Making the Most of a Situation: This Sunday's Big Midday Meal

We've reached that time of year when it feels warm if the sun is shining and you are directly in its rays. With all of the trees surrounding our property, I wasn't sure if we'd find a spot where the sun was shining full on. for midday-dinner on Sunday. As it turned out, one small patio area had sunshine, so we dragged a few chairs over there to have our big midday meal.

Here was our menu:

Sausage-Pumpkin Pasta
Tomatoes in Vinaigrette
Spiced Apples

This was an easy meal to prepare. Saturday afternoon I cooked the sauce, then Sunday morning, just before leaving for church, I put the sauce into the crockpot, added dry pasta, and turned it on Low. It was totally done by the time we came home. In fact, the pasta was a tad overdone. I'm still working on getting the pasta texture right. 

In the hours before church, I made the tomato salad and the spiced apples. The tomato salad was simply tomato wedges, shredded celery leaves, vinegar, oil, garlic, and salt. The apples were sautéed in a little butter in a skillet with cinnamon added at the end. I used frozen apple chunks from apples that were bruised or damaged from our trees.

While changing clothes after church, I put the spiced apples back on the stove with a little water and warmed them through. The meal was simple but tasty.

The set-up for our meal is designed for ease for the cook. I set out plates, silverware, and everything is self-serve. (The rest of the week I serve up individual plates to everyone.)

I try to make plenty on Sundays, so it was no surprise that there were leftovers. I ate the tomatoes and apples with my lunch on Monday and turned the pasta dish into a main dish soup for dinner Monday evening. To stretch the pasta in sauce into a soup, I added more vegetables, cooked lentils, additional herbs, salt, garlic and some stock. The soup was delicious and ensured there were no more leftovers from Sunday.

For Sunday's evening meal, I made pancakes and sausage. With the house feeling very chilly yesterday in the late afternoon, making pancakes seemed like the perfect food to warm the kitchen. For pancakes, I use a cast iron griddle placed on 2 gas burners on the stove. Not only does the griddle cook well, but it radiates heat out into the room while cooking, and stays warm for 15 minutes afterward, giving us a warm room throughout our little dinner in the kitchen. Our pancake syrup is simply granulated sugar, maple flavoring, molasses, salt, and water, heated in the microwave.

The large Sunday midday meals are working well for us. My family tells me that this is their favorite meal of the week. Both daughters have made a point of being around on Sunday midday now so they can join us. And I love that expectations for the evening meal are minimal. Pancakes this week, maybe PBJs next week. 

The other thing I really love is the change of pace for meals one day of the week. Change is a good thing. It breaks up monotony and helps us see opportunities that we didn't know existed. 

Back in August when the new church service times were announced, I'm not sure we all felt a noon service would work for us. I imagined we'd be half-starved by 1 PM. I thought cooking a meal ahead would be extra work. I thought this would make my Sunday afternoon feel too short. As it turned out, we're hungry but not starving at 1:30 when we get home. Cooking ahead has been so much easier than I had thought. i enjoy spending time on a Saturday afternoon doing a little cooking. And my Sunday afternoons and evenings are now more low-key than they were when we attended an 8 AM service.  This change has definitely worked well for us. And if in a year our church changes service times again, we'll find some way to make the most of that.