Monday Memories--Chris' Suppers

“You know you’re a Chadwick if lunch is dinner and dinner is supper” is one of the lines in a family scrapbook. And how we could tell if new kids that moved into our school were town kids or country kids was what they called the evening meal. (Yes, you're so right. Nellie Olsen would have correctly snarled, "Coun-try girl" when she met me.)

When you have seven girls in a family, you’re bound to get some specialists. My sister Chris was the cook. We all liked it when she fixed supper because she cooked with flair. She wore an apron, or at least tucked a dishtowel in the waistband of her levis. Chris went beyond cookies and brownies; she made jelly rolls and layered cakes. She fixed individualized salads (which also meant twelve extra plates for the dish washer) instead of a mega-salad in the center of the table. She used the Betty Crocker Cookbook for Boys and Girls and made Raggedy Ann salads from peach halves, or just invented salads like graham crackers with applesauce and whipped cream.

But my favorite thing Chris would cook when it was just us little kids for supper was . . . Leftovers. She would shoo us out of the kitchen, tuck in her dishtowel, and pull everything out of the fridge. She artfully arranged each plate. One plate might have spaghetti, while another one had meat, potatoes and gravy; a third plate might have a hot dog and potato chips, and the fourth a bowl of chicken noodle soup. Sometimes if we were lucky, a bowl of cereal was one of the meals. No matter what was on the plate, each one looked appetizing by the time Chris was done with it. Chris set the table with the different plates of food and covered each plate with another plate or bowl so that we couldn't see what they were.

We had a dinner bell that hung on the edge of the cupboard and that is how everyone was called for meals. But before we could sit at the table on Leftover night, we had to draw a number. The numbers determined which plate we ate and where we sat.

As I recall, Chris wouldn't let us switch plates once we uncovered our dish. We had to eat the plate we drew, even if weiners made us throw up. But it was worth the gamble, it was almost as daring as B-I-N-G-O. I used this same idea with our kids and they liked it as much as I did (Calvin not so much).

I appreciate Chris. She has fed me well through the years . . .