Sunday Dinner at Grandmother's House

Grandmother’s house evokes many memories. Int he kitchen where my grandmother even in her most advanced years was the dominating figure, I can still see her washing the dishes while others took over the dish-wiping function. She almost always would have on hand a supply of her chocolate cookies, with the chocolate icing on top, and would often parcel them out to us children when we happened to be in the kitchen at other than mealtimes.

Aside from these chocolate cookies and the Christmas bakalsar (sp?) I recall only one other kind of cookie she ever made. These were a cookie that was baked over a curved surface (such as a rolling pin) and thus were not flat. I preferred the chocolate cookies. She may have made the garden-variety sugar cookie but I’m uncertain as to that. She made pies, notably apple pie and her pie-crust–making ability was unsurpassed — her crusts were always light and flaky. Cake making was more in my aunt Ruth’s realm and her specialty was sort of a brown sugar of caramel cake with like frosting.

The kitchen was the source of the Sunday dinners which we often had at my grandmother’s house. Typically they would feature some sort of pot roast and invariable mashed potatoes and gravy. On rare occasions the mashed potatoes and gravy would be supplanted with fresh boiled potatoes with fresh peas all in a cream sauce. This would occur when the first small potatoes were available from the early planted potatoes from the garden, if at the same time the first peas were ready for picking.

Sunday dinners were always later than the usual noonday time as a good part of the cooking was done after my grandmother returned from attendance at the morning church service. The service would be at 11:00 o’clock so it would be at least 12:30 before she had returned, changed her clothes and began in the kitchen. Actually I suppose the pot roast had been simmering all during the church service.

The Sunday dinners were always served in the dining room. I only remember eating at the kitchen table a few times and that was not at a Sunday dinner. At quite of few of these Sunday dinners in addition to our family and those in my grandmother’s menage, there would be “uncle” Albert and “aunt” Marie also. “Aunt Marie” was actually a cousin of my grandmother’s and “uncle Albert” was her husband. When there were vacation visitors such as uncle Lawrence and aunt Dagmar or uncle Milton’s family were in town they too would be at the Sunday dinner table.

Preceding and following the dinner there would be visiting in the parlor, with uncle Carl ensconced typically in “his” chair in the northwest corner of the room. It was here he would relate his little story of “pinch me” and “tickle me” while holding one of us on his lap so he could appropriately pinch to tickle us at the conclusion of the story.

One of uncle Albert’s oft-repeated comments would be about uncle Carl’s hands as being “real working hands.” Uncle Carl’s hands, like my mother’s were sturdy, short-fingered and admirably suited to toil. Uncle Carl’s hands were calloused and hard — he never used gloves when he was working. I always used cotton gloves when I was using a pitchfork for example as during threshing.

During the summer months such visiting would likely be on the screened front porch, particularly after the noontime meal. Late in the afternoon there would be almost inevitably an early supper — bread, cheese, perhaps some rice dish, jello, with cooked fruit for dessert. Following the supper there would be the ubiquitous devotions, perhaps a Bible or devotional reading with a prayer being read followed by the Lord’s prayer.