Let’s Bring Back Sunday Dinner, Y’all

Sunday dinner ideas: Stephanie's Sunday pot roast with potatoes and carrots

Let’s bring back Sunday dinner, y’all.

If you’re looking for Sunday dinner ideas, pull up a chair. I’m a preacher’s wife and a mom of five, and on any given Sunday there are anywhere from seven to thirteen people at our table. Sunday dinner is sacred in our house. Somebody always brings a friend, the green beans always run out, and nobody is in a hurry to get up.

Somewhere along the way a lot of families lost that. Ball games, work schedules and phones crept in, and the big Sunday meal turned into everybody eating whenever. I don’t think it has to stay that way. You don’t need a fancy menu or a perfect house, just one meal a week where everybody sits down at the same time. That’s what this page is for.

“My grandma always made Sunday dinner, and each of us had ‘our place’ around her table… At the table I felt safe, loved and seen.”

Read my story: why I want to bring back Sunday dinner →

Everything here is food I actually make on Sundays: the menus, the recipes, the leftovers plan for Monday, and a free printable to get you started.

📝 Free printable: The Sunday Dinner Planner

Four Sunday menus, a grocery list for each one, a scan-for-the-recipe code next to every dish, and a page to plan your own Sunday. Tell me where to send it.

You’ll also get my free Saturday newsletter. You can unsubscribe anytime.

Four Sunday Dinner Ideas, Menu by Menu

Each of these is a full Sunday dinner: a main dish, the sides I serve with it, and a dessert. Click any dish in red for the full recipe and printable card.

Sunday pot roast with potatoes, carrots, corn and crescent rolls

The Pot Roast Sunday

This is the one. It goes in the oven before church, and the house smells like Sunday dinner when we walk back in the door.

Sunday dinner ideas: simple lasagna for a crowd

The Lasagna Sunday

No boiling the noodles. Put it together Saturday night, slide it in the oven after church, and it tastes like you worked on it all day.

Stephanie holding her easy ham for a crowd

The Ham Sunday

For the Sundays when the whole family is coming. It never fails, and the leftovers are half the point.

Sunday dinner ideas: no peek chicken and rice with green beans

The Easy Sunday

Four ingredients, one pan, and no peeking. This is the Sunday dinner for the weeks when everything else is busy.

Sunday Dinner Ideas That Stretch to Monday

A big Sunday dinner pays you back on Monday. When there’s pot roast left, it turns into Leftover Beef Stew or Pot Roast Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches, and nobody ever knows they’re eating leftovers.

Share Your Sunday Dinner Ideas: #BringBackSundayDinner

I want to see your table. Next time you sit down to Sunday dinner, snap a picture and post it with #BringBackSundayDinner and tag me on Facebook (Stephanie Stewart Longstreth) or Instagram (@stephaniecooksforacrowd). Fancy or paper plates, two people or twenty, it all counts. I’ll share my favorites.

Wear It to Sunday Dinner

I hand-lettered “Let’s bring back Sunday dinner, y’all” myself and put it under a Dutch oven like the one my pot roast cooks in. It’s on the Sunday Dinner Apron in red gingham or red stripe, on the Sunday Dinner T-Shirt in ivory, crimson, black or pepper, and on a big 15 oz Sunday Dinner Mug in gingham or stripe with a red inside, for the second cup of coffee while the roast is in the oven. Shipping is free anywhere in the US.

So here’s my challenge to you: pick one Sunday this month, set the table, and call everybody in. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It just has to happen. Come to the table, y’all.