Easter Luncheon 2018

The rose pattern  plates are Grandma Tommy's wedding china. The knife and relish forks down the center are to remind me to set out the butter and the pickled okras!

You asked for it, a belated post about our Easter Lunch. At least, Ms. Jenny did, and so you just have to grin and bear it! ;) I cooked and prepared for our party for 12 hours on Saturday. For reals, folks. An 8:30-8:30 cook-athon, and then my kitchen looked like a tsunami of tragically messy cooks (in reality, just one) had hit. The cleaning got me and I went straight to bed and fell asleep before I knew it. But first, some recaps of Saturday preparations...

I couldn't resist a close-up of the table flowers. They are from a Shoshito cherry tree I planted years ago. I love how the buds are a pale pink and them open creamy.

I told you I planned on making three desserts, two fruit based and one chocolate. My older boys threw a major wrench into the workings. They asked about our menu and when I got to dessert they both said, "And lemon cakes!", at the same time. You see, I almost always make my lemon pound cake recipe and bake it in egg shapes and glaze them to look like Easter eggs. I did think that I would make a tiny break with tradition, but Noooo! We are all very nostalgic about tradition in my family, it is a comfort and gives something lovely to look forward to,  but my oldest son seems to have gotten even more so as he ages. For example, at St. Pat's I made the traditional green pistachio pudding. But I did not put the green plastic Good Luck coins in them like I often do. I used them to decorate the name tags instead. Devin looked sadly into his pudding and said, "No good luck coin?" Sigh. I really need to be a better mother...

Which means that the chocolate nests with darling little speckled eggs idea was thrown out the window like so much bath water and the lemon eggs were back on the menu. 

I think the pan where they were coated is as beautiful as the eggs! My glaze is lumpy in places because those are bit of lemon in the juice that I mixed with powdered sugar for the glaze- yum!

I did get to make two new desserts though, and they both tasted amazing. I found the first one on Pinterest and it was called a Blueberry Cream Angel which you can find here-  https://www.melskitchencafe.com/heavenly-blueberry-and-cream-angel-dessert/ . It calls for an angel food cake cubed, with a cheesecake-like batter poured over that you can make in the blender with cream cheese, evap milk, and sugar. You make a lovely compote of blueberries, cornstarch, sugar, and lemon juice, thickened on the stove. And then you make homemade whipped cream. These are all layered in a dish. 

I don't have a trifle dish, so I used a clear bowl and made three layers instead of two. I also added more evap milk to the cream cheese mixture to make it more smooth and creamy. Perhaps because of my bowl shape, but I needed to whip an extra 1/2 cup cream to cover my top and I sweetened it a bit more then she did. Then I saw the last drippings of blueberry sauce in the pan and decided to use my spatula to swirl it in the top for decoration. I thought it looked lovely and it tasted that way too! I don't like that most trifles are too fluffy for me, just tons of whipping cream to coat your mouth with no real substance. This was perfect in that it was dense with the cake dredged in a cream cheese batter, livened with the bite and burst of berry, and there was the hint of airiness from the whipped cream. Yes, very Dreamy!

I had such "pie in the sky" dreams for my second dessert. It came from on old Victoria magazine, a raspberry-rose blancmange that looked too beautiful to be true. I even found a rose embossed mold at Goodwill to chill it in. It is basically raspberries, cream, and sugar, boiled and strained with a touch of rosewater added in. You chill this. Come back 6 hours later and add gelatin to a bit, then heat it all. Cool this over an ice-bath, then whip cream and fold in. Let me tell you that I could not stop licking the spatula and cleaning the bowls! It tastes exactly as if my favorite raspberry custard pie was without a crust and folded into cream. When it tastes that good, you pour it into the mold with fairies and stars dancing before your eyes, just imagining how glorious it will be after setting up in the fridge overnight! 

The recipe from the magazine and my lovely mold

However, when I bounded in the door from church I had a mental list. Heave ham out of oven and cover to rest, put risen rolls in oven, set out butter, unmold blancmange. Let's say it resisted. It would not loosen. I set it in warm water. Nothing. Finally, I let it sit in the water while I ran to do other things. Perhaps it sat too long. Perhaps my gelatin did not set...It came out in a ring shape, but all spiky from the sticking to the mold with no hint of roses at all. I would have been supremely miffed if I hadn't known how divine it tasted. As it was, I growled at it and scattered some crumbled frozen raspberries over it. Here's the thing, Dear Reader, you know how I, um, can't really just make a recipe? Well, I had to half the recipe to make it fit my darling mold. It was a ten cup recipe and I cut it to five. And let's just say that halving a tiny envelope of gelatin ain't easy. So, the fail was most certainly my fault. I will try it again because it was so tasty. And maybe, just maybe, I'll do it like it says next time.

