What was your favorite Sunday dinner as a child...and traditions?

[churchsecretary]

Thanks for this very interesting thread!

We usually had macaroni & meatballs on Sundays. My Dad was Italian, and my German mom learned to make that one early on. We all enjoyed it, too! We usually had bread, salad, & by the time I was about 11 or12 I was allowed to make dessert (usually a cake).

My mom was a good cook. I also remember fish on Fridays, oftentimes with macaroni & cheese. She usually would fix a ham with sweet potatoes and green beans when we had company. My Dad was a college professor so we regulary had people over to eat, sometimes other profs, sometimes students. One Christmas a Swedish exchange student came & brought Jansson’s Delight, a potato dish which was quite good! Another time a Korean nun came & taught us how to make braided ribbon fish. As I grew older, I was usually in the kitchen with my Mom. We canned tomatoes & pickles & jams in the summer, froze corn, beans, peppers & flat leaf parsley. She passed away last year & I cried that we weren’t going to be making jam together ever again.

My grandmas also taught me a lot, as did a great aunt. We would spend time with all 3 during the holidays. My great aunt made the best meat loaf, homemade noodles, & cole slaw. Also a lovely strawberry pie, which I still make !!! My Italian grandma taught me the finetuned basics to cooking Italian, and my German grandma was also a good cook & even learned to cook Chinese from a neighbor who owned a Chinese restaurant!

One more thing: we too, got candybars on Sundays…but only if we were good in Mass.

 

[cthulhubryan]

Nothing tops my mother’s roast beef with homemade gravy and whipped potatoes.

On Sundays she usually made some sort of roast (anything but pork roast, which my dad hated) by putting it in before Mass, then setting the oven timer so that it would be done just a couple of minutes after we got back. Occasionally we had lasagna. We lived very close to chuch and always walked to and from the 10:00. After dinner we normally went on some sort of excursion, like to a college campus or park or minor historic site, and then usually had an inexpensive supper out, which was our only meal out most of the time.

Sounds yummy. But the statement “nothing tops it” is somewhat of a challenge that we all may have to decide for ourselves. So, when is dinner?

 

[Barb_McAtee]

Ah, yes, what a wonderful thread! I remember Sundays… I grew up in the late '40’s and '50’s in the midwestern US. We had 10 kids, and there was always a baby so mom and dad split us up and we went to 2 Masses on Sunday. It was a day of REST! No shopping, just a drive to Grandma’s house most Sundays for dinner with aunts & uncles & cousins. This was dad’s side of the family because mom grew up in Montana. The adults spoke in Flemish when they didn’t want us kids to understand and I remember a few words and a Flemish poem about one of my little brothers. We were “meat & potatoes” family, and Grandma always had a HUGE pot of coffee perking on the stove, which gave fragrance to the whole house. Her house always smelled so good!
On the Sundays that it wasn’t “our turn” to go to Grandma’s (when she got too old for the whole crowd), our house was so peaceful on Sundays. Dad cooked a great breakfast after Mass, with eggs, bacon, toast, fried potatoes, milk, juice and coffee. I don’t think I ever remember him breaking a yolk - eggs were always “sunny-side up!” Then, we cleared away breakfast and mom & the older girls got going on the big dinner that was usually ready around 2. Breakfast was about 4 hrs. earlier.
Lunch was usually a pork or beef roast, with potatoes, carrots, onions and celery all around it. The flavor was magnificent! While all that was in the oven, we kids would go outside and, depending on the season, would play ball of some kind - summers, baseball or tennis, in the fall, football or basketball - over on the school playground. We never lived further than a block from our parish - mom and dad’s dream and requirement for a home.
If the weather was bad outside - rainy, only, because if it were snowing, we went sledding - we all sat around, or laid on the living room floor and read the funnies, or books we had started. We were all avid readers and I don’t remember the TV being on except for the news in the evening and on Sunday evenings, the Ed Sullivan show. Jackie Gleason, on Saturday nights, was too racy so that was out!
Ah, Sundays…, and this is the way I raised my grown kids, so they’re doing it now, too! Thanks for this thread!!

 

[NSFrame]

Sounds yummy. But the statement “nothing tops it” is somewhat of a challenge that we all may have to decide for ourselves. So, when is dinner?

Oh, she’ll make it if you ask! With rings of onion on top, cooked rare. Not sure how she makes the potatoes but I’m sure it involves a lot of butter. Next time you’re in Central Mass., drop by and you’ll be a believer too.

 

[jewells17]

We sort of did it different. Mom did a hot meal six nights a week …so on Sunday we did chinese, italian, or deli take out and came home and had fun. They let the four of us eat in front of the tv and we watched all those good shows…Ed Sullivan and all the rest. The other nights of the week it was chicken and dumplings, roast beef with onions, potatoes and carrots, tasty pork chops and gravy. Mom was a great southern cook ! Our favorite was when she made her famous dip. She grated 1/2 of a large onion into a bowl and added one large thing of cream cheese and milk…a dash of garlic and salt and mixed it together. She chilled it and put it out with a big bowl of potato chips…it was so good ! Anyway…this has been a fun thread…thanks for starting it.

 

[Beachcomber]

This thread has made me absolutely starving.

I grew up in the South where we lived with my grandparents. They were Baptists (I am the only Catholic in the family and that happened later). Sunday dinner was the midday meal after church. Then, there would be a Sunday evening church service, after which we’d have a light meal (supper).

One of my favorite Sunday dinners was a roast with mashed potatoes, creamed corn (it was actual corn, not from a can and it was white corn, I remember). There was often a side of greens and also, my grandmother did a jello salad. Anyone remember jello molds? They were big up until the late 60s, I think. My grandmother had lots of different shapes for the molds.

I used to like the sweet jellos, the ones with fruit in them and maybe cool-whip; but not the savory jellos, that had vegetables in them.

For dessert, it was often cake, or a pie. We had fruit trees on our property and that was a treat when the fruit was ripe.