It’s Week 2 of our new Heinen’s Sunday Supper series highlighting a different Barrington family’s approach to preparing special meals each Sunday. Heinen’s is offering a gift card to one Barrington family each week to shop for groceries to prepare their Sunday meal. In turn, each participating family will share their photos and thoughts here at 365Barrington about the personal significance of gathering weekly for Sunday Suppers.
Today, we’re featuring Sunday Supper at the McConnell family’s house, written and photographed by Barrington photographer and mother-of-four, Susan McConnell of SusanMcConnellPhotography.com. How I’d love to pull up a chair to this beautiful dinner table!
Heinen’s Sunday Supper – Week 2
by Susan McConnell, Barrington photographer and mother-of-four
Raising a large family means life is always up in the air. As a mother, I’ve insisted on some of the you-can-count-on constants like building a fire in the fireplace when it’s below zero, always having a dog in the family and sitting down to a home cooked meal just about every night, especially on Sundays.
Sunday supper is special and sacred because it’s the official end of the weekend and the official beginning of the week. You can call it a family meeting, but when food and candles and flowers are involved it hardly feels like a meeting. It feels much more like the stuff that memories are made of.
I’ve raised four children and, while I’m not quite done, I can look back and see the patterns that have turned into rituals. The rituals that my children will take into their future with their own families. It’s interesting that Heinen’s asked me to write about this, because just the other night my youngest daughter was setting the table and said, “You know, I like that we have dinner every night. It’s the only time when we’re all together in the same place at the same time.”
One of the ways that I’ve engaged my children in our family meals is by teaching them the ever-evolving lessons of the importance of healthy food.
Our family has embraced organic, local and humanely raised food, and as the mother and the official “gatherer” of that food, I was thrilled when Heinen’s moved to Barrington. They’ve become my one-stop grocery store and I couldn’t be happier about that.
Heinen’s hens come from a farm in Ohio that not only raises them organically and lets them run free range, but their diet contains nothing genetically modified. (Non GMO)
Heinen’s has an abundant selection of organic fruits and vegetables as well as spices and grains.
And milk, well it’s the old fashioned kind with cream on the top.
In preparation for my Sunday Supper, I took my camera along with me on my weekly trip to Heinen’s. On my shopping list were ingredients for this Sunday’s menu, which includes Midwestern Roasted Hens, Buttered Butternut Squash, Wheat Berry Salad with a dessert of Angel Food Cake with Strawberries.
Thank you, Heinen’s for helping inspire the healthy dishes I prepare for my family. You’ll find my recipes for this Sunday’s supper below and I hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
Heinen’s Grocery is located at 500 N. Hough Street, between E. Main Street and Route 14 (next to Meathead’s) in Barrington, Illinois. They’re open 7 days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. For more information, visit Heinens.com.
CLICK HERE for Susan’s Recipes…
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Susan’s Sunday Supper Recipes
Midwestern Roasted Hens
Organically raised hens from Gerber Farms
Baste the hens with a mixture of:
Ingredients:
Organic olive oil
Sea salt
Pepper
Organic rosemary
Directions:
Bake for 1-1/2 hours at 375
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Buttered Butternut Squash
Organic butternut squash, peeled and cut into cubes
Baste the squash with a mixture of:
¼ cup butter from grass fed cows
2 tablespoons organic brown sugar
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon pepper
Bake for 1 hour at 375
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Wheat Berry Salad
Ingredients for the wheat berries:
1 cup of soft, organic wheatberries
6 cups of water or organic chicken stock
¼ teaspoon sea salt
Directions:
Boil the wheat berries until tender, about 50-90 minutes. Drain.
Ingredients for the vinaigrette:
1 teaspoon finely minced garlic
1 tablespoons organic lemon juice
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
¼ cup organic olive oil
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon pepper
Directions:
Drain the wheat berries and toss with vinaigrette.
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Angelfood Cake with Strawberries
(My kids call this angelfruit cake and I’ve never corrected them.)
Ingredients:
1-1/4 cups cake flour
1-3/4 cups white sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups egg whites
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
Beat egg whites until they form stiff peaks, and then add cream of tartar and vanilla extract.
Sift together flour, sugar and salt.
Gently combine the egg whites with the dry ingredients and then pour into an ungreased cake pan.
Place cake pan in cold oven. Cook for about one hour at 325.
Top with organic strawberries that are sliced and mixed with a little bit of water and organic sugar.
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About the Author
Susan McConnell is a professional photographer in Barrington and has been a mentor and friend to us at 365Barrington.com from the very beginning.
Not only is Susan a mother-of-four, she’s married to long distance swimmer, Doug McConnell who swam the English Channel, the Catalina Channel and is planning to participate in the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim this summer.
Nourishing her family is Susan’s top priority and photography is her passion, especially when she’s taking pictures for causes close to her heart.
Susan McConnell has been creating personal, commercial and editorial fine art photography for a very long time. Her quiet and fun-loving manner, as well as her ability to instinctively see the best shot, is what makes her the first choice of so many. To learn more about Susan and her work, CLICK HERE to follow her Facebook page or visit her website at SusanMcConnellPhotography.com.