I didn't take any pictures of the little messy ring that the blancmange turned out to be, but here it is on a dessert plate. Ugly, but sure delectable to eat!

On to the not-as-much-fun stuff: real food. I cooked up one of the last hams from our glorious pigs. I never manage to get a picture of the main dish because it gets carved up and stuffed in faces. But it was a gorgeous hammy ham-ness, kept toasty under Grandma Tommy's silver meat dome. For the sides I did deviled eggs on Gma Tommy's egg plate and also made her recipe of Oriental Ramen Salad. Moma made Grandma Betty's Tater Salad, and I made my hubby's Grandma Ernestine's 7Cup Fruit Salad. 

I made a compound butter that was really luscious, especially on the slightly sweet roll dough. I let the butter sit out until softened and then I zested a lemon, finely chopped some cilantro, and ground some heads of my dried lavender. 

I used a fork to smash all this into a mixed paste. 

Then I scooped it up into an egg shape and used my fingers to smooth it. This got wrapped in plastic wrap and frozen. Then I put it into my Great-grandma Horner's butter dish and put it on a bed of lemon peel shreds and lavender heads so people knew what was in it. 

I decorated with a cilantro leaf and pansy. The lid went on and I popped it in the fridge to set. 

The next day the butter went out on the table, along with two dishes of pickled okra. Anytime you decant something (take it from the commercial container) and put it in something else, it seems so much more special.

For the rolls, I made my Aunt Sally's Butter Horn Roll recipe. But for Easter they become what the boys call Bunny Butt Rolls. Whatever dough you choose to use, the shaping is a cinch. Just cut it into the amount of your regular rolls. Pinch off a chunk to roll into a ball for a tail. Take the rest and roll between your palms to make a rope, just like when you were little and made snakes out of Play-doh. Make it about 9 inches long. 

Loop it over itself like the picture and use your thumb to firmly press the "ears" together where they cross. Put the "tail" into the hollow. Now you have the hind-end view of a rabbit! 

This dough is great, because you can place it on parchment on sheets and throw it in the freezer. The next day you can put it out to rise. I put it out at ten, when we left for church, and when we arrived home at twelve it was perfect. Bake them according to your recipe and then brush liberally with melted butter. 
 

These have not been brushed with butter yet...

Our rolls went onto the curved bone dishes to the sides of our plates to allow for more room for food without the bread taking the chance of getting soggy. The rest went into the beautiful silver swan bun keeper at the end of the table. That was a present last year from my Pop, isn't she gorgeous?

I never remember to take pictures at the table, even when I sit the camera ON the table. I had a tripod set at the table on St. Pat's in hopes of a picture with all of us and hubby's mom and stepdad. Did it happen? No. So this time I had everyone look at me and I told them very sternly to, "Look nice!" That means no dorky face, no finger up the nose, no crossed eyes, no bunny ears over heads. I had to threaten my two boys on the left with bodily injury and the absence of Easter goodies is they were not decent. Well, you can judge how well that worked for yourself! It's as decent as they could get. Then my oldest demanded to get to do whatever for a second photo, so we hammed it up. My youngest is pretending to do gang signs, and the oldest? Yep, that's him down there with the carrot up his nose...

Speaking of carrots, another tradition is something special at each place setting. This year it was chocolate chicks (they come in adorable packs at Aldi) and plastic carrots filled with sweet and sour powder from the Dollar Tree. These were perfect for writing names on. (And obviously for the mining of snouts...)

After lunch I let everyone hunt the eggs that I had hidden. I did a pretty good job, because we had to count and re-hunt twice for them to find them all.

Hubby didn't hunt eggs, and Devin had been scouting them the whole meal so had to sit out till others had found some, for fairness sake. Moma found the giant golden egg, but the only picture I got of her is a blur as she flew by grabbing at eggs!

My sweet daughter-in-law Savannah got everyone piles of candy. One of mine was a giant carrot filled with COTTON CANDY! She knows I am a cotton candy fiend. Here I am doing my best Bugs Bunny impression...

She also boiled two dozen eggs so that we could all dye eggs since we hadn't gotten to the weekend before. (It was St. Pat's the weekend before! I couldn't think about Easter just yet...)

My moma, Seth, William Cole, Pop, and my dear daughter-in-law Emiley, making masterpieces.

 I put oilcloth over the end of the table and we got down to it. Our bonanza of beautiful eggs went with