Kitten is f.i.n.a.l.l.y asleep after a long tug-of-war with bedtime. I picked her up at her grandmother's after work and she was in the middle of what would become several meltdowns. From what I hear, she didn't have a nap today so I'm not surprised the evening was such a trial. The good news is that her tummy hasn't been upset in four days now. Her throat is still sore, her nose is still runny, and she misses her mother and baby sister terribly. I tried to clean things up a bit after she feel asleep. Housekeeping in the dark - with just a very dim light in the kitchen - is not a treat. Just 24 more hours...
I was showing a friend my 1945 cookbook yesterday and she noticed right away that the menus in the back are different on Sundays than they are on every other day of the week. Sunday is the one day where the menus shift from a Breakfast-Lunch-Dinner pattern to Breakfast-Dinner-Supper. A telling glimpse into the rhythms of yesterday. When Sundays for most Americans meant a morning church service, a dinner at mid-day that was more elaborate than any other meal of the week, and a light supper in the evening. These were the Sundays I knew as a child in the 1970s and '80s. When we got home from church, my mother would hurry off to the kitchen and bustle about as we played indoors. We were still in our church clothes - my mom looking fancier than she had all week - and we'd sit down to the table at 1 or 2:00.
There's something to be said for sharing these kinds of feasts as a family on a regular basis. Not just once or twice during the holidays, but pausing once a week to express your gratitude for the good things on your table and the people 'round it. A chance to teach little ones about table manners and fine dining. A chance for mom (or whomever the cook in the family might be) to show off some new recipes. A chance for the family to regularly use their finest dishes and glassware. Society as a whole pausing for a day of rest is something we've lost in 2009 and not for the better, I think. I don't have a husband or children to treat to an elaborate dinner, but I'd love to bring back some of that ritual to my Sundays...
For now, I'm sticking to the Monday-Saturday dinner menus. And I'll probably do 'em up on Saturday evenings. That gives me plenty of time to prepare them and clean up afterwards. I'm going to need to get my sea legs before I try doing any of these on a weeknight!
7 comments:
wednesdays is my day to do a fancy dinner...
or i'll roast something on saturday or sunday
it is a great chance to try a new recipe or pull out an old favourite that isn't getting a regular workout
The big Sunday mid-day dinner meant not just a light supper in the evening, it also included leftovers from the main dish in the week's menu planning. A ham on Sunday gave the housewife the option of ham and noodles and/or (probably both) split pea or bean soup from the bone later in the week. Roast beef meant hash. Chicken meant some kind of casserole, as did a pork roast.
Sunday dinner is still an institution in Britain, although it is declining. Prepackaged parts are steadily becoming more available and a lot of people now just go out for it. What surprised me, however, was how inflexible the menu for it was. My extended family is southern, so things like fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, or roast beef would have been rotated. Here, it seems that the dinner always features roast meats-beef, lamb, chicken, or pork, with essentially the same side dishes. What is featured, as much as how it is featured, seems to be a big part of the tradition here!
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the "roast dinner" but I do like yorkshire puddings!
I do a larger meal on Sundays, although I do my 'fancier' meals the night before with our saturday 1950's dinners, though only twice a saturday do I have to do it as two saturdays out of the month my vintage friend does it, so that is nice. Shay-I do that! A ham becomes pea soup, casserole, sandwiches for hubby etc. Sunday is also my cake day/dessert day where I bake something large for desserts for the week. That is why my illness has robbed me of this, this past week and I am hoping to get back to it this sunday! I hope the little one feels better.
I didn't grow up going to church, but now we attend every Sunday. Therefore, I don't have the "model" your mom provided to figure out how to be gone all morning to church and then throw together a big Sunday dinner.
How did she do it? If you didn't eat until 1 or 2, were the kids "starving to death" and bothering her while she was cooking? (My son is a bottomless pit with two hollow legs.)
I would really like to establish that tradition again. (And stop going to restaurants EVERY Sunday--$$!)
I would imagine Saturday night was very important in prepping. Are you able to pick your mom's brain on this or recall from your own memory?
If things were ready for a Sunday dinner after church, that would be a great time to invite people over. They're already out and sort of dressed up and in a visiting mood!
Roxanne
I sure am enjoying your blog and thought I would chime in on the Sunday dinner. We always had a big Sunday dinner after church and we kids were generally underfoot and grousing about being hungry. Sunday supper was usually scrambled eggs, or pancakes or the like made by my father. Now that I have my own family, I find that I have had to tweak Sunday a bit to fit us. We still have a large Sunday dinner with as many things made in advance as possible. Salads and jellos are easy to do on Saturday as are rolls or biscuits. Vegetables for cooking can be pared in advance and placed in water overnight in the fridge. If we have a particularly busy Sunday, I have been known to use my crockpot for the main meal as it is ready to go when we get home. If we are going to be home all day, I try to have an appetizer to keep the "I'm so hungry"-ies at bay. China is a must as is the silverplate. We also use our crystal, but not as often as I chose a pattern with too small a water glass.
My daughters (3 teens) help with the dishes after dinner as I don't like to put my china or silverplate in the dishwasher and it cleans up rather quickly. Anyway, there is something homely about the girls in the kitchen- chatting and wiping and putting away- that I love. I suppose some might think it silly, but it gives a kind of connectedness to the past, a comraderie with the women that went before, a sense of womanliness that seems to be missing in much of our lives today.
Oh, yes, how could I forget how useful those Sunday leftovers would be... I'm glad to hear that the tradition is still holdin' on in GB.
Roxanne, we're a post-Vatican II Catholic family, so we weren't gone from the house for more than say 90 minutes on Sunday mornings! Though I wasn't paying much attention, I suspect my mom popped anything that was going to take some time into the oven before we went to church. I can remember being very hungry sometimes waiting for dinner to finally be served. (My tummy was used to having lunch at an earlier hour.) We never had any appetizers per se, but sometimes she'd give us a slice of bread and butter or something to tide us over and get us to pass the time by getting out the china, setting the table, folding napkins, etc. I can remember the most trying thing about Sundays for us as kids was learning to be patient.
Part of the reason she was probably able to leave the house with us - and put dinner on the table - was because they were still quite basic meals. Nothing gourmet, and she probably didn't try many new things out on Sundays, but definitely not your run of the mill weekday dishes. I'll have to ask her next time I talk to her... Great question!
Sundays seem like they were once a really popular day for callers, too. Older relatives, friends... During the '40s, the normal American work week was 6 1/2 days (M-F plus Saturday mornings), so Sunday truly was the only complete day off.
Mrs. N., I love the story about your daughters! Thank you for visiting my blog - and for sharing that sweet story. Yes, I can imagine that Saturday night would come in very handy for prepping a big dinner. A century ago, they would have prepared all of Sunday's meals on Saturday evening, so that very little work would have to be done on the Sabbath.
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