I’ve never real been much of a cook. My mom was the best cook. There was always dinner on the table every night. Usually around 4:00 pm as dad had chores to do around the farm in the evening.

Dinner was usually some kind of meat, potatoes, and a couple of side dishes. Always hot and tasty, always delicious and always at the table. Dinner usually included some type of desert that had most likely been prepared the previous Saturday. Saturday morning was always baking day. Cakes were made, pies were baked and chocolate chip cookies were always being baked.

Dinner started to change with married life. It was still always hot fresh and delicious but , the older we got, the less strict it became. Dinners started to become later, more of them came out of the microwave than the oven. Fewer and fewer of them took place at the table.

As I’ve gotten older and started cooking myself, there been less variety in the menu, less time spent cooking, fewer deserts, fewer dinners at the table and dinner time became later and later with each passing year.

Weekend dinners were always different. They usually took less time to prepare, had less variety than the weekday dinners and seemed to be a lot less casual.

It seems like evening dinner was the highlight of the day. Everyone seemed to look forward to it. Now days, for me, anyway, it seems to have become a “what do you we need to fix now” kind of chore.