A Snapshot of Our Easter Feast

We had a great Easter at home this year. Sometimes it's nice to be on your own for the holidays, only because then you get to do all the cooking. That would only be an excuse for someone who *hearts* cooking a lot! :o) "Sorry, we can't join you for a family meal, because i really need to cook something!" :O)

Seriously, it would be wonderful to spend every holiday with family now that we're married, but it's super hard to travel for just the weekend and i really want to instill that yearning desire in my child for her to want to come back every holiday to her parents (like my parents did for me.)
So our feast is one way we do that. First, we started off the day with Father (Uncle) Peter's Mass in Lakewood, with again another homily that was amazing (especially because he's only been a priest for 2 years and this parish is his first assignment and if there is such a thing as a reverent rock star of a priest, he would be it, because the parishoners there **totally, madly love** him.) If you ask my hubbie if it was a good homily, it might not have been to him, because my brother in law likes to tell stories of his family life when they were young which in turn usually embarrasses my hubbie to no end. Especially when after Mass, people come up to introduce themselves and say, "Are you the mean brother?" LOL

Today's homily was great because we learned something--i love those type of homilies, and my b-i-l knows how to deliver them. We're both 34 y/o and every time we go to hear him offer Mass, i leave wishing i could be as great at something the way he is regarding the way he presides over his parish.

Anywho, what he taught us today, was about the angel that was commanded to guard the Tree of Life, after Adam and Eve defied God and helped themselves to the Tree of Knowledge. Nowhere else in the bible is the story of that angel elaborated on or discussed. However, do you think that renders him a person of no consequence? I mean, he must be pretty important if he is there to guard the Garden of Eden, particularly the Tree of Life, with his flaming spearwhile God handles Adam and Eve. But what is his purpose? When is his job "finished"? Wanna know where he shows up again? In the tomb; he is the angel they see after they've discovered the stone has been rolled away from the tomb. His job was to tell Mary, et al, that whom they are looking for was not there and that He has been resurrected. Amazing how the stories in the bible work that way!

After we got "school'd", we came home for a cram session in cooking. With just a few simple ingredients, an Easter feast can be awesome, yet still serve tradition!

I follow Nigella's Feast recommendations when it comes to Easter. Ham is ham...but how do you dress it up. We eat it so often, that having Easter HAM (aaawwww--angels sing) is more like, "Oh boy, ham" (said in the tone that any teenager you know would use if you were asking them to accompany you to the grocery or clean up their room.)

We marinate/cook our ham in cherry Coke and onions. I add the cloves in that this point too, because i didn't want to have to figure how to get them into an already sliced ham.


After that, it is into a roasting pan and topped with a mix of cherry jam, paprika, and red wine vinegar and placed in the oven to caramelise.

Then we serve a little mash with peas and roasted asparagus with portabello mushrooms in herbs.

 

This is totally not necessary, but was super cute and delicious...our local bakery made these Easter "bunnies" in the place of dinner rolls.

(guess what? bunny butt!) :o)

And last, but not least, we serve the Easter Nest flourless chocolate cake!
It goes in looking like this,

this you take it out of the oven and it does this and you think, "holy mother of God! how am i ever going to serve this and be taken seriously as a good homemaker?"

and then you remember that the recipe requires more chocolate (in the form of fresh whipped cream with melted chocolate added and that fills in the crater, and even more chocolate is added in the form of Cadbury's. Oh, the humanity!

One other extremely important ingredient to have around is coffee,
without whom, none of this Easter cooking would get done. :o)

Could you imagine the feast you could easily put together with a cuppa joe like this?

You'd still have energy to participate in the egg hunt!