The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from mere animal biology to an act of culture. –Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto There is something remarkable that happens when people eat together. While we share our thoughts, feelings, and waffle fries, we connect. We become known to one another in a more intimate and familiar way. The fancy term for this is building social capital. It happens by degrees, running the gamut from a quick lunch in the corporate cafeteria to working shoulder to shoulder in grandmother’s kitchen at Thanksgiving. (The kitchen in every home…