Less Holiday Stress, More Connection Around the Table
Margie Raimondo is a storyteller and chef who focuses on the connections between food, agriculture, heritage, and culture. She founded Urbana Farmstead and The Grain Keeper. She is also an author, educator, and filmmaker dedicated to preserving the stories that connect seeds, the table, and place.
Are you already dreading the holidays? The planning, the cooking, the pressure to make everything perfect can feel overwhelming before the season even begins. We picture a welcoming table and everyone enjoying themselves. Then we spend so much time in the kitchen that we barely get to enjoy the gathering.
This year, give yourself a little breathing room. A simpler menu, a few helping hands, and a recipe with a story can lighten the work and bring more joy to the day.
1. Keep the menu simple
Choose a handful of dishes you love and feel comfortable making. Start with one dish you can prepare the day before and one dish someone else can bring. If something on the menu adds more worry than pleasure, give yourself permission to leave it off.
A simpler menu gives you time to welcome your guests, sit beside someone you’ve missed, and enjoy the food you worked to prepare. Your time belongs at the table, too.
2. Share the work and the joy
Invite friends and family into the kitchen. Someone can wash the greens, another can shape dough, and someone else can set the table. Give each person a small task and enough freedom to do it their way. The napkins may be folded differently. The rolls may come in several sizes. That’s part of the fun.
As a chef and cooking instructor at Urbana Farmstead, I see how easily conversation starts when people have something to do together. I remember a woman in one of my classes who was determined to roll out a flawless sheet of pasta. When the dough tore and folded unevenly, she threw up her hands and laughed. Looking down at the uneven pieces, she thought of her nonna’s pasta. Those pieces had never been identical either, but they tasted like home.
Give someone a place beside you in the holiday kitchen. You might find that the conversation you hoped to have over dinner starts while you’re still making it.
3. Cook something with a story
Choose one dish that means something to you. It could be a family recipe, a seasonal vegetable prepared the way someone taught you, or a familiar pot of beans. Making it together gives you a chance to tell its story and teach someone how to carry it on.
In my family, making pasta on Christmas Eve to serve on Christmas Day is a tradition that goes back generations. As a little girl, I couldn’t wait to be tall enough to work at the counter beside my nonna. I wanted my hands in the dough, doing what she was doing.
Years later, I taught my daughters. Now we’re teaching my grandchildren. And sometimes it gets a little competitive. My grandchildren think they can make better pasta than I can. Well, I’m not ready to concede that one just yet.
But I love that they want to try. They’re learning how the dough should feel under their hands, the same way I learned beside my nonna. Someday, I hope they’ll stand beside their own children at the counter and tell stories about making pasta with me.
If you’re making a dish someone taught you, invite a younger cook to help and tell them who taught you. If someone is new to your table, ask what dish they remember growing up with. You might hear a story you never would have asked for.
Make room to enjoy the holiday gathering
As you plan your holiday meal, choose one thing to simplify, one task to share, and one story to bring to the table. Then give yourself time to sit down and hear the stories others bring.
What we grow around a shared table is more than food, it’s connection, memory, and a story carried forward.
Read more from Margie Raimondo
Margie Raimondo, Agrarian Storyteller, Chef, Author, Educator & Filmmaker
Margie Raimondo is an agrarian storyteller and chef whose work explores food, agriculture, heritage, and culture. She founded Urbana Farmstead and The Grain Keeper and is an author, educator, and filmmaker preserving the stories and traditions that connect seed, table, and place. Her work spans regenerative agriculture, food preservation, Mediterranean foodways, heritage grains, and culinary education.
