This is the Thanksgiving long weekend in Canada. Not only am I thankful for the delicious meals I am getting now, but also all of the mouthwatering fare I have enjoyed throughout my life. Below is an example of Sunday dinners I got as a child at my Grandparent’s house. They were gastronomic treats featuring many of the fresh homegrown foods that they produced on their farm.
My young eyes couldn’t help but dart around all of the various dishes of food, arranged on the large round oak table that Grandma Schmidt had laid out for us. I was hungry and eager to begin the meal, so I waited impatiently for Uncle Bill to take his place around at the table with the rest of us, so Grandma could give a nod to Grandpa indicating it was time for him to say the prayer.
As he began his monotone presentation, I jeopardized my place in heaven by opening my eyes during the prayer, furtively glancing up from my bowed head, to look at the patterned china plate, piled high with pieces of fried chicken. Its smell had set me salivating, from the time I had slid into my chair at the table.
Once Grandpa got done with the same prayer he said at every meal, the adults at the table began to pick up the steaming plates and bowls of food to circulate them around the perimeter of the table.
“Do you want some mashed potatoes, David?”
“Yes, please.”
Grandma Schmidt ran a tight ship, so we kids had to be quick with our “Please” and “Thank you’s” when we were in her presence.
“What piece of chicken do you want?” asked my mother.
“Could I have a drumstick?” knowing full well that those special parts were always saved for us kids.
“Thank you.” I repeated again, as the crispy brown skinned chicken leg was placed on my plate besides the mound of fluffy white mashed potatoes.”
“Gravy?”
“Yes, please.”
I took my spoon and made a quick concave indentation into my mashed potatoes; a pond to hold the thick white “milk” gravy, with a few flakes of black pepper floating on its surface. I loved milk gravy, and it could always be depended upon whenever Grandma fried up one of the unfortunate members of her chicken flock.
“How about some corn, David?”
“Please.” I loved corn too. Months earlier it would have been served as corn on the cob, but this corn had been cut from the cob, frozen, and now fried in butter and salt. I scooped up as much as I could get with the large spoon and piled it on my plate next to the overflowing milk gravy that coated my mashed potatoes.
Next to come around were the the butter beans, a type of lima bean, which my grandparents always grew on their garden. The broad flat pale green-colored beans swam in a white creamy sauce. I noticed that my plate was quickly running out of useable space.
“How about some “Tommys?” (My uncle’s slang for tomatoes)
In the plate were several layers of large, fresh, juicy red tomatoes, thickly sliced and glistening, showing off their small yellowish oval seeds. They were some of the Burpee Big Boy variety that I helped pick in Grandpa’s field. Grandpa Schmidt made his living growing tomatoes and lettuce in his large commercial greenhouses, but this being later in the summer, the “hothouse” tomatoes were finished, and I worked picking these field tomatoes in the hot August sun as my summer job.
The tomatoes filled the small space remaining on my plate. I glanced around to make sure everyone’s plate was full, then realizing that this was the case, I assumed had permission to finally began forking up the delicious home-grown bounty from my grandparents farm that lay before me.
When I needed to quench my thirst from all the solid food I was shoveling into my mouth, I reached for the tall glass of milk that sat besides my plate. It was unpasteurized milk from Lilly, my Grandpa’s milk cow.
“Ugh,” I thought as I took the first gulp, “warm milk.”
The milk had been poured from Grandma’s blue crockery pitcher into glasses for us kids some time earlier when the table was set, so it was now room temperature, and to make things worse, during that time, a quarter inch of yellowish cream had now risen to the top. I was not a big fan of either warm milk or cream, and so to make it palatable, I took my spoon and stirred up the milk so that the cream disappear from my view, before I drank it.
Thirst quenched, I picked up my fork and continued to enlarge the empty spots on my plate.
At Grandma’s, it was understood that all the food one had put onto their plates had to be eaten. When everyone’s plate was clean, Grandma would acknowledge the fact and exclaimed that clean plates meant “a sunny day tomorrow”.
The photo above was taken long before I was born, but it does show how my grandparent’s house looked.
View my paintings: davidmarchant2.ca
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