Dad, serving lunch at his parents’ house

Our father loved the kitchen as only a devoted eater could. He made magnificent scrambled eggs, but his best meals, in our humble collective opinions, were served on Sundays. Because Dad was excommunicated from the Catholic Church after marrying our Protestant mother, he attended church only when his children’s baptisms and weddings required it. Instead, he went out early on Sunday mornings to shop at one of the many Jewish delicatessens – now long extinct – then scattered around Kansas City. We had favorites at all of them – the glorious poppyseed roll or corned beef at the New York Deli, or the rye bread with caraway seeds at the deli at 79th and Troost that arrived at our house still warm in its plastic bag. Sunday meals, for us, were never pot roast or chicken, but paper-wrapped packages of sliced corned beef or pastrami, soft mettwurst spread on buttered toast, half-sour Polish dills, tins of sardines or jars of herring, fresh horseradish, chewy egg bagels, and that beautiful warm rye bread.