Old School Sunday Dinner with Slow Cooker Pot Roast Recipe

On any given Sunday in Texas, words like "dinner" are used for lunch and the evening meal is...well it's just always known as supper. {This concept threw off my California-native husband for a while}. But in Texas {and the south in general}, Sunday is when you bring out your best: your best china, your best recipes and your best buddies. It's a time for fellowship and friendship...over a good meal and a glass of tea. This Sunday Slow Cooker Roast is the perfect dish to throw in the pot early in the morning and have it ready by dinner time {aka, noonish}.

When life gets crazy, certain things fall by the wayside. For us, entertaining on a regular basis was one of those things. But recently, my friend, Kristen Duke from Capturing Joy {another Texas blogger I met at Blissdom}, put out an 'Invite a Family Over for Dinner Challenge'. While I missed the original April 30th deadline, I still wanted to join the fun. #invitefamilychallenge 

We invited a very sweet family from church to join us after services this past Sunday. I put together a roast that I had made many times...but this time, put a twist on it by fixing it in the slow cooker {so I could leave it to cook without worrying about it while we were at church}. The recipe for the roast is at the end of the post. {It is adapted from Pioneer Woman's roast that she cooks in the oven}.

This is such a comforting and familiar smell to me...a Sunday roast. My mom fixed many a Sunday roast while growing up. You can smell it cooking before you even come back inside the house. 

I fixed two since we had a crowd of seven...and we ate almost every bit of it! {Ignore the timer on the left pot there...it's busted and will only set to six hours on high...but it's my back up pot, so I'm not too concerned}. 

Didn't even need a knife to cut it...yum! 

The night before I also put together a banana pudding and Aimee Shugarman's Mandarin Salad. The morning of, I got up a little early and made a potato casserole that could hang out on low in the oven all morning. It was nice to have everything all ready to go once we all got back to the house. I just popped some premade rolls in the oven and we called it good. 

One of the reasons cited on Kristen's post about not having people over is not having a tidy home. And we allllllll know how I am with a mop. But taking a little extra time the night before to straighten up {and yes, mop}, wasn't a bad thing at all. I did, however, spend thirty minutes creating a new spring chalkboard while I avoided cleaning potties...but I'm sure everyone does that, right? 

And it was nice to use our dining room...it doesn't get a whole lot of traffic during non-holiday, non-birthday months. My husband even clipped some fresh roses from his rose garden {that took over my used-to-be-vegetable-garden, but whatevs} for the table. And my precious eight-year-old insisted on displaying a book about Van Gogh for our friends. Don't you have a book on Van Gogh in your dining room? No? Well, Benjamin can hook you up. He's the authority on all things Van Gogh. You may remember my sweet boy from this post.

Our Sunday dinner was awesome...mainly because of the friends we shared it with. I'm hoping to get back into the habit of having friends over regularly again. And just not stressing over every detail of it. Do you enjoy entertaining in your home?

{click on above image to download a printable recipe card}

{i linky-party here}

and at Coastal Charm and Savvy Southern Style

Neglect your chores like me and don't miss a thing:

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