Food, Glorious Food!

In a big family, there is always LOTS of food, and my Mom & Dad were master meal planners. My Dad always did the grocery shopping. I don't think he particularly enjoyed this job, but it was the lesser of two evils, the second option being staying home with the kids. This task was accomplished once a week on Saturday and Dad would usually take one child with him as a "helper".  I always loved going with him because he was a softy (with a sweet tooth to match) and could be talked into all sorts of forbidden goodies.

Breakfast was "on our own" during the week and was always cereal. We had "special breakfast" on Saturday mornings, made by Dad since he was an early riser and wasn't a fan of most cereal. We would help him stir batter for fluffy pancakes or waffles, or wait impatiently until a huge pot of oatmeal or cream of wheat (my favorite) was ready. We'd also make orange juice from a big frozen can of concentrate and three cans of water. Mom never had to worry about left-overs!

The magic of Sunday breakfast is a source of debate among my siblings. Since it was Sunday, Dad would go to Mass early and come home and start cooking bacon. He'd assign whoever was around (usually the kids who were up and dressed early enough to attend church with him) to start making toast, more orange juice and set the table. When all that was done (it takes awhile to cook a pound or two of bacon), Dad called everyone to the table as he made sunny side up eggs. We had a large free-standing skillet that he would bring to the table to serve from. So here's where the story gets fuzzy. As much as I loved these family times, as we all got older it became a war to get everyone up and to the table. My younger brothers and sisters still talk about being tired and hung over from the night before, only to be summoned downstairs to face greasy bacon and runny eggs. It got much worse when Dad discovered the health benefits of poached eggs on soggy toast.

The first year that five of us were enrolled in school (leaving two at home and Mom pregnant with number eight), my parents invested in a huge chest freezer that was kept stocked with meat, TV dinners and of course, our sandwiches for school lunch. After kindergarden, we were each enrolled in Catholic School as soon as there was room in our grade. Because the school was run by the church, no cafeteria was available so we all had to brown bag our lunch every day.

Before the school year started, my Mom and Dad would stock up on about a dozen loaves of bread and sandwich fixings. The kitchen table became the staging area where sandwiches were assembled, one or two loaves at a time. First was the standard PB&J. Each sandwich was made and expertly wrapped in waxed paper or later, waxed sandwich bags (if there were plastic sandwich bags, they must have been expensive, since I don't recall using them). Then the sandwiches were all loaded back into the bread wrapper marked with the contents and sent to their frozen home until needed.

Since mayonaise didn't freeze well, we learned to eat some interesting combinations such as bologna with ketchup and tuna salad made with mustard. It was our job each morning to grab a brown bag, go into the freezer and pack a frozen sandwich from the wealth of selections. There was always one loaf of sandwiches nobody would touch, such as my Mom's creation of cream cheese and olives (Yuk!). We'd add an apple, raisins or banana to the bag and that was lunch. The sandwich would thaw enough to eat by lunchtime. A carton of milk was provided at school, as long as we remembered to bring in our milk money at the start of every month.

At our house, if you knew what day it was, you'd know what the dinner menu was. Dad traveled and was rarely home during the week, so Monday thru Thursday we had casseroles or occasionally TV dinners (depending on how Mom was feeling that day). Friday night was always spaghetti, but never with meat. My Mom made an interesting tomato-Velveeta cheese sauce mixed with cooked spaghetti. Saturday night was always hot dogs and baked beans. Sunday dinner we'd all assemble in the Dining Room and have something that usually involved Mom cooking a roast or pork chops or Dad barbecuing steak. Or we would go out to a nice restaurant. It was a rare event when we strayed from this rotation. 

Some things I never knew about until I grew up and moved to my own home include: butter and margarine are different things (we always used Imperial and called it butter), real spaghetti sauce has meat and no Velveeta cheese in it, and that there are families that actually have salt shakers on the table at every meal. Even when we had eggs or potatoes, there was never any salt added and fresh-ground pepper was the only option for enhancing flavor.