Patty’s Ponderings: Sunday Suppers Around the Table

It’s a snowy Sunday, (Monday by the time I publish this), in our little city and as I quite often do; I find myself at the laundromat with other washer/dryer challenged humans. The advertised free wi-fi is not functioning for the second week in a row and the free cable only has 18 channels, so what’s a person to do? Write? Apparently so.

I have Sunday supper about half started on the stove, but need a few items to complete it. So a quick trip to the grocery store after laundry and I’ll be good to go. Today’s menu is a veggie stew with lentils, beans, potatoes, mushrooms, (to name a few), hot biscuits, and a purchased chocolate pie for dessert.

Sunday suppers were instituted by my best friend Georgie as a way to help us reconnect, with each other as a family, (yes after 32 years we are family) and to a past where Sunday suppers were something special. She has memories of lively family gatherings, with her four siblings and parents, around their dining table on the farm in Sloan, Iowa.

Sunday dinners, (as we called them in our house) were also a gathering time for our family and did involve a bit dressier meal than a weeknight dinner. Meaning some sort of dessert was included; which wasn’t usually a part of a regular ‘school night’ meal.

But in general, in our home, conversation around our dinner table was verboten, because the news was on the TV and my dad wanted to see and hear it! We had the Vietnam War as a guest at our table daily, from the time I was about 9, through the start of high school!

Initiating a conversation at dinnertime in my youth was a good way to precipitate a rage-fueled meltdown from my dad, which would ultimately lead to broken dishes, a lot of tears, possibly some bruises, and finally- silence. Lots of silence.

I prefer Sunday suppers they way we do them now.