Missing My Mother’s Sunday Dinners

I took for granted the hundreds of Sunday dinners my mother made throughout the years. Sunday sauce with ziti was always number one, with pot roast or chicken with lemon and garlic or lasagna as alternatives. It was great waking up to the smells of dinner cooking or, after I was married, looking forward to not cooking and just going there to eat and be served.

Well, those days are long gone. Now I have to think up, shop for and cook the Sunday dinners. It’s a lot of work. Today, I put the pot roast up before doing my food shopping for the week, at 7:30 am. It takes a long time to cook and we eat early. After I get back and put away the groceries, I peeled the carrots and 4 pounds of potatoes and clean the onions that will all be cooked in a couple of hours. The preparation isn’t really so bad. But, trying to time everything so it is still hot when it gets to the table is a little tough. I don’t know how my mother managed to do that. What’s worse is the clean up afterwards. It seems like everything in my closet has to come out in order to make this meal. I don’t have a dishwasher and my husband is always right there, in front of the sink, making sure I don’t have to wash everything myself. But, everyone loves pot roast so it’s worth all the time and effort even though, as my mother used to complain, it takes hours of cooking for 5 minutes of eating.

Everything always tasted better when my mother made it too. Even though I used the same ingredients and follow her instructions to a tee, my meals never quite measures up to hers. Maybe she added a secret ingredient when I wasn’t looking, like a cup of LOVE, that you can’t buy in any store, but makes all the difference.

Have a great Sunday everyone! Bon appetite!