Eleventh Sunday

Eleventh Sunday: The Original Menu
Dried split pea soup
Roast duck
Apple and horseradish sauce
Baked sweet potatoes
Creamed peas
Lettuce salad with French cheese dressing
Peach custard pie
Coffee

The split pea soup recipe is completely from scratch, starting with soaking the peas overnight. The roast duck is a whole duck with six cups of stuffing to be served with apple and horseradish sauce.

With one exception this is a VERY tasty menu and something I would normally serve. The exception being the duck. Not only is a whole duck too much food for two people, but neither of us like duck. In the past I have substituted side dishes or smaller portions of the same meat, but this is the first time I have not liked the main dish. After a bit of discussion with Brian, we settle on sausage, which should go well with apple and horseradish sauce.

Eleventh Sunday: The Modern Menu
Pan-broiled sausage
Apple and horseradish sauce
Baked sweet potatoes
Peas
Lettuce salad with French cheese dressing
Peaches with cinammon and whipped cream
Coffee and Gold


I followed the recipe as-is for the apple and horseradish sauce, which starts with making homemade applesauce to which two teaspoons of horseradish are added. I also made the salad dressing exactly as is: olive oil, cayenne, salt and vinegar. It was very tasty. I would definitely make this entire meal again.

Tenth Sunday

Tenth Sunday: The Original Menu
Winter fruit cup
Pan-broiled steak with oyster sauce
Creamed potatoes
Spinach
Finger rolls and butter
Salted peanuts
Apple-celery salad
Olives
Pineapple delight
Coffee

The meal begins with an appetizer cup of diced apples, bananas and oranges mixed in lemon juice, orange juice and powdered sugar. The apple theme is continued later in the meal with apple-celery salad: diced apples and celery mixed with mayonnaise. The mayonnaise is REAL mayo: raw eggs, dry mustard, cayenne, salt, salad oil and vinegar. I wish I was brave enough to try real mayo someday, but for now, I have neither the time nor the guts to eat raw eggs.

I thought creamed potatoes would be potatoes in white sauce, but it's actually mashed potatoes made with cream instead of milk.

And another fun dessert! Pineapple delight is shredded canned pineapple and lady fingers layered in an "attractive glass dish" and soaked in the juice of a jar of Maraschino cherries, all topped with a thick cream.

Tenth Sunday: The Modern Menu
Stuffed celery
Filet mignon tips with mushrooms
Deluxe mashed potatoes
Bread
Spinach-apple-celery salad with mango dressing
Pineapple rings
Coffee and Gold


Another meal NOT made on Sunday, this time because I've been suffering from a horrible cold.

Deluxe mashed potatoes are mashed potatoes with Alouette garlic and herb cheese. Since I've been sick I did not have the energy to make a dressing but picked up a bottle of mango dressing at the store.

Brian and I both loved this meal! Who doesn't like a meal starring filet mignon?

Ninth Sunday

"March – Five delicious salads are among the good things for this first spring month."

Ninth Sunday: The Original Menu
Chicken noodle soup
Celery
Fried chicken a la Hazelton
Brown gravy
Sweet potato fluff
Green peas
Olive nut salad with French dressing
Floating island
Coffee

This meal uses the whole chicken – what isn't fried is used in the soup. Although "sweet potato fluff" brings to mind sweet potatoes with marshmallows (what's more fluffy than marshmallows?), this recipe is just mashed sweet potatoes. The salad is interesting: cream cheese mixed with chopped olives, rolled into balls and coated with chopped walnuts. French dressing is not the tomato-based dressing we're familiar with today, but the standard oil and vinegar.

The floating island is rather complex: milk scalded in the double boiler with egg yolks and sugar. The egg whites are beaten until stiff and placed on top, becoming the "island." I don't mind eating raw cake mix, but stiff raw eggs just don't sound appealing.

Ninth Sunday: The Modern Menu
Fried chicken legs
Mashed sweet potatoes
Peas
Blue cheese cole slaw
Bread
Pickles
Pineapple rings
Coffee and Gold


Since there are only two of us I substituted a whole chicken with fried chicken legs. I'd love to try the olive nut salad, but Brian does not care for olives, so I made blue cheese cole slaw instead (from leftover cabbage from a dinner party featuring corned beef). Instead of raw eggs I played it safe with pineapple rings with marshmallows in the center – fluff and island all in one!

Eighth Sunday

Eighth Sunday: The Original Menu
Cream of carrot soup
Breaded pork chops and fried apples
Boiled potatoes
Pickles
Corn pudding
Cole slaw salad
German coffee cake
Coca whipped cream dessert
Coffee

With the exception of the desserts (I can't bake anyway!) the eighth Sunday menu is quite simple. I've actually made this menu before, a few years ago (sans dessert of course), and even the carrot soup was easy. Tastewise, however, the corn pudding was a disappointment: eggs, milk and corn, seasoned and baked in the oven, may sound good, but the end result was not what I was expecting - it was more like a "baked corn omelet.". Perhaps I've been spoiled by my mother-in-law's "corn, corn and more corn" (corn, creamed corn and corn muffin mix all mixed together and baked to a nice bread-like consistency).

Despite the lackluster corn pudding, the real disappointment with the original menu is the lack of color: white soup, white pork, white apples, white potatoes, white corn, white salad – I'm surprised the author's didn't recommend a sprig of parsley to punch up the color palette, instead, relying on a lone pickle to provide interest.



Eighth Sunday: The Modern Menu
Breaded pork chops and fried apples
Boiled potatoes
Creamed corn
Blue cheese slaw
Pickles
Tomato horseradish sauce (leftover)
Bread (leftover)
Pineapple rings (leftover)
Tea and Gold

I actually made this dinner on Thursday, not Sunday, as we had a prior engagement on Sunday. It was my first full week at my new, full-time job. I arrived home at 5:30 completely exhausted, and by 6:30 I was enjoying a delicious meal. Given the complexity of some of the other meals, I was amazed at the ease of this one! Disclaimer: I did use canned creamed corn.

Seventh Sunday

Seventh Sunday: The Original Menu
Rice and tomato soup
Roast chicken
Creamed carrots
Baked potatoes
Brown gravy
Tomato aspic salad
Pineapple ice
Prune cake
Coffee

"For economy's sake it is always well to have a soup precede a poultry dinner, then less of the chicken or duck, whichever it is, will be eaten, leaving sufficient for a serving on the second day." This is generally not a problem for a family of two. So we turned to the family of two's chicken of choice: Cornish hen. Even with a 22 ounce hen to split and no soup, there were still enough sides to yield some leftover chicken meat.

The salad is another gelatine dish, this time, one of the famous aspics. Every time I think of aspic I remember Billie Burke in "Dinner at Eight," saying in her Glenda-the-good-witch-of-the-North voice, "but we MUST have an aspic, we must!" I never heard a gelatine described as elegant before, but Billie Burke was convinced that her party would not be a success without it. I'm convinced that my dinner would not be a success with it. The economy may be regressing to that of 1933, but fortunately, our taste buds are not.

Having said that, I think everyone understands why I won't even comment on prune cake.


Seventh Sunday: The Modern Menu
Pepper dip with pretzels
Roast Cornish hen
Steamed carrots
Baked potatoes
Tomatoes vinaigrette
Pineapple rings
Coffee and Gold