved into the dorm less than ten minutes from our house and dove into college life. About three weeks in, she texted to share that some of her new friends hadn’t enjoyed a home-cooked meal in over a month (Some of the student-athletesContinue reading “Where it started…”