Sunday ... bread making, cake baking ... and supper!

I have fond memories of Sunday dinners when I was a kid.  I remember my grandma rising before dawn to get started on preparations for Sunday dinner after church.  Seems like a lot of our family gatherings were on Sundays ... with a huge supper.  I remember my mom and dad putting fabulous meals on the table most every night, but there was always something extra special about Sunday.  Some of my most cherished memories are sitting in fellowship around a dinner table with family and friends.

So when I was browsing the stacks at the library a few months ago, this book caught my eye.  A Return to Sunday Dinner by Russell Cronkhite.   

There are so many wonderful menus and recipes in this book.  Many of the meals I grew up with.  I really need to purchase a copy of this book since I've renewed it twice, then returned it and checked it out again!  It has beautiful photos, which are a must for me in a cookbook.  So anyhow, I was looking through this book again today and got the itch to really make a big Sunday supper.  My previous plans were to lay out by the pool all afternoon.  But today turned out cloudy and cool and it even sprinkled this morning!  Definitely not the typical July weather I previously posted about.  

So I changed my plans and decided to get busy in the kitchen.  First off, I made peach ice-cream and put it in the freezer.  Hubby just picked all the white peaches off our tree and I needed to do something with them.  Then I decided it was a great day for making bread.

My 3-year old insisted on helping.  She's such a busy girl, ALL the time!  But when Mommy starts a project in the kitchen she always wants to help.  I consider it a blessing when she finds something to concentrate on.  In the photo above she's supervising the grinding of the wheat.

Just what do you wear when you're helping Mommy make bread?  Why your very favorite pretty, pretty princess dress of course!  Believe me, I didn't dress her just for this photo, this is how she dresses herself most every day.

And yes, I grind my own wheat.  Why?  Because it's more nutritious.  If you buy whole wheat flour in the store it's already rancid.  The oils in the wheat start to turn rancid within a few hours of grinding.  So I buy the wheat berries and grind it myself.  Whole wheat berries will stay fresh forever practically.  Plus, it just tastes yummy!

Did someone say yummy?  I'm here just in case you happen to drop something in my direction!  This is Tonka, our 9 month old English bulldog.  I'll have to write an entire post about her sometime. 

I do the initial kneading of the dough in the KitchenAid mixer, but I like to do the real kneading by hand.  It's very therapeutic.

 

What do you do while you're waiting for the dough to rise?  Sit in the kitchen window and eat one of those yummy white peaches Daddy picked!

While the bread is rising I look through that lovely cookbook again and ask hubby if he wants Rouladen for dinner.  It's a German beef roll filled with bacon, onions, mustard and a dill pickle spear.  My mother-in-law introduced this dish to me, so it holds fond memories for my husband.  I told hubby if he'll make a trip to the store I'll make this for him for dinner.  He's so great ... or maybe  just hungry.  He went to the store and got everything I needed.

In the meantime, I help my oldest daughter make a chocolate cake. (I'll have to post that photo later)  We decide to make a Texas Sheet Cake.  This is another cake I remember from my childhood.  Someone always brought this to family gatherings.  I discovered that The Pioneer Woman had this same cake recipe on her website so I had my daughter go step by step through it and make the cake herself.  She did a fabulous job and this cake is sooooo yummy!

Finally, the bread is done.  3 loaves later.  One loaf is the tester ... it's eaten immediately.  It's amazing how quickly everyone scurries to the kitchen when the bread comes out of the oven! 

 

After bread making and cake baking it's time to start preparing dinner.  I make the rouladen, complete with mashed potatoes, a killer gravy and sweat and sour cabbage.  Hubby had rave reviews!

So this was our Sunday and our supper.  As good as the food was, for me it was the joy of creating something for my family and sitting down together to partake.  And having my girls with me in the kitchen made it even more special. 

Now, who has room for a dessert or two?