At one point in my childhood, Daddy was a survival instructor, teaching downed pilots how to live off the land. This was misbegotten for more reasons I can go into here, but that's the military, what can you say? He'd leave the house before any of us woke on Saturday mornings, and he'd come home "from the mountains" on Thursday afternoons when we were at school.
Neither of my parents had a sweet tooth, but Weds afternoon my mom would make a big, iced layer cake.
Thursday afternoon happened to be CCD classes followed by mass. Since they weren't able to go to mass on Sunday, the men who were so inclined (Dad is devout) would be in the back of the base chapel. After services, those of us whose fathers were survival trainers would go to the back pews and wake up Daddy.
There wasn't enough food in the world to fill up my skinny Daddy. That cake was always gone, and for dinner, because it was cheap and filling, we always had New England Boiled Dinner, with lots of bread, butter (well, really margarine) and a hug salad.
New England Boiled dinner is something I never make, only eat it at Mom's when we're there. But I always think of that year when we only had two days a week with Daddy, and ate that meal every Thursday. Friday we ate normally (this is when Mom said to heck with the church, she wasn't making Dad eat fish when he only got a couple of meals a week, and she never looked back), then they went dancing. The smell of New England boiled dinner, even the thought of it, reminds me of that year.