The Regenerative Table

Zero-Waste Entertaining, the Prinsley Way

As I prepare to gather friends and family to share our newest summer release, I keep thinking about how we gather — and how much stuff we have been taught we need in order to do it beautifully.

I have always tried to create meaning without creating waste. Which, in this era, can feel nearly impossible.

But I try.

For this gathering, I don't want the perfect Napa Valley event. I don't want forty matching napkins ordered overnight, identical centerpieces or a table that looks like no one has actually lived around it.

I want character.

My entertaining has always been inspired by my grandmother: the more the merrier. Grab a seat. Grab a plate. We'll figure it out.

Perfectly imperfect gatherings.

So instead of asking, What do I need to buy? I've been asking:

What do we already have?
What can we grow?
What can we borrow?
What can we share?
What can we make together?

And something magical has started happening.

For our long farm tables, I'm envisioning white butcher paper running their length. Guests can draw, write, doodle, leave notes and make a beautiful mess of it. Maybe afterward I frame a section. Maybe an illustration becomes something Prinsley uses someday.

The table doesn't need to be precious. It needs to become ours.

I texted my chef friends about plates:

"I like the multicolored ones. The table will hopefully be decorated with fun color and flowers, so I don't think everything needs to match or be white. Character."

And character is exactly what we're getting.

Tomatoes will come from my grandmother's garden. Zinnias from a girlfriend's. Wild fennel grows abundantly around us. Glass water dispensers are coming from a family friend. I'm gathering used vases rather than buying dozens of new ones.

Then today, somewhere amid overflowing laundry and regular life, my mom casually asked:

"Your linen napkins or mine?"

"Well…I need forty."

"I don't have forty. But you probably do?"

She laughed.

"Do they have to match?"

NO.

That's the whole point.

I want colorful napkins. Mismatched platters. Zinnias and wild fennel spilling out of collected vases. Food passed around. Wine poured. Drawings accumulating across the table.

I want us to use our resources.

And yes, I recognize that I have particularly wonderful resources.

My friends are chefs and graduates of the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. One of my garden sources founded and cooked at Oakville Grocery. Their mother is one of the most fabulous weavers of people and events I know. My mother and grandmother have entertained people their entire lives.

But maybe that's part of the lesson.

Our greatest resources aren't necessarily things.

They're people.

Tonight, at 9:16 p.m., my mom and I are texting about the guest count. There's another text thread going with my extraordinarily talented culinary friends and their mother. I'm calling Grandma to figure out when we should harvest her garden. We're collecting vases. We're finding platters. We're planning for dozens of farm-fresh eggs to become the homemade pasta we'll serve.

And suddenly I realize:

This is already the gathering.

This is the crescendo. The orchestra warming up.

My crew is harmonizing — giving, planning, lending, growing, making, receiving.

We haven't even poured the first glass of rosé yet.

Gathering as regeneration

There is a word for the kind of life I'm trying to create through Prinsley: regenerative.

We use it when we talk about agriculture. Healthy soils. Biodiversity. Farming in a way that leaves something better behind.

But I think regeneration can extend beyond the vineyard.

It can describe how we live.

Borrow. Source. Share. Reuse. Grow. Give. Receive.

Long before overnight shipping and one-click entertaining, this was simply how communities worked.

It is certainly how my grandmother grew up. Neighbors on Lovers Lane shared what they had. People showed up for one another. Gardens produced more than one family could eat. Tables stretched when another person arrived.

You didn't necessarily purchase your way into a beautiful gathering.

You created one together.

There is something deeply luxurious about returning to that.

Not luxury defined by perfection or abundance for abundance's sake.

Luxury as tomatoes picked from Grandma's garden.

A friend's flowers.

Someone else's platter.

Farm eggs transformed into pasta by talented hands.

A napkin that doesn't match the one beside it.

A table covered in drawings by the people who sat there.

A bottle of wine made to be opened, passed and shared.

The perfectly imperfect table

Will doing it this way be easier?

Absolutely not.

Amazon could probably deliver forty matching napkins to my door tomorrow.

Instead, there are text threads and phone calls and lists and pickups and questions like, Wait — who has the water dispensers?

It's magical.

It's stressful, too.

But somewhere in all of this coordination, people are showing up for me.

And that means something.

Soon we'll gather under the gorgeous Napa Valley sun. There will be friends and family, homemade pasta and garden tomatoes, flowers and mismatched napkins, drawings covering the tables and bottles of our new rosé being passed around.

I don't know exactly what the table will look like.

I don't want to.

I want to see what happens when everyone brings a little something to it.

Because perhaps the most beautiful gatherings aren't created for people.

They're created with them.

And to me, that's gathering well.

That's regeneration.

That's Prinsley.

With love,

Kim