How do you dine?

When you sit down to eat a meal, how do you eat?  Do you eat because it's simply a fuel, a sustenance that must be eaten as quickly as possible in order to get back to your life? Or do you like to sit and enjoy the flavours, let them roll across your tongue and enjoy each burst?  Are you distracted, doing 100 things as once while shoveling food in because it's 'time' to eat? Or do you try to make time to sit down and take a bite at a time, eating until you are full and no more?
 

Did you know that the French can spend hours eating one meal.  To the French a meal is about sharing conversation, enjoying each morsel of food and savouring the time they are spending together.  Dining is an experience, something that is to be enjoyed and shared with the ones you love.  Food is not simply a fuel, it is a way of life.  Food is intertwined into their life. However not in the way that other cultures (Australians included) center around the over consumption of processed and sugar rich foods.  The French rarely have processed food, the food is all about fresh produce and making things from scratch.   

When it is Devil Spawn and I at home, my dinner is usually consumed in front of the tv and computer. I hardly notice what I am eating and no doubt this has contributed to my weight gain.  On daycare days I usually only eat dinner as I just couldn't be bothered to eat lunch when it is just me at home. I have gotten to the point now that I can't sit and do one thing at a time.  The only time that I sit down to watch a movie without being on some form of social media is when my phone is flat or I am at the movies.  It doesn't make for a very enjoyable dining experience. It is nothing more than a 'it's dinner time' experience.
 

However when we go out to dinner as a family it is a whole different experience.  We usually get an entree or bread of some description and we actually talk, you know the real kind of talk that isn't just about crap.  We discuss the food, the atmosphere and how the textures make us feel.  When we order our mains we discuss and contemplate what we want. There is no rash decisions.  It must be painful for other people when they dine with us but we don't care.  We usually can't decide between two meals, so we order both and share. We make our dinner a sharing experience, we talk about the foods.  We take the time to enjoy the food and the flavours that go into making the food what it is.  It truly is a wonderful experience. Something that I really feel like we need to incorporate into our every meal.
 

How do you dine? Are you an eat and dash or do you savour the food?

Linking up with Grace from With Some Grace for Flog Your Blog Friday