My father was a preacher-man and Sunday was a go-to-meeting day big time. This meant arrival at church just before 9am, attend services until noon, do the meet and greet thing, and be home by 1:30pm for dinner at 2pm.
We almost always had multiple guests at our Sunday dinners which meant a fair amount of food, so prep began early, frequently around 5am. The main course would be something suitable for braising which got covered with aluminum foil and popped in the oven about 8am on low-and-slow and off we went.
The menu went something like this:
- Salad: Generally this would mean a half canned peach (or pear) with a scoop of cottage cheese and a maraschino cherry on top. Possibly with a drizzle of mayonnaise. All of this sitting on a lettuce leaf. Iceberg lettuce of course.
- Pot Roast with roasted potatoes, carrots, and onions that were cooked in the dutch oven along with the roast. The roast and vegetables were served on a large platter with the gravy (enhanced by Mom magic) in a gravy boat on the side.
- Sometimes there would be an intermezzo of sherbet in a demitasse cup.
- Oh, and dinner rolls. Store bought because who had time? I was born an endomorph so a couple of those rolls with real butter was a serious treat for me.
- Fruit crumble, berry pie (sometimes homemade), or ice cream cake from the freezer depending on time constraints.
- Tea or coffee. No wine because we ‘had to set a good example for others’. (After leaving home, I eradicated this concept by becoming a total wine-hound.)
So we would all sit down together at the big table that could take a round dozen chairs or more, Dad would say Grace, and we were off to the races. Almost all of the guests were fascinating folks from all over the planet with experiences to match, so the conversation was always very interesting and there was a lot of laughter as I remember it.
The food was excellent and we all reached the finish line after a very pleasant 90 minutes which was when Mom would jump to her feet and say: ‘oh, the rolls, I forgot the rolls!’.
We had a lot of bread puddings on Monday nights…
Take care everybody!
Steve
