There are many restaurant and fast-food places that claim to offer “Country Cooking”, cooked fast and served fast. But good country cooking is not meant to be served in a rush; it’s meant to be cooked slowly, the textures, colors and scents savored as raw ingredients turn themselves into a great home-cooked meal for your family to share together around good old fashioned wooden kitchen tables. Consider all of the ways your sturdy wood kitchen tables can play a role in your bringing country cooking back into your family. Rolling Dough Yes, wood kitchen tables are for more than just setting place settings and having the meal. The tabletop is a great spot for you to prepare and roll out the dough for breads, cookies, piecrusts, and anything else you may need a large surface area and the use of a rolling pin to create. It is very fulfilling to roll out and manipulate the dough for a piecrust by hand. It might be a bit more time consuming than purchasing a pre-made crust, but the satisfaction garnered from it is worth more than the time you will have spent. It just seems that handmade piecrust tastes better. A good country cook will tell you that it’s because of the love that is added to the dough. Chopping Vegetables & Assembling Ingredients Your wood kitchen and dining tables can be used as giant chopping boards to chop the veggies used in your meals, or to spread out and assemble your ingredients. The large surface space makes it ideal to spread out your ingredients and take stock of everything that’s going to go into your meal. One note in this case is that you may not want to cut the vegetables directly on the surface of your kitchen tables. The knives can do damage to the tabletop surface. Instead, you may want to use a roll-out cutting board on top of the table to protect the surface. Teaching & Sharing As the center of your kitchen, your wood kitchen tables are a great spot to sit and learn recipes from your grandparents or parents. In turn, it is a great way to teach country cooking to your own children. Sitting around wood kitchen tables with your family around you, passing down the secret family recipes, is a very good tradition to start. Start a family recipe book, to ensure that your family recipes do not get lost between the generations. Family Meals Sharing your home cooked country-style meal around your wood kitchen table is a great way to foster family togetherness and start a new family tradition. In homes around the world the sturdy wood kitchen table has been the focal point of the home, the place where families and friends gather to celebrate all aspects of their lives. In your home, you can use your own sturdy reliable wood kitchen table to bring your family together, over a home-cooked country meal, comforting as much as it is familiar.