Bite Dinners

I had completely forgotten about bite dinners until driving home from church today Dave mentioned how long it has been since we had one. And he missed them. It is an idea I got from our friends, the Pates. It is how I survived a lot of Sundays with little kids and Dave in bishoprics (meaning he left hours before the rest of us on Sunday and got home hours after us).
So the basic idea is to have a bunch of things that can be eaten in bites. I forget a lot of what we used to eat, but some of the basics were pineapple chunks, mandarin oranges, black olives and cheese cubes. We ate with toothpicks. Everything was in bite-size pieces and the kids liked it because they ate what they liked and skipped what they didn’t. Ham cut in little chunks, baby hot dogs in barbeque sauce, baguettes in little rounds. It changed depending on what we had in the house. Grapes, banana slices, whole wheat crackers. It was long before roasts were in the budget and it was never fancy or expensive—whatever was on sale or in cans in food storage. And it didn’t matter what time Dave finally made it home because it didn’t burn or overcook or dry out. If the kids snitched pieces while they waited, I didn’t care. It didn’t spoil their dinner—it was their dinner. In fact, if I remember right, sometimes Dave didn’t get all the choices, some of the bowls were empty before he ever saw them. I am not quite sure why he remembers bite dinners so fondly—or how I had forgotten all about them.