Major religious holidays demand ritualistic foods: Thanksgiving demands turkey. Passover seders entail matzo. During Ramadan, Muslims fast during the day, and eat at night. The Chinese New Year calls for boiled dumplings. Easter requires ham, colored eggs, and chocolate bunnies.
Every family is different. We will prepare the annual lemon cheesecake (sans the spiders-under-the-nasturtiums decoration) and a small spiral cut ham, from which we will make deelish ham biscuits to munch on with some noontime Bloody Marys.
The Bloody Marys are a custom we embraced during the years we held Easter Egg Hunts in our back yard for many churlish children and their parents. When the children outnumbered the adults. We had no idea how cutthroat the competition was for the Easter Eggs. We, poor benighted adults, who thought our helicopter hovering had resulted in happy, sharing, loving, and reasonable children. We didn’t realize that children hopped up on jelly bean rocket fuel would become as vicious as the boys in Lord of the Flies. Even our own. Those sweet little girls in pink Lilly Pulitzer Mommy-and-Me-dresses? Stand back and avert your gaze. Blood will flow. As will tears. And vodka.
So, no Easter Egg Hunt for us this year, but Bloody Marys for sure, with a nod to passing time and practically grown-up children. And we will be happy, for a moment, that we will not have to break up any plastic egg fights. Or dig melted chocolate out from under the sofa pillows. And whose kid was that who persisted in schmearing his boogers on the wall in the hall? Sheesh. Time marches on!
If you still have wee ones, and want to look like the parents with the mostess, Food52 offers up recipes for 10 kinds of homemade candies. I would be very proud of myself if I pulled off a homemade Cadbury cream egg, and I do not think I would share it with anyone. I suppose my children got their killer instincts naturally…
https://food52.com/blog/10191-10-homemade-candy-recipes-for-easter
Easter is quite warm some years, so it is nice to offer cool food, thus our cheesecake. The gentle folks at Garden & Gun have quite a good idea for a dessert that we intend to prepare often this summer:
https://gardenandgun.com/blog/southern-summer-dessert
If you are fellow empty nesters, and are feeling sentimental for the good old days of marshmallow Peeps, here is just the recipe for you – Marshmallow Peep-Infused Vodka. Holy camoly. As a child I used to make my peeps last longer by waiting for them to get a little stale, and then gnawing on the slightly leathery texture of the sugary coating over the course of a couple of days. It might well be a pleasant childhood memory that I can now abandon: https://www.foodbeast.com/2013/03/29/diy-marshmallow-peep-infused-vodka/
And here is a healthy idea for using up those leftover eggs – skip the soggy egg salad sandwiches – have the eggs for dinner: Kale Cobb Salad. https://www.dinneralovestory.com/kale-cobb-salad-or-how-to-turn-easter-eggs-into-dinner/ Yumsters!
The Easter Rabbit and I agree that cooking carrots is a big mistake. You can either enjoy them crunchy, fresh and raw, or gussied up, shredded and baked into a cake, slathered with thick lashings of sweet cream cheese frosting. There are no exceptions. The Rabbit knows.
https://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/03/sigrids-carrot-cake-perfect-for-easter/
https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/layered-carrot-cake-50400000111526/
Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Elwood, you must be,” – she always called me Elwood – “In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.
-Elwood P. Dowd (and Mary Chase)
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