Spectacular Sunday!!!

Okay so lots of cooking happens in my house on Sundays! I will start with breakfast! I am not a huge fan of biscuits and gravy, but Christopher is.  I love almost everything else, but recently I made my own sausage gravy and my mind changed.  Buddy always wakes us up at 7:30am regardless... sometimes we get him to go back to sleep other times no way. Well today we were up by 8am so breakfast is a must! What I did was instead of just making biscuits, I form the biscuits around the back side of a muffin tin and then placed them in the oven. Now I have a biscuit bowl!! I then scrambled some eggs and made my sausage gravy. I tried a different recipe this time which was very good. You put the eggs in the biscuit bowl then top with sausage gravy and sprinkle cheese.  I could only eat one, Chris two. Here is the recipe for the gravy I used.

Sausage Gravy

1lb sausage of your choosing (Bob Evans is my favorite)
2T butter
3T Flour
2c Milk
2t brown sugar
1/2c half and half
salt and pepper

Brown sausage add butter, stir in flour, slowly stir in milk. Add brown sugar, salt and pepper and half and half. Cook til thickened.

On we go, next for lunch I had purchased a loaf of one of my other favorite breads (because I had a coupon), Hawaiian Bread!!  I usually make a different recipe with this loaf but decided to try something new. This one was for Hawaiian Dip in the loaf.

Hawaiian Dip

1 Loaf of Hawaiian Bread
1c diced ham
1c diced green onion
3oz green chilies diced
6oz cream cheese
1 & 1/2c sour cream
2c shredded cheddar cheese

Mix the cream cheese, sour cream, and cheese together. Add ham, green onion, green chilies. Mix well. Now cut the Hawaiian loaf in half leaving a little more on the bottom.  Put the top off to the side so you do not nibble at it!! Now cut the bottom to look like a bowl, do not cut all the way through. Put the bread you remove into a bowl for later. Pour your mixture into the bread bowl and place the top back on. Wrap in foil three times and place in the oven on 350 for one hour and ten mintues.... I tried to crack the oven to 400 and only do 40 mintues, and the dip was not hot enough so I would do the 1hr and 10 mintues. While this is cooking, break up the bread you have left over from the bowl and mix 1T melted butter and 2T veggie oil. Toss bread in this mixture. Place it on a pan lined with foil and cook in the oven until browned. This is great for dipping! Take out of oven remove lid and enjoy!! It was verryyyyy good!!

I was not expecting it to take that long to cook so I made Chris alittle snack as he awaited the hawaiian dip.  Garlic Herb cheese spread on crackers with a slice of english cucumber. One of my favs!

Okay now on to dinner. As I mentioned, I always recall my mother cooking with her sister/my aunt. Well lets flip flop to the other side of the family, the Pastel's. I can remember and hear stories of my grandmothers cooking, and we continue to share these recipes on the Pastel side as well! Well my only female cousin on this side, Susan, aka Shusan shared her chicken paprikash recipe. She also shared her spaetzle recipe. I must admit that paprikash sounds some what familiar,but not really. And spaetzle, never heard of it.  Well, all I can say now is WHAT THE HECK!!! I have totally been missing out!! This was a spectacular meal!!! I want to make it every day now! Hahaha. Chris was making mmmMMmmm noises before I could sit down!  I did some research about both of these recipes of course prior to making them.  I decided to make the spaetzle the night before.  I deviated from the no fail recipe Susan gave me, which was very nerve racking because I had no idea what I was doing!!!  After making them I googled some images and saw that mine were similar, pheww! I also tried them and they were delicious! I can't wait to enjoy these little noodles/dumplings/whatever you wanna call them not just with the paprikash but by themselves with butter and garlic!!

Spaetzle

3 Eggs, beaten
1 & 1/2 cups milk or half and half
1/2c POTATO PUREE (this is what was different) I made out of red potatos
1 & 1/2c flour
1/2t nutmeg
salt and pepper

Mix it all up together. Fill a pot of water and heat until you have a nice simmer. I decided to use the larger holed end of my cheese grater to plop the dough through. This worked great!!! I did a bunch until the pot was full then took the out with a slotted spoon and placed them in ice water, then strained them. I repeated this numerous times..... and then overnight in the fridge!

Now for the Chicken Paprikash, which I followed pretty closely to what Susan provided.

Chicken Paprikash

I used 5 Chicken drumsticks, skin removed--- Susan's called for 1 1/2 to 2lbs of chicken breast cut into chunks.
1 medium onion diced
3 cloves of garlic
2T butter
1T water
3T olive oil
1t salt
2T paprika
6cups chicken broth is what I used... this was too much would have been fine with 4cups (I have lots of leftover)
I also used alittle bit of Sirracha Sauce (just a bit)
2 small little bunches of parsley
1 1/2c sour cream
4 1/2T Corn Starch
4 1/2T Flour
Salt and Pepper

Okay first thing I did was toss my drumsticks with salt, pepper, and 1T papkria. Then I added the olive oil, water, and salt to a deep pan and sautee my onion and garlic for a few mintues. Remove this and place in small bowl. This is when I added a few shakes of sirracha sauce. Then I added the butter to the pan and added the drumsticks. I let these cook until they were browned (maybe 5 mintues). I then added teh garlic and onion mixture, and chicken broth. I then put 2 small bunches of fresh parsley.  Ifyou have some type of cooking string I would recommend tying it up. I did not so I just plopped it in there. I then let it simmer for 45 mintues. While simmering I mixed the sour cream, corn starch and flour. The 4 1/2 was for a thicker sauce... you could use less depending on how you like your sauce. After 45 minutes is up add this mixture to your pan and stir and cook until thickened. Then I got to add my Spaetzle!!! YUMMMM.  I ended up pulling the chicken off the drumstick with my fork, easier to eat. Enjoy!!

Susan thank you so much for this recipe it was amazing! I think I am going to have dreams about it tonight that's how much I liked it!! Give the little man a hug and kiss for me, oh and tell Jerry I said hello!!! Miss you guys! Wish we were closer! If anyone wants me to try a recipe of theirs feel free to leave me a comment or send me an email!!! Til next time !