Sunday Dinner, January 6, 2008

The inaugural edition of Sunday Dinner 2008 is here! And I'm starting the new year off right by actually cooking Sunday Dinner this week. To be more exact, my Sunday Dinner is simmering on the stove right now.

I just made a 5 quart Dutch oven brimful with my homemade Portuguese bean soup and boy, does it ever smell good! I may make some cornbread tomorrow after I get home from church to eat with the soup, but more than likely we'll just have crackers with it.

I also have the custard made and in the fridge to make homemade vanilla ice cream either for Sunday Dinner dessert or to make Monday or Tuesday. I found a recipe for vanilla custard ice cream and did a little tweaking to make it my own, and if I do say so myself, it makes the best vanilla ice cream I've ever had, homemade or store bought, bar none.

So, that's my menu for Sunday Dinner. Care to share yours in the comments?It's been years since I've made Portuguese Bean Soup and I just got a craving for it and got all the ingredients to make it when I did my monthly grocery shopping this morning. I never make it the same way twice but it's always good. I plan on posting recipes for the bean soup and for my homemade red beans and rice as well as my new homemade vanilla ice cream on MY RECIPE BLOG sometime in the next few days. I'll try to get it done tonight, but no promises. This has been a full and busy day. Details in just a bit.

TAMMY, I haven't forgotten that I promised to give you my Red Beans & Rice recipe but it's like my bean soup recipe: I never make it exactly the same way twice. Each time I make it I use what I have on hand, a little more of this, leave that out this time, etc. I rarely measure anything so I'll have to try to nail some measurements down a little more accurately for the bean soup and the red beans and rice. I want to offer a special "THANK YOU!" to my good friend ELEANOR@TAME THE SHREW for coming to my assistance with some coding tips for my blog. She took pity on my OCD and emailed me the directions for changing the header and header wrapper measurements in my template.

See? My new header? It no hang-y over no more, LOL! And now I can use the pale ice blue background that I wanted. I approached probing into the innards of my template with much fear and trembling, but Eleanor knew how apprehensive I was about fiddling with my blog's insides and was very encouraging and precise in her instructions. Whew! With Eleanor's much appreciated help I managed to fix the Header That Hung Over. And I felt so full of myself and so smart that I even dared to venture into the inner workings of CECIL'S BLOG and fix her Hung Over Header, too!

Thanks again, dear ELEANOR! I appreciate so much your kindness and your help. :o)And now the details from my busy day. I know you've just been hanging on the edge of your office chair from all the suspense!

I left the house this morning before 9 am to do my monthly grocery shopping. I hit *Kroger* first, then on to Wal*Mart. Jessica called when I was checking out at Kro*ger (of course! while I was trying to use my debit card and pay up!) and asked if it would be okay if she met me at Wal*mart and then came home with us for the rest of the afternoon. Jason would join us when he got off work for supper. Did you see how she worked in that self-invitation to supper in the midst of the other request? Of course I was blinded by visions of playing with Emmy for the rest of the day and said Yes, LOL! ;-)

Jessica has been sick for the last several days with the same crud everyone else has had, I'm assuming. Anyhow, she was too sick to work on Friday and spent the day in bed. She still wasn't feeling too swooft today and wanted me to help take care of Emmy and give Jessica a bit of a break. As it turned out my sister Cecil came over and spent all afternoon/evening with us and helped take care of Emmy as much or more than I did.

**For "take care of Emmy" you can read "played with Emmy and had a grand ol' time." ;-)

I made the custard for the homemade vanilla ice cream and put it in the fridge to chill and then put a big beef roast in the oven for our supper.

By the way: To Whom It May Concern: (This may be you! Are you concerned?) Kro*ger has beef chuck roasts on sale for $1.97 a pound with your Kro*ger card. Okay, commercial over. I just thought some of you might need to know that bit of information.

I had a bit of time while the roast was in the oven to play with Emmy, then it was time to peel the potatoes to add in with the roast. While the potatoes cooked Jessica and I cleaned off the table and set it for supper. As soon as the potatoes were done I thickened the gravy from the roast with a little cornstarch and water and we sat down to a supper of beef roast, roasted potatoes and gravy. Jason had gotten off work in time to eat supper with us and then have ice cream.

All in all it was a good day of food, fun and fellowship with family, but now Diane is TARD. Besides our supper tonight, as soon as everybody left for home I started cooking my Portuguese Bean Soup for my Sunday Dinner, so I've actually cooked 2 big meals tonight.I don't know why bean soup sounded so good at this particular time. Or soup of any kind, really. As I type this at almost 11:30 pm it's 57ºF and the high for Sunday and Monday both is supposed be hovering around 70ºF. Even for Arkansas that's a little extreme and our weather geeks are predicting storms overnight Monday night into Tuesday, possibly severe. But I wanted bean soup, dadgummit, so I made soup. So there! Nyah nyah nyah! ;-)

The unseasonably warm weather also makes all these snowflakes, ice and snowmen seem kind of lame, but I'm hoping Winter will return from Canada and points Northerly soon and make my Winter header and theme seem all valid and appropriate again.

And with that I will bid you adieu. May God meet all your needs, and may you have enough to share is my prayer for each of you.