GATHER ROUND

Every night, without fail, my family ate dinner together.  There were table and chairs in the kitchen, but we always ate dinner in the dining room.  All eight of us  would gather around the table in our more or less designated places.  My mother sat at the end of the table closest to the kitchen.  My father sat at the opposite end with his back to the window.  My youngest brother sat on one side of the table at the end next to my mother.  I sat on the other side at the end next to my father.  I'm pretty sure that this arrangement was so that there was an adult handy to manage the younger children. 

My father was a meat and potatoes kind of man.  He wanted a hearty meal at night followed by dessert.  My mother's cooking was good, but pretty basic.  I didn't know what really good spaghetti was until I was an adult.  My mother's version of spaghetti sauce was thinned out tomato paste put in with hamburger that had been fried in the frying pan.  That was it.  She would occasionally make a dish called Spanish Rice which was  the same as the spaghetti sauce but with a little chili powder added.  She made a pretty good meat loaf. Her pork and beef roasts were always great.

We had dinner as a family every night except Saturday. My mother would cook for those who were at home.  But with teenagers and their various activities,  not everyone was at home on Saturday evenings.  Saturday dinners were scaled back.  It was the one time that mother could get away without meat and potatoes.

A Saturday staple was Tuna Fish gravy over toast or Tuna Casserole. Tuna Fish gravy was made by warming up tuna in a frying pan, seasoning it with a little salt and pepper, adding some butter and flour to thicken up the milk gravy.  I doubt if I could get my family to eat it.  But we all loved it. 

Being raised with the tradition of nightly family dinner, there was no question that I would do the same with my own family.  I didn't know any other way.  Instead of eating family dinner around a rectangular table as I did in my youth, my children gathered around a round table.  But the purpose was the same...to gather the family together at the end of the day.

Update:  My oldest brother, John, remembers the actual recipe for my mother's spaghetti and sauce.  Fry hamburger with chopped onions in a skillet. Add some salt and pepper.  Add a can of tomato soup and 1/2 soup can of water.  Mix with the hamburger and onions.  Then pour over the spaghetti.  He says that he found out what real spaghetti sauce was on his mission in the New York area when he was served spaghetti with sauce that had been cooking all day.