Sunday Roast

This past weekend, I started a new tradition in our home.

Inspired by my Sicilian Grandmother, I prepared my first Sunday Roast. (I actually made it on Saturday instead because my husband and dad went to a football game on Sunday but that's a somewhat minor detail. ;)

When I was very young, most Sundays in our family were spent at one of my two Italian Grandmother's homes. From what I can remember there was always some kind of pasta, meat that I couldn't chew, lots of dessert, and very full tummies by the time we drove home.

As time went on and the grandchildren grew older and busier, while many a Sunday was spent with at my Grandparents homes', it was no longer a weekly occurrence and it revolved more around birthdays and holidays than tradition.

The unfortunate truth is that there are many family members that we only see at funerals. This became very apparent to me recently because we have had quite a few deaths in our family over the past three years. Most of my mom's first cousins fall in that category.

I was able to have a nice but abbreviated (fancy restaurant + three little boys + exhausted husband) conversation with one of her cousins following my grandma's burial. Though she is on the Irish side of our family, her husband's family is from Sicily and they still keep the tradition of Italian Sunday Supper among his parents and siblings, rotating homes each week. They keep an open door policy where guests are always welcome and there is always enough food to go around the table.

I was so inspired by this tradition that I decided to recreate it, at a somewhat less elaborate scale, within my own family.

Every Sunday my family will sit around the table together and enjoy a meal worth looking forward to each week. We won't always have company, though guests will always be welcome. We won't always have roast, though there will always be some sort of meat in the oven. We won't always have pasta since this grazer's stomach cannot handle so much food at once!

But we will start this tradition now, while our family is young, with the hope that as our children grow they will cherish their memories of a Sunday Supper and bring the tradition with them when they are older...

Of course, they can just continue coming to my house - that's fine with me too! ;)

Last weekend we had Roast Beef, Asparagus, Mushrooms & Mashed Potatoes.

This weekend we will have Roasted Chicken, Carrot Soup, Broccoli & Baked Sweet Potatoes.

Cheers!