The first few months on my own, supper was whatever I could think of at 5:30, which was usually hot dogs. Then one Sunday night I sat down at the table with a pad of paper and wrote down every supper I could make that the girls would eat. I got to fourteen. That's the rotation. Three weeks, fourteen suppers, and the fifteenth night is pizza, which I didn't cook, so it doesn't count.

None of this is fancy. Every one of these takes about half an hour of actual work, or goes in the Crock-Pot before work. I've written them the way I make them, not the way a cookbook would. A "package of hamburg" means the regular package from the store. (For you folks outside New England, hamburg is ground beef. That's what we call it here and I'm not changing now.)

1. American Chop Suey. It isn't Chinese and it isn't chop suey and every kid in New England grew up on it. Boil a box of elbow macaroni and drain it. In a big pan, brown a package of hamburg with a chopped onion (and a chopped green pepper if you've got one) and pour off the fat. Add a big can of crushed tomatoes and a small can of tomato sauce, salt, pepper and a shake of garlic powder, and let it bubble for fifteen minutes. Stir in the macaroni. Parmesan from the green can on top. Better the next day for lunch.

2. Tacos. I use the kit in the box and I'm not ashamed. Brown the hamburg, drain it, add the seasoning packet and the water it says on the box, simmer. Warm the shells in the oven. Put out shredded lettuce, cheese and chopped tomato and let everybody build their own. Katie eats the shell with cheese on it and nothing else. I've made my peace with that.

3. Crock-Pot Beef Stew. Goes in at six in the morning before the bus. A package of stew beef, four or five potatoes cut in chunks, a few carrots cut up, an onion in quarters. Sprinkle a packet of stew seasoning over it and pour in a can of beef broth and a can of water. Lid on, low, and go to work. When you walk in at four the house smells like somebody's been home all day. Best feeling there is.

4. Spaghetti and Meatballs. Meatballs: a package of hamburg, an egg, a half cup of bread crumbs, a handful of Parmesan, salt, pepper, garlic powder. Squish it all together with your hands (the girls fight over this job), roll them about the size of a walnut, and bake them on a cookie sheet at 400 for about twenty minutes instead of frying, which is less mess. Drop them in a jar of sauce and simmer while the spaghetti cooks. I make a double batch and freeze half for week 3, in case week 3 goes bad.

5. Fish Sticks and Tater Tots. Out of the freezer, onto the same cookie sheet, into the oven at whatever the bag says. Mémère still doesn't eat meat on Fridays, and the girls like that we do it her way. Ketchup for the tots, tartar sauce for me, ketchup on the fish for Katie, which I don't want to talk about.

6. Pea Soup (soupe aux pois). My pépère's soup. I make it Sunday afternoon and we eat it Monday, because it's better the second day anyhow. Rinse a bag of yellow split peas. Put them in the big pot with a ham bone or a hunk of salt pork, a chopped onion, a couple of carrots cut small, and plenty of water, enough to cover by a few inches. Bring it up, then turn it down and let it go slow for two or three hours, stirring now and then so it doesn't stick, until the peas fall apart. Fish out the bone, pick off any ham and put it back in. Salt, pepper, a pinch of summer savory. With bread and butter. If it gets too thick, add water. It always gets too thick.

7. Hamburg Gravy on Mashed Potatoes. Cheap, fast, and the girls love it. Peel and boil potatoes and mash them with butter and milk. Brown a package of hamburg with a chopped onion and drain it. Sprinkle a couple of spoonfuls of flour over the meat and stir for a minute. Pour in a packet of brown gravy mix made up with water (or a can of beef broth) and stir till it thickens. Spoon it over the potatoes. Peas on the side, which Marissa eats and Katie hides.

8. Chicken and Rice. I got this off a soup can and it's never let me down. In a baking dish, stir together a cup of uncooked white rice, a can of cream of mushroom soup, a can of cream of chicken soup and a can and a half of water. Lay chicken pieces on top. Sprinkle a packet of dry onion soup mix over everything. Cover tight with foil and bake at 350 for about an hour and a half, till the chicken's done and the rice is soft. Don't peek. I always peek.

9. Sloppy Joes. Brown a package of hamburg with a chopped onion, drain it, and stir in about a cup of ketchup, a squirt of mustard, a spoonful of brown sugar and a few shakes of Worcestershire sauce. Simmer ten minutes. Scoop onto hamburger rolls. Potato chips and carrot sticks on the side, and lots of napkins. This is the one supper where nobody gets yelled at for making a mess.

10. Breakfast for Supper. Katie's favorite night of the whole three weeks. Pancakes from the mix, sausage links, scrambled eggs, and orange juice in the good glasses. Katie puts chocolate chips in her pancakes in the shape of a face. Marissa does hers in the shape of the letter M. I do mine in the shape of a pancake.

11. Meat Loaf and Baked Potatoes. A package of hamburg, an egg, a sleeve of saltines crushed up in a bag (the girls do the crushing with a rolling pin, enthusiastically), a chopped onion, a squirt of ketchup, salt and pepper. Mix with your hands, pack it into a loaf pan, spread ketchup on top. Bake at 350 for about an hour. Scrub some potatoes, poke them with a fork, and put them right in the oven next to it. Everything's done at once. Leftovers make a sandwich the next day that I'd put up against anything.

12. Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup. Canned tomato soup, made with milk instead of water. Grilled cheese with American cheese on white bread, buttered on the outside. Here's the secret, and it took me a long time and a lot of smoke to learn it: medium-low heat, and be patient. Low and slow, it comes out golden. High and fast, it comes out like my toast.

13. Pâté Chinois. This is what Mémère calls it, and what every Franco family I know calls it. Everybody else calls it shepherd's pie, more or less. Brown a package of hamburg with a chopped onion, salt and pepper, and spread it in the bottom of a baking dish. Pour a can of creamed corn over that (Mémère does one can of creamed and one can of regular). Make a pot of mashed potatoes and spread them over the top, all the way to the edges. Dot with butter, a shake of paprika. Bake at 375 for about half an hour, until the top's a little golden. Ketchup on the side, of course.

14. Beans and Franks. Saturday night supper in New Hampshire, but in our house it's Thursday. Heat a couple of cans of baked beans with a spoonful of brown sugar and some chopped onion. Boil or grill the hot dogs and put them in toasted split-top rolls. If you can find the brown bread that comes in a can, slice it and butter it. Coleslaw from the deli. The girls think this is the best supper in the world, which tells you something about my cooking, I guess.

And on the fifteenth night, the pizza place on the corner. Large cheese, half pepperoni. They know my voice.

My mémère, Catherine Racine, is 85 years old and lives in a senior apartment on the West Side. Every Christmas Eve, after midnight Mass, our family has the réveillon at my mother's house, and Mémère brings six of these, and there are never any left. When I got custody, she came over on a Sunday afternoon, tied on an apron, and taught me to make one. Now we have one about once a month for Sunday dinner, and Mémère comes over and tells me what I did wrong. The girls call it "Mémère pie."

What you need:
Pie crust for a two-crust pie. (Mémère makes hers with lard. I buy the kind in the box at the store. She pretends not to notice.)
A package of ground pork
Half a package of hamburg
1 onion, chopped fine
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1/2 cup of water
1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon summer savory
1 potato, peeled, boiled and mashed

What you do: Put the pork, the hamburg, the onion, the garlic, the water and all the spices in a big pan over medium-low heat. Break the meat up with a fork and keep stirring now and then. Let it cook slow, about half an hour, till the meat's cooked through and most of the water's gone. Spoon off the fat. Stir in the mashed potato; that's Mémère's secret, it holds it all together. Let it cool a while. Heat the oven to 400. Put the bottom crust in a pie plate, fill it with the meat, put the top crust on, crimp the edges, and cut a few slits in the top. Bake about 35 or 40 minutes, till the crust is golden brown. Let it sit ten minutes before you cut it.

We eat it with ketchup. Mémère eats it with her green tomato relish and looks at the ketchup like it insulted her.

Merci, Mémère.