Today we had spaghetti for dinner. An easy meal that will consist of three to four cans of spaghetti sauce, three pounds of spaghetti, and five pounds of hamburger. People often ask us what it is like to cook for all of these people. It is hard to answer that question. For me, I learned how to cook cooking for many people. I started learning how to cook when I was about ten or eleven years old and had six brothers and sisters. It’s just the norm for me. Us older girls, who can cook, often amuse ourselves by wondering what is will be like when we get married and have to cook for two. Only two, imagine only having cook and clean for two. Oh, heaven.

Meal time at our house is a much anticipated event. Breakfasts and dinners are our biggest meals. Typical breakfast meals are biscuits and brown gravy, pancakes, waffles, eggs, and oatmeal. Dinners vary; this month our dinners will be potato soup, calzones, shredded beef tacos, enchiladas, meatball sandwiches, steak sandwiches, chicken pot pie, homemade pizzas, pot roast, tacos, hamburgers and hot dogs, spaghetti, beef stew, and chicken.

Three of us girls, I and my fifteen and fourteen year old sisters, each take one meal a day, save Sunday. Our job is to prepare and cook meals, serve them, and, with the help of one of our younger sisters ages twelve, eleven, and ten, clean up afterwards. My mother cooks on Sundays, and she normally cooks or is highly involved in all dinners.