The first African American to serve in the U. S. Congress (1945 to 1971) representing Harlem, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. grew up as a preacher's kid in Harlem's famed Abyssinian Baptist Church. He said that is mother set the family menu based on “the law of diminishing returns. That is, whatever was bought for Sunday was bought with the objective that it should last in some form until Friday or Saturday, and it did.” For Mrs. Powell, a native of Christiansburg, Virginia, “A fifteen-pound leg of mutton on a Sunday ended up on Friday or Saturday as lamb croquettes; during the intervening days it appeared as a ragout, stew, hash, and various and sundry other inventions,” recalls or her son Adam.
