Day 2 - Sunday's Best Dinner

I started in the kitchen as soon as we walked in the door from church.  Oh, how that sofa looked so comfy; it was like it was calling my name.  But I had to pass it up and head to the kitchen and start on dinner, yes at 1:00 in the afternoon.  Why so early you ask?  Well when you are trying to prepare 3 different recipes all in one evening you have to start early.  Times like this is when I wish I had a double oven. 

The dessert that I..well you would say attempted yesterday was suppose to be for dessert after our Sunday dinner.  Of course that wasn't happening cause last night I just threw the flat looking cake in the trash.  Made it to the store before church and bought more butter and cinnamon for the cake.  I was going to attempt to make the coffee cake from Day 1's blog...with the RIGHT ingredients this time.  Let's just say that you can judge what the outcome was by the pictures below :)

                               

Now that's what the cake is suppose to look like.  And it tasted so much better.  Both kids enjoyed it so much that they asked for this cake for their birthday.  Awww.....what sweet kiddos I have.

The dessert was made so then I started on the bread part of our Sunday dinner.  Buttered Rosemary Rolls. Just the name of that sounds wonderful.  The actual rolls are not homemade though.  Just go to the frozen dept. of your local store and get frozen, unrisen rolls.  The actual recipe tells you to melt butter in the iron skillet then let it cool and then place the unrisen rolls in it.  I guess I don't follow directions well, cause I didn't do that part.  But I sprayed the pan with Olive Oil non stick spray.  Placed the rolls in the pan.

Cover with a kitchen towel and place in a warm area to let rise for 2-3 hours.  If you live in Texas; in your home you have to keep it cool.  So another alternative to get them to rise is:  place your oven on warm for a few minutes.  Spray the kitchen towel with water (very lightly don't soak the towel) and place over the pan.  Turn your oven off and then place the rolls in the oven.  They will rise beautifully.

Wow....they are coming out of the pan; it's ok don't be alarm by this.  Once they are done rising preheat your oven and then melt 2 tbsp. of butter.  Don't melt the butter in your oven...I know that's probably what that last sentence was telling you. :)  Use the microwave it will work that way better.  Brush the butter onto the rolls.  Sprinkle with "fresh" rosemary and some kosher salt.  Bake according to what the roll package says.  Usually about 10-15 minutes.  Oh how beautiful and yummy they look when they are done.

As they sit there they will not be so high out of the pan.  Then dig right on in.

Rolls are now done.....time to prepare the Twice baked new potatoes.  These are very time consuming but the end result are so worth it.  Hope you think so as well.
Just like I have said in the previous blog it's always best to get all your ingredients out and ready to go; make the preparation time go so much smoothly.

I know it sounds crazy but I did not plan on having those potatoes lined up so perfectly like that.  If you know me well enough you would say that I probably even grabbed a ruler to measure each one to make sure that they were perfect for the picture. :)
Put the scrubbed potatoes in a bowl and coat them with olive oil and place them on a cookie sheet. And bake until done.  After they are completely cooked and kinda crispy on the outside time to remove them and cut each one in half.  Remove the inside of the potato half.  But make sure to leave a small layer on the inside of the potato.  We...I say we cause I recruited my husbands help on this, how nice of me huh?  We used a cookie scoop; it worked very well.

Place all your mixing ingredients into the bowl with the insides from the potato.  Mash it all together very well.  Then I used the cookie scoop again and filled the potatoes with the filling.

                              

I actually took 1/2 of these filled potatoes and placed them on another cookie sheet and covered it with foil and placed them in the fridge.  Those will be popped into the oven and baked just in time for Home Group Bible Study tomorrow evening. 

After filling them all bake them and they will then have a nice crispy topping to them when they are done.  With all the baking going on I did not take a picture of the outcome.  Go ahead make them and you will see :)  My only added thoughts to this recipe would be to add chopped up cooked bacon to the top of them.

Now at this time we are about 30 minutes behind schedule.  And this is with me being in the kitchen since 1:00; but oh well it was all worth it.  My plan was to have dinner at 5:00 on Sundays so that gives us some down time after eating and getting the kitchen cleaned.  We were just 30 minutes behind....so we rushed together to get the final entree prepared.....Meatloaf.  I'm not a big meatloaf fan but thought I would give it a world since my mom make it last weekend and said that it was good.

Again I recruited my husbands help in getting everything together.

I know you're probably thinking....wow that's alot of dirty dishes.  Yes it was!  Great job for thinking right :)
Placing all the meatloaf ingredients into a bowl together.  Going by the recipe it says....WITH YOUR HANDS.  Really you want me to combine all this with my "hands".  This is where my husband came in handy.

How nice of him to do the dirty work for me.  Reading on while he's mixing; it says to then shape the meat into a loaf onto a broiler pan.  Afterwards wrapping bacon around the meat.  YUM...bacon makes everything taste better. 

Now it looks like a big ol' thing of bacon.  Fatting but good.  Next mix the topping ingredients together and then place about a 1/3 of it on top of the meatloaf.  Bake for about 45 minutes on 350 degrees.  After those loooonnnnngggg 45 minutes is up place another 1/3 cup of topping sauce onto the meatloaf.  Place it back into the oven for another 15 minutes.  Take it out......and........yum.........



Look at all that grease. :)  Looks like alot for just 4 people.  So I did just like my mom did and place 1/2 of it into a freezer safe container and freeze it for another meal.  Meatloaf sandwiches?  Yeah that's what I'm thinking. 

So there's my wonderful Sunday family meal.  Hope you have enjoyed my evening blog and look forward to cooking and blogging on another recipe next weekend.  Of course I already have it planned out; but....don't want to ruin the excitement.

Here are the links to the recipes:
 Buttered Rosemary Rolls
 Twice Baked New Potatoes
 Meatloaf

Have a blessed week.

Jennifer