What happened to the big family dinners that I remember from my childhood? Maybe I have watched the Godfather movies too many times or too many Sopranos episodes where the families would get together for dinner on Saturday or Sunday and I am projecting that onto our family, but I seem to remember getting together a lot at 90 Eggerts Crossing for meals when I was a kid.

I don’t mean holiday meals those we still do, just at different locations in Mercer County. I’m talking about the Sunday morning breakfasts and the meals in the yard during the summer with Rose and Louis, Fran and Angelica, Clora and Dean, Henry and Tim, Bea and Ray, John and Bea and Terry and Willie and me and sometimes other family members and friends. Those are the meals I am talking about, and the birthday celebrations with a huge carrot cake and funny hats.

It seems when Rose and Lou died, things began to change. Family gatherings were fewer and something seemed to be missing when we did get together. It’s understandable that things change. A few of us moved away and we all have families and lives of our own. Sure, today we visit once in a while or meet at wakes or weddings and on holidays. It just seems we are always in a hurry to get through dinner and get back to our lives.

In the old days the adults used to sit around the table and talk back and forth while the kids would go outside or into the other room to play. Now when we get together we are in a hurry to eat and get going. We meet at diners and restaurants too much these days where we are always having to go, so we can’t sit and talk and the food is not as good as if we cooked it ourselves. With the amount of money we spend for our meals we could have better and more food if we were to cook it ourselves.
I get a glimmer of these family dinners I am discussing at La Vigna meetings, when Fran and Corine’s families and Aunt Bea and Aunt Lorriane descend on the beaches of the Jersey Coast or on the days leading up to and after the picnic in the yard at 90 Eggerts Crossing. These glimmers always just make the loss of these dinners felt much more in my mind.

It was these family dinners that gave me the sense of what the family is and taught me to respect and cherish the family as a whole as a child. I feel that my child and my cousins’ children have been cheated out of a wonderful piece of heritage and learning of family.

I am on the look out for a butcher in the Lawrence/Trenton NJ area. If anyone has one that has reasonable prices and good quality meats please let me know.

I have been working on a project as an editor for the ChefMoz dining guide that is part of the Mozilla Directory project. ChefMoz is a web site for restaurant reviews, from volunteers.

I am starting to use it for planing nights out with my wife to find new places to eat and try. I am also using it to plan where I want to eat on our next vacation to the Keys.

So when you go out and eat, how about taking the time to then write a review for the restaurant. If the restaurant isn’t listed click on the “add restaurant” link on the upper right menu and fill out the form as best you can and then leave a review and the editor for the area will ok it and post it.

So please check out ChefMoz.org and help us out getting more restaurans and more reviews and help spread the word about ChefMoz dining guide.

I am going back to school next month. I am taking some culinary classes at the local community college..I can’t wait…the first class is a knife class which is a good thing since my knife skills are for crap these days. I am hoping to also find out about getting some new knives. The other classes are meat, poultry, and fish. It seems like a fun set of classes to take and the price was right. :)

On Saturday Carolyn and I worked on organizing the kitchen a bit. We also decided to convert the junk closet in the laundry room to the pantry and get all the canned and dry goods out of the kitchen cabinets and moved to the new pantry. I still have to clean out the big pot cabinet and get it reorganized so I can find things in my kitchen when I am cooking.

I have also added a recipe section on the site so you can see my recent cooking projects. You can find it here.

Well Christmas 2007 has come and gone and everyone in the Bilancio household had a great Christmas. I spent most of it in the kitchen working on Christmas dinner but it was fun working with food and my folks.

The big gift this year went to my wife Carolyn. I gave her a romantic getaway vacation to the Florida Keys for both of us. We still have to pick where we are going to stay but I have booked the air fair and car rental. We will be going sometime in May. I know I am looking forward to just sitting by the ocean or pool relaxing for a week with a few day trips to Key West and other sites in the Keys.

The family started showing up promptly at 4:30 and dinner was served around 5:30. All the food was great and we all had a great time enjoying each others company. Things started breaking up around 8:30 - 9:00.

Hope everyone had a great holiday and is looking forward to the new year.