Week 4 – 52 Ancestor Challenge – Invite to Dinner

Around my house, dinner is the noon or mid-day meal.  While what you call a particular mealtime isn’t overly important, in this instance it is.

It seems like every Sunday after church, every birthday, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and many times in between, all of our family would gather at Momma’s house for dinner.  Some weeks Momma fried chickens other times it was roast.  There was always mashed potatoes and gravy and sometimes she would fix “Pineapple Salad” which consisted of a lettuce leaf with a slice of pineapple on it and a dollop of miracle whip in the hole of the pineapple ring.  I always told her she was messing up three good things by combining them and fortunately she didn’t make me eat it.  There was always sweet tea to drink, she fixed it in an old crock pitcher that belonged to her grandma.  When Momma died, her oldest grandson said that he wished he could have one more glass of Grandma’s sweet tea.

My older sister, Becky, and I both liked the chicken’s liver and each time Momma fried chicken, she and I would have to share it.  My oldest nephew, Tom, and I would pull the pully-bone or wishbone, as some people call it and every time, he would get the short end. This was always a guaranteed argument because it meant he would get married first and I am eight years older than him.  Most weeks we’d have homemade banana puddin’ for dessert.  Momma never made it pretty, but it was certainly delicious.  To this day my niece will only eat it while it’s still hot because that was how Grandma fixed it.  Other times she would fix chocolate puddin’ and before she beat the meringue into it, she’d always take a bowl out for my daddy because he didn’t like “calf slobbers”.

We were a big and boisterous group, often there were 15 of us and we’d pull the table apart and add the extra leaves and then everyone would squeeze in.  It always seemed like everyone was talking at once yet we knew what was going on in each conversation. Momma didn’t believe that children should be seen and not heard.

After everyone was full and the kitchen was cleaned up, Momma and Daddy would go into the living room and take a nap  in their chairs.  The grandkids would head outside to run and play.   The adults would congregate in the dining room and play board games like Trivial Pursuit or Scrabble.  There was always a lot of laughing and joking and often we would end up in hysterics because Momma and Daddy would be in the next room trying to out snore each other.

Times were so much simpler, kids played outside, the adults sat around and visited and played games, no one was glued to their cell phone or computer.

I would love to be able to go back for just one Sunday afternoon.

Banana Puddin’

• 1 cup sugar
• 6 Tbs Flour
• 2 Cups of Milk
• 2 Egg Yolks – beaten
• Butter
• Vanilla Extract
• Bananas & Vanilla Wafers

• Whisk sugar and flour together
• Stir in milk until smooth
• Stir in beaten egg yolks
• Add butter – about the size of an extra-large egg
• Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened
• Stir in a splash of vanilla extract
• In a large bowl alternate layers of vanilla wafers and sliced bananas (we prefer more cookies than bananas
• Pour hot puddin’ over the cookies and bananas (Momma always poked a large spoon down through them to mix the puddin’ in good, like I said, it’s not a pretty dessert

Double or triple recipe as needed

Add 3 Tbs of Cocoa powder if you prefer Chocolate Puddin’, Momma would make meringue (calf slobbers) out of the egg whites and then beat it into the chocolate puddin’

#52ancestors

Whispers from the Past…..