The first day of school has become something of a cultural milestone. Children pose on front porches with oversized backpacks. Parents snap photos holding chalkboards announcing new grades and future career aspirations. Teachers prepare classrooms.
School buses return to familiar routes. Then, sometime around 8:30 a.m., something remarkable happens — the house gets quiet, and a collective exhale follows — until you begin totaling the back-to-school investment.
Jokes aside, for many working parents, August is not just the beginning of another school year. It is the finish line after a summer spent juggling camps, vacations, childcare schedules, sports, snacks, sunscreen and somehow still making it to work each day.
We celebrate birthdays, graduations, anniversaries and holidays, but we rarely acknowledge this quieter accomplishment: We made it through another summer.
Our August ended with a bang after a two-week “cousin camp” at our farm. Two weeks’ worth of daily activity planning in 15-minute increments, alongside three meals and two snacks a day for six kiddos, while still making sure those meals are healthy, is a lot to think about.
As someone who teaches hospitality, I spend a great deal of time thinking about celebrations. Hospitality is not reserved for life’s biggest milestones. Sometimes it is about recognizing the ordinary moments that deserve a little attention, too. Perhaps surviving summer is one of them.
Instead of rushing back into the rhythm of carpools, practices, meetings and homework, what if we paused — just briefly — to celebrate the beginning of a new season? What if we celebrated not with an extravagant dinner, not with another event to organize — but just lunch.
Invite a friend you’ve been meaning to catch up with. Meet your spouse if your schedules allow. Call your mom. Gather a few coworkers. Spend an hour remembering that adults need community just as much as children need recess.
Hospitality does not always require opening your own front door. Sometimes it means allowing someone else to set the table.
This September, Bistro Verde at Lincoln Land Community College will participate in Chicago Gourmet’s new Dine Around program, an opportunity to encourage guests to celebrate local dining. While the program runs Sept. 1-18 at participating restaurants across Illinois, guests can enjoy our mocktail-pairing lunch through Bistro to Go Sept. 8-10 and Sept. 15-17. Chef Joshua Dineen’s dish takes inspiration from traditional strawberry shortcake and reimagines it as a fresh salad paired with a refreshing slushy.
Certainly, this pairing is delicious, but perhaps the real invitation is permission to celebrate making it through another busy season — permission to linger over lunch, permission to reconnect with someone whose company you’ve missed during the whirlwind of summer.
As hospitality professionals, we often say people may forget what they ate, but they will remember how they felt. So here is my adult back-to-school challenge: Before we power through the fall season, schedule one lunch — not because you have a meeting or errands nearby, but simply because surviving summer is worth celebrating.
While I would normally include the recipe for the delicious mocktail and salad dressing, you will just have to visit us at Bistro Verde to pick it up because sometimes the most meaningful celebrations happen on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.
Chicago Gourmet Dine Around Special at LLCC’s Bistro to Go
Raspberry & Orange Salad Fresh: Raspberries, mandarin oranges, spinach, creamy raspberry dressing, candied pecans and mini shortcakes.
Pineapple Refresher: Pineapple, cucumber, lime, ginger and honey.
Guests can then enter online for a chance to win tickets to the festival. For more info and to register, visit: chicagogourmet.org/page/dinearoundparticipation.
Sheridan Lane is director of culinary programs and operations at Lincoln Land Community College.Â
Lincoln Land Community College offers credit programs in Hospitality and Culinary, and non-credit cooking and food classes through LLCC Community Education.
Cooking or food questions? Email epicuriosity101@llcc.edu.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: The unsung holiday we don’t celebrate enough, but should
Reporting by Sheridan Lane, Special to The State Journal-Register / State Journal-Register
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By Sheridan Lane, Special to The State Journal-Register | USA TODAY Network
