Family Dinner A Celebration of Love, Laughter, and Leftovers

Erma Bombeck Family-The Ties That Bind . . . and Gag! (1987) The noisiest table in heaven For me there will be no heaven unless it is laid out around a round oak table turned oblong by company's-coming leaves and stretched into infinity to accommodate those who have gathered joyfully, eagerly, around Kentucky tables here on earth. At this table I will, of course, find the relatives and family friends who nourished and nurtured me as a child. My Aunt Ariel will be presiding over the world's finest jam cake while Aunt Johnny slips me a handful of red and yellow "tommytoes," still warm from the garden whose earth I can smell on her chapped but tender fingers. Charlie, my favorite uncle, will be crouched to the side, laughing and goading Daddy on to crank, crank, crank that freezer of homemade ice cream. And Ethel will be passing a big bowl of milky creamed corn, scraped from ears my Uncle Clifton has raised, and the perfect match for Jessie's white half-runner beans cooked long and slow to tender perfection. There will be no rank strangers here-not for me or for anyone who cares to join us. As has been the custom throughout Kentucky's history, the table of my home state will always have room for anyone who is hungry and enough food to be divided up and shared until everyone there is fed. How will you find us? Well, I'm afraid we will likely be the noisiest table in heaven. Ronni Lundy Foreword Savory Memories (1998) The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found. Calvin Trillin What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you. Nora Ephron Poor Mother! My name is Nicholas Fain Owen. I was born in Bristol, Tennessee, and currently live in Cherokee Park, Bluff City, Tennessee. When I was a child we lived in a big old eleven-room, two-story house. I was the runt of the litter in our family of twelve children, three of whom are younger than me. There were five boys and seven girls. . . . We always had two tables. . . . We had a big table with a bench on either side and a chair at the head and at the foot of the table. Dad sat at the head and Mother sat at the foot. We older children sat on each side of the benches. The younger ones, the first ones to eat at the first table, had to sit in the middle of the benches. So when we heard "Dinner's ready," or "Supper's ready," all the younger kids would start running so they could sit in the middle. If you didn't make it to the middle you had to wait for the next table. The first ones would eat, the table was cleared and reset for the second table. This was done at every meal in our house. Poor Mother! She cooked breakfast and cleaned up and started dinner. Nick and Marje Owen Table Talk (1995) Every night of my childhood Mom cooked the steaks in her usual fashion, which was to put the meat in the broiler for about a minute, turn it, and announce that dinner was ready. . . . Dad ate with his usual appetite. When he was done he turned to Mom and said, "What a wonderful dinner, darling. Thank you so much." And then he did what he had done every night of my childhood: kissed her hand. Ruth Reichl Tender at the Bone (1998) Enough for her family to eat The family meal was always served onto our plates by my father from serving platters, and when everyone had said grace and we all concluded "Amen," my mother would say, "Oh, John, you haven't left yourself anything but the carcass" (if it was a chicken), or "the head" (if it was a fish), or "the tail" (if it was a steak), or "the gristle" (if it was a roast). She was often right. My mother always feltSunshine, Linda is the author of 'Family Dinner A Celebration of Love, Laughter, and Leftovers', published 2003 under ISBN 9781400045921 and ISBN 1400045924.