Simply Sunday

I love Sundays. I always have. It's the one day a week, even as a little girl, I remember my entire family being together for the whole day. What could be better? In our house, the women (my two sisters, MamaDeLuxe, and myself) are the ones in the kitchen-cooking, baking, pouring the wine & chatting...and the men are usually doing other things...like watching tv or napping until the food is done. European men have it made. Enough said. Besides that, the house is filled with the sounds of childhood innocence. While sometimes I do enjoy a nice quiet afternoon (ie. last Saturday), majority of the time I love hearing the voices of my neices & nephews and the pitter patter of their little feet running through the house. Yes, today was perfect.

It started off with my Mom's amazing homemade egg salad sandwiches.
We started by boiling the eggs.

In the meantime, we chopped up red and orange bell peppers, a few green onions, and half of a regular white onion. Along with that we also zested about half a lemon.

To top the egg salad, we baked several slices of Pancetta in the oven. Pancetta is like a much healthier, less fattier Italian substitute for bacon.

Once the eggs were finished boiling, we peeled them (stiiiinky!), and cut them into halves, then smaller pieces.

Combine the eggs in a large bowl with all other ingredients & add a good amount of S&P, a few shakes of Cayenne, 2 small spoonfulls of Dijon mustard, and 2 small spoonfulls of Mayo (any kind will do).

Gently mix & set in the fridge to chill for about 30 minutes. Once done, start assembling on your favorite bread (we used Arnold's rye today).


I topped the sandwiches off with Kraft's new Bacon&Chedder cheese slices. Lord have mercy. That's all I'm saying.


The day only got better from there. I started on my pie adventure (as previously posted) while the other gals got dinner started. On the menu...

Happy Hour & Appetizers:
I mixed 2 of my newest wines together for a milder, sweeter afternoon beverage. You may recognize lastnight's Malbec purchase. The other wine is Canyon Oaks moscato. Moscato wines are made from the muscate grapes which are much sweeter in taste. This wine has wonderful fruity hints to it.

Along with the wine we baked up some of Wegmans' Wine & Cheese flavored pork sausage. I don't usually gravitate towards sausage but this was very good. It had the perfect amount of cheese flavor with a slight kick at the end.

We also baked up some Brie cheese & topped it with Wegmans' mouth-watering caramel pecan cranberry topping. You can find it in their cheese section.I prefer Carr's brand crackers with my brie. A little more expensive but very delicious. I'm not kidding you, this was HEA-VEN-LY! I actually saw the skies part & could hear the angels singing, "ahhhhhhhh". Just like that.

Main Menu:
Sweet corn on the cob, which we coated with Olive Oil & cilantro

Beer,Bourbon,and BBQ'd ribs (literally melted off the bone!! )

Grilled chicken & Greek-style Ratatouille (called Briami)

And a nice, fresh salad topped with black olives, Parmesano Reggiano shavings, and dijon dressing

Finally, at the table...Happy Sunday, everyone. Hope you have a wonderful week.