Welcome everyone, come join a Southern Kentucky family during one of their Sunday Dinners. Want to try some new recipes for your family, or simply want to add some authentic Southern recipes to your cookbook? Come as you are or dress to impress, all are welcome at this family’s traditional Sunday Dinner.
Come Join Us
Join us on May 18, 2021 at the Boone’s Family Farm located in New Hope, Kentucky
Between 4-7pm for dinner and drinks & Anytime after 8pm for our famous Texas Hold’em game
At this event you can taste a variety of fabulous homegrown southern authentic cooked meals, pick up a couple new recipes for your family, or partake in a some family friendly card games!
“It feels like we are eating a Thanksgiving or Christmas meal every Sunday night” -Cody
“Ever played a three hour long game of Texas Holdem? Well join in on our Sunday Dinner tradition and you will see some action” -Carrie Ann
Come get a verbal and physical cooking lesson with the Boone Family. Let us teach you how to cook a traditional Sunday Dinner from scratch. Individuals of all ages are welcome to join in, because afterwards we will be eating these award winning entrees. Afterwards, you should be able to cook this exact same meal with or for yourself or your family.
The Dinner Menu:
- Mutton Chops
- Macaroni and Cheese
- Mashed Potatoes
- Corn on the Cob
- Collard Greens
- Homemade Dinner Rolls
The Importance of Sunday Dinner
The importance of Sunday Dinner is to bring everyone together after working and going to school all week to just relax and spend some quality time together. The meals that we have at Sunday Dinner also hold a special significance within our family. Roughly all of the food that we cook for our Sunday Dinners are grown in our garden or raised on our farm. Santino (1994: 9) stated “These ceremonies and rituals indicate the cultural and social concerns of these peoples, that is, successful planting and growing of subsistence foods”. This provides a sense of empowerment for my family knowing that we are able to be self-sufficient in our food-ways.
Lundy (2016: 296), “But people still unite around food because food taps into much deeper values”. This is significant because even though each member of our family has their own occupation, education standing, and family of their own everyone is still active in maintaining our gardens and our livestock. Sunday Dinner is a way to bring everyone together to celebrate all of our hard work and dedication that it took to prepare and cultivate our food supply.
Herman (2019: 350) describes a meal and says that it, “Reveals the work menus perform around the promise of plenty, the cultivation of wonder, and the satisfaction of desire”. This quote also ties in the significance of the food that we provide at our Sunday Dinner because we are celebrating all of the hard work that went into having a successful harvest and crop year by enjoying the satisfaction of the meal itself. Knowing that everyone at the table had something to do with the production of the meal allows for our family to maintain a tighter bond with each other and our food-ways.
Our traditional Sunday Dinners used to just be immediate family, however, over the years our tradition has spread to include close friends, cousins, significant others, and neighbors. Herman (2019: 340) says, “There are no invitations to the turtle party, just a general awareness of the date and place and the understanding that family, neighbors, and friends inclined toward a game dinner are welcome”. Over the past decade our Sunday Dinners have become an event that everyone looks forwards too because they know that every Sunday around 4 o’clock the Boone’s family farm will be cooking enough authentic southern comfort food to feed an army. Our after dinner card games have also become a fan favorite that everyone of all ages can enjoy.
The Importance of the Food
Mutton – Lamb is very important to my families food-way. We have raised all different breeds of sheep to provide our family with protein. Since we have raised our protein source from birth, we have complete certainty that we are consuming quality meat. This blog from KY Barbecue (2009) on Oral Histories claims that, “Mutton is usually basted while cooking over hickory coals and served with a savory Worcestershire sauce-based dip, a thin black potion that also contains vinegar and spices like black pepper and allspice”.
Potatoes & Corn – Potatoes and Corn are both grown in our families garden. This allows for us to have these vegetables at our fingertips when preparing one of our Sunday Dinners. Even though after we have added in an unnumbered amount of butter and salt these two side dishes might not be considered a vegetable anymore.
Collards Greens – Greens are a traditional side dish for any southern family. However, they are significant to my families food-ways because we had a special ingredient to give it a little something extra to set it apart from other families. Our special ingredient is the lamb bones that was not used in the production of the Mutton Chops. By adding this special ingredient it gives our families collard greens a different taste than other recipies.
Sources:
Herman, Bernard L.. 2019. A South You Never Ate. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina Press.
Santino, Jack. 1994. “Introduction – Holidays in America: Ritual, Festival, and Celebration, and Homemade Holidays: Making Symbols, Making Meaning”. All Around the Year, xiii-46. Urbana, IL: U of Illinois Press.
Kentucky BBQ. (2020, April 14). Retrieved May 11, 2021, from https://www.southernfoodways.org/oral-history/southern-bbq-trail/kentucky-bbq/
Lundy, Ronni. 2016. Victuals: An Appalachian Journey with Recipes. New York: Clarkson Potter.
