Thinking about Sunday Dinner

I can’t figure out how my mom got so skilled. She cooked us all breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the world, with a few exceptions, and she did it sweetly, willingly, without ever the first question that she was the one to do that. And my mother is not exactly and even-tempered person. What’s more, she didn’t dither about like I do, trying to figure out what to make. She just went to the store, found what looked good, and produced (mostly) delicious, fabulous, English/Southern US-style meals without much forward planning. Her sister did this, too, though I think Auntie Ann’s cooking has more of a gourmet/Southern US influence. Significantly, while I know Grandmama was a more than competent cook, I don’t think cooking per se was ever really her “thing.” She cooked for important and numerous gatherings, as the wife of a minister, and I’m told she was the chief meal-maker (though I think Granddaddy Joe did more cooking than my Daddy ever did). Mom also claims Grandmama always shooed her out of the kitchen, so I don’t get the impression that she ever really taught my mother to cook. And yet, as we sometimes joke, my mom could look at a cupboard with a rotten potato and a dried bean and a fridge with a near-empty gallon container of milk and a rubbery carrot, take a pot missing a handle, and within half an hour produce a bounteous feast for a family of five to eight. The state of the kitchen tells you she worked some kind of magic (she cooks with wild abandon), but how she does it has always been an incredible mystery to me.
I can’t do it. I have to plan meticulously my family’s meals, and even when I do, by meal preparation time, I’m so exhausted that I’m often afraid if I try to cook, I’ll burn the food, spin into a tirade, and dissolve into dysfunction for the next 24 hours. These days, I handle about half the evening-time meals and my spouse uses the leftovers to produce creative concoctions for the rest.
And yet I enjoy cooking above almost all other things. If the timing is right, the kitchen clean, the pots shining and have their handles intact, and the fridge and pantry stocked with the full contingent of fresh ingredients for a meal that meets my high standards, I’m at peace and supremely happy when I cook. It feels nearly as natural as writing does to me. I look a little ahead, envision the next few sentences of my composition, and proceed through the working of my craft until I have produced a meal of nearly gourmet quality and high nutritional content.
I’ve recently realized that, perhaps I’ll never be the cook that my mom has been, but that, perhaps, I am the ideal Sunday dinner chef. She always cooked a scrumptious Sunday dinner after church (my mother watered and my stomach growled while we listened to music, I set the table with the fine china and silver, and my brothers and father waited eagerly for the call to the meal). Heretofore, the idea has seemed so daunting to me, and soup and sandwiches has been our Sunday dinner fare (we don’t dare brave the restaurants – both the Baptists and the Methodists get out before we hardy Episcopalians do). And anyway, for many years, it was just Robyn and me at the table, and we were often under the wing of another family – Jeanne’s or Darlene’s – with whom we attended church and, often as not, went home to dinner. The turbulence of my life since arriving in Knoxville has also discouraged me from cooking ambitious Sunday feasts.
But I think, at this point, the habit of cooking Sunday dinner might be a very therapeutic one for me to cultivate, and one that would be most beneficial to my little household. I won’t be able to wave my magic wand, as my mother can do, over a raw potato and a green tomato, though. So yesterday, I planned for an after-church meal of seeded roast pork, collard greens, and biscuits (my style tends towards the gourmet, but when I cook South, I don’t hold back). It’s not ambitious, but it’s a Sunday-quality meal. We finally got my fine china out of the attic when we moved (though we still don’t have an adequate china cabinet), but I don’t have my Robyn here to set the table while she complains bitterly of her grumbling tummy, so I’ll deck the table out with the Noritake before we leave for church. My hope is that by 2 o’clock we’ll be sitting down to The Return of Sunday Dinner.
Any suggestions for next Sunday are welcome!