Sunday Supper

Pot roast.

Makes you feel good just reading those words, doesn't it?

Would you believe that when I was a little girl my mother told me only poor people ate pot roast??! She really did, but, well... I also told you that she was an alcoholic and, therefore, one might correctly assume, not always in her right mind.

The first meal Tom's mother cooked for me was the aforementioned. At 17, I was shocked but tried not to show it on my face. Two bites were enough to tell me that Mom was obviously crazed; this was Good Stuff.

I'm loling as I write because, at that first meal on Farm Brook in Detroit, two bites were truly all I got to eat. Dinner at Tom's was quite different from dinner at my house. In the amount of time it generally took my family to politely pass the food around the table while everyone filled their plates, Tom's was entirely done!

It was like eating with Speedy Gonzales and family!?

When I saw his mom start clearing her plate and his sister's too I figured the right thing would be to stop eating so I did.

It was the best two-bite meal I ever had!

At home, there were usually six of us dining and EVERYONE had to tell a story about something interesting or funny they had learned or something that happened to them during the day. If you claimed 'nothing happened' then my dad would insist you chronicle the precise progression of your day starting with "the alarm clock rang at 6:48AM" and ending with "I sat down for dinner at "6:30PM."

Six people each recounting a diverting anecdote, everyone responding to it, questions asked and answered for clarification purposes... dinner was never shorter than an hour in length.

I didn't have a stopwatch so I can't give you a precise number of minutes First Dinner at Tom's took but I think "seven" would probably be a safe guess.

Since that first, albeit brief, introduction to pot roast I have always been a fan.

It's the perfect meal, is it not, on a cold day, a wet day or just simply Sunday?

It's the best of all the Diner Food we serve regularly. Spaghetti falls into that category as does meatloaf, kielbasa and sauerkraut, cheeseburgers, Coney dogs, mac and cheese.

Who doesn't like diner food?? It's hot and satisfying, full of flavor, kind to the pocketbook and universally enjoyed.

It's mmm mmm good, Mom's bias notwithstanding.