I love old timey menus—such as the one I shared with you several years back which showed the fare available at the Revere House on May 18, 1851. But no menu from yesteryear is so personally important as the one describing a meal served in the Temple Auditorium Catering Hall at 251 Rochester Avenue, Brooklyn, New York on January 24, 1954.

The reason this meal matters so much to me is because without it, I wouldn’t exist!

The menu below records what was served at a reception and dinner following the wedding of my parents, Barney and Toni Edelman, 62 years ago this month. I discovered this document mixed in with my mother’s letters and photos after she died on December 30. Until then, I had no idea it even existed.

My favorite part of the meal? That the roast turkey wasn’t served with just the usual sides of cranberry sauce plus carrots and peas, but with stuffed derma as well.

Any meal featuring stuffed derma is my kind of meal … whether or not it leads to my eventual birth.

I wish I could have been there. But, of course, I wasn’t to show up for another 14 months.