I read this article on Friday Night Meatballs yesterday, and from sharing the link on facebook, many friends seem to enjoy the idea too. The author writes that they decided to connect with their community of family and friends by hosting an open invitation dinner every Friday night – meatballs and pasta, so nothing fancy, but a nice dinner that would get everyone together and connecting with each other.

This is the quote from their first Facebook post about it:

So here’s what Joe and I have decided to do, in my 33rd year, to make our lives happier: we are instituting a new tradition we call Friday Night Meatballs. Starting next Friday, we’re cooking up a pot of spaghetti and meatballs every Friday night and sitting down at the dining room table as a family—along with anyone else who’d like to join us. Friends, neighbors, relatives, clients, Facebook friends who’d like to hang out in real life, travelers passing through: you are welcome at our table. We’ll just ask folks to let us know by Thursday night so we know how many meatballs to make. You can bring something, but you don’t have to. Kids, vegetarians, gluten-free types, etc. will all be taken care of. The house will be messy. There might be card and/or board games. There might be good Scotch. You might be asked to read picture books. You might make new friends. We’ll just have to find out. This is our little attempt to spend more time with our village. You’re invited.

That sounds good to me. Our friends are a little more spread out around our city, and I can see how it could seem like an effort to drive across town to our house, but once we’re back on our feet after baby two arrives (39 weeks pregnant is probably not the time to start a new endeavour), we’ll give it a go and see what happens. Maybe a monthly catch up. The kids can run around and eat (or not), adults can catch up over a meal and see what we’ve all been up to lately, and we’ll reconnect with people we don’t get to see often enough.