Bring back Sunday dinner

[Elaina]

I know it's a typo but...

shit the tv off,

Man, I bet your TV hated Sundays.lol

 

[Rosie]

We usually ate dinner together every night. My dad also was a truck driver so sometimes it was just my mom, brother and me. Sunday dinners were usually cooked by my daddy as he was a Southern boy and as others have said, we usually had supper after my mom brother and I came home from church, about 1-2ish. Now, my mom lives right down the street so I usually make Sunday dinner at her house or she comes to mine. About twice a month, my brother and his family will come over for Sunday dinner or I may have a guest for dinner, almost always on Sunday. Normally I plan a few courses and a big dessert, start cooking in the late morning/very early afternoon.

 

[Miss_Bella_Hell]

Man, I bet your TV hated Sundays.lol

let me go edit that!! lol

 

[John in Covina]

Family meal time

Dinner on the weekdays was with the family set until my brother got to be a senior in high school. He tended to go out a lot and may not be there. As a family, we did not eat out much as the family budget would not withstand the expense until I was in high school. My brother went to parochial school which cost whereas I got to go to the regular public school. My dad would get home at 6pm and we’d have dinner with in the next half hour.

Sundays we would always try to be together and for the most part could swing it. Often we would have the 1-2pm early dinner an hour or 2 after getting home from church. Sunday was a big meal, something cooked with great skill and love. Occasionally, my mom would have gone to the deli to pick up a variety of cold cuts and smoked fish or lox. Then we’d make sandwiches and have the potato and macaroni salads along with pickled stuff like pickle or those Italian veggies in the jar. Boarshead cold cuts or Karl Ehmers usually and always some killer Genoa salami in the selection.

These days it’s mom and me, and we sit down at the table a lot but do bring dinner in to watch TV sometimes. Sunday get-together with family and/or friends comes up frequently but not every Sunday right after church. I like to make a big pot of Spaghetti or chili for friends. For special “Feast days” we like to do lamb or a standing rib roast. If not then it is BBQing steaks which will do fine. Don’t forget the red wine!

It remains a great joy to have family and friends over to sit down over a great meal and sip the wine. To share with others is the greatest joy I have these days and that is a happy thing!

 

[Tommy Fedora]

Really ?

In all honesty I do not miss the Sunday dinner. I grew up in a big Italian family and look back and cringe at those days. The fighting, yelling, complaining, racist attitudes, etc. Let us say they are a classic dysfunctional Italian family.
I care for my siblings but am not interested in homemade drama. As adults our "traditional" Italian family are as close as co-workers.
The focus of my life is my small but wonderful family: my wife and son. Who by the way my family despises because my wife is Irish.
You gotta love Italians.

Feel bad for you Feraud, my Italian experience is completely different. We always have a good laugh together and cherish the time we can share a meal. Too bad.

 

[RaasAlHayya]

When I was little, my mom, my sister and I had dinner together most nights. When I became a teenager, we all mostly had TV dinners or canned soup whever we decided we were hungry, because my mom was too tire after work to cook very often. I wish I had taken on the responsibility of cooking dinner.

I live in Dallas, Texas now, but I grew up in Atlanta, GA, and sometimes I miss Southern food so much I just want to cry.

--Leslie

 

[olive bleu]

Growing up we ate every meal together, every day of the week. If it wasn't at my own house, it was at my grandmother's.I have wonderful memories around food.

Now, i have a job where i do not get home till 8:30 pm.which is too late for my children to eat. however my husband is currently a stay-at-home dad and eats with them every night.On the weekends, we always eat together and plan a special meal. we frequently have friends over and the kids always eat with us.

my husband grew up with his mom cooking huge meals on Sundays as well and has a lot of fond memories around food.

mealtime is very important to both of us, my husband is a chef, and loves to feed people,when we sit at the table we tend to sit there for hours,eating & drinking wine(or something like that).I hope we can pass that on to our kids

 

[Phaedra]

My grandmother always had big Sunday dinners with all my aunts, uncles and cousins. It was always fun and whenever I think of it, it brings back very fond memories.

 

[Big Man]

From my earliest memory until the time I left for college, we ALWAYS ate Sunday dinner (mid-day meal) at my Grandmother's. Following dinner (in warm weather) we retired to the front porch where the adults sat and talked while my sister and I played in the yard. My Dad often times would go into the "front room" and take a nap on the couch.

After I began working at the "state hospital", my Grandmother would fix a lunch for me and my fellow co-workers (three of us) on the Sundays when I had to work.

This way of life continued until my Grandmother's 99th year, when she came to live with my Dad and Mom. At that point, the "big family dinner" slowly faded away. I still try to get everyone together whenever possible, but it just isn't the same any more.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

This is something I want to reinstate...

although lacking a family (i have one...but not for this kinda stuff)...

I plan to start trying to do this with freinds...

I am moving, so at first it might be a potluck while I recover from the costs of moving, but it's one of the things I really want to start doing, having folks over all the time for things like a sunday dinner...

 

[MinnieRose]

Growing up my mom had supper ready every night at 6:00 unless we had a basketball game or somewhere else to be. We always drank tea - soda was very unusual. I don't recall Sunday lunch being a big deal.

Now, my husband's mother has dinner (lunch) for all of the family nearly every Sunday. When everyone is there, that's 28 people!! She is a great cook! I know she does it to keep connected, but it sure seems like most people just eat and run.

 

[Feraud]

Feel bad for you Feraud, my Italian experience is completely different. We always have a good laugh together and cherish the time we can share a meal. Too bad.

Do not feel bad at all! The family dynamics between how I was raised and my married life are completely different.
I am a much better person being excluded from sibling events.

 

[John in Covina]

I am a much better person being excluded from sibling events.

***********
They don't still make you sit at the kids table... Do they?

 

[Feraud]

***********
They don't still make you sit at the kids table... Do they?

Not at all but when my adult siblings get together it is like a children's table.

 

[Senator Jack]

Ah, the troubles of my fellow guineas. You know, when people ask me if I like opera, I tell them if I want three hours of screaming Italians, I'll visit my parents.

Sunday dinner was actually THE event, of course. Don't you remember a really bad 70s show called The Montefuscos? It lasted about a year. Every episode was about the family extended getting together for Sunday dinner. Someone actually thought 22 minutes of yelling would be entertaining. Well, that's television for you.

Now where was I? Oh yes, my Sidecar...er, I mean Sunday dinner. I'm the last of the New Yorkers in my tribe and I still try to have a Sunday dinner, even by my lonesome. A plate of pasta, sausage, meatballs, wine. Some 1940s picture on the TV. Does it get any more New York? Does it get any better? I guess if I had a few people to play Seven-and-a-half with it could. (for you non-oily Loungers, Seven-and-a-half is a lot like Bacarat and Blackjack, but even nine seems to be too bothersome for the Eye-Ties so we made it Seven-and-a-half)

Do I have anything else to say about this? Mmm....no. Not right now. Ciao...Arriverderci...and,

Kind regards,

Senator Jack

 

[flat-top]

Who knew there were so many paisanos here at the Lounge??!!

 

[Mojito]

My maternal grandmother lived and travelled with us when I was a child, and as my mother worked night duty as a nurse, Nana often handled the cooking. She was extraordinarily adept at it, having grown up as the daughter of a station [ranch to my American friends!] owner in the Blue Mountains. She helped her mother and the servants cook vast meals for her father, grandfather and all the stockmen - given it was hard physical work, they had several large meals a day...roasts, a range of cakes and slices etc. Her cooking was very traditional Anglo - roasts and veggies, Anzac biscuits, tarts, sago, etc.

My mother, however, is a more experimental chef - she picked up many recipes and influences as we travelled the world. So when she took over the cooking for a big family event - often on a Sunday - she might go for something Asian or middle-European. She is also a very ambitious cook - I remember her somehow managing to contort an entire suckling pick to fit into our oven in the NY apartment's small kitchen (and it was perfect).

We still have big family gatherings - if not perhaps every Sunday, then often. My sister has developed a nack for very yummy contemporary cuisine, and my mother can do the traditional dishes Nana did and also her own exotic international recipes.

And there are always platters of potatos, cooked in a variety of ways - perhaps a nod to our Irish heritage!

 

[Aquia33]

Sunday was Dinner time

Growing up in the anthracite center of Pennsylvania in an Irish Catholic family, we ate supper (always boiled potatoes) on Mondays thru Saturdays. But on Sunday it was dinner (with mashed potatoes) at an early (2-3pm) hour, it was also the time when neighbors and family would visit after 5. It was a time for discussion of news, school, and doing neighborly things.

We have tried to follow the same tradition, now transplanted to Virginia, and only recently have somewhat diminished doing it as the family now numbers 20 and grandchildren with dates and differing schedules has had an affect.

I am happy to say though that when there is an opportunity to get us all together, they are very special moments. But there is a rush in seeing my grandchildren do things (cause frustration!) to their parents that their parents did to me, such a delight!

Each person is different, but I can really see the generational inheritances and cultural mannerisms of my childrens children that indeed have passed thru me from my grandparents.

But I digress. Needless to say Sunday was dinner time and a happy time

 

[Lincsong]

Once a month we'd go over to my Grandma's house. The other three weeks grandma and grandpa would come to our house for a couple hours then go over to my uncle's house and vice versa. But it was that one Sunday when we'd all go over to Grandma's house.

My mom's immediate family was small just two boys and her. So when we'd go over to Grandma's there was the nine grandkids (I'm the baby of the nine), Mom, Dad, my Uncle and Aunt and my other Uncle and his girlfriend. Then the older grandkids got married and brought their wives, husbands, or if not married then boyfriends and girlfriends. So you figure 20-25 people in a 1200 square foot house. This being California, from April to October it wasn't a big deal because we'd be dispersed between the living room and the big backyard.

But from November to March when it was cold and/or raining we were all inside that house. Grandma and my Mom and Aunt were in the kitchen, Grandpa, Dad and my Uncles were in the living room. The living room was real small; two Queen Anne chairs, a nine foot sofa and Grandpa's small lounge chair. We could squeeze five on the sofa and two would lie down on the floor and watch television. When the doorbell would ring, whoever was sitting on the chair next to the door would reach over, turn the knob and pull the door open. The girls would be sitting in Grandma's room talking. Some of the boys would sit in Grandpa's room or my Uncle's room and watch television.

Grandma was the "General" and she had everything ranked; all three leaves were installed on the dining room table. Fully opened the table sat 8 but 10 could be squeezed into the dining room. Only the adults could eat in the dining room. The kitchen table sat 4 and the four oldest grandchildren ate there. The youngest ate on television trays in Grandpa's room and I sat on the washing machine in the laundry room. In the winter with all those people in the house all the windows had condensation.lol I think about how we all fit in that 2 1/2 bedroom house now and I just laugh.

 

[Gray Ghost]

We always did Sunday Dinner. Mom would put it on before Church and turn it down to a slow simmer. After Church, Mom would then fry up the chicken. We always had fried chicken, real mashed potatoes, corn, butterbeans, homemade biscuits and lots of gravy. You needed lots of gravy for soppin. We would have any number of desserts. My favorite is pecan pie, pronounced pee can and not puh khan or pee khan. With my father gone and all of my brothers, including myself, out of the house we dont get together like we use to. If we do, then it is usually out to a resturant. My mother is 75 now and she does not do alot of cooking anymore. Ladies from Church usually takes her out for dinner or one of us will or have her over to our houses. I am trying to restart the tradition since I just got married. It is hard due to the fact that I work night shift at the Rocky Mount PD and am usually asleep during the noon day meal. We are just getting ready to go to a shift that I am off every other weekend and that will help alot. I have just gotten myself hungry now and I guess I am going to have to go and find me some biscuits and gravy. See y'all later.

Gray Ghost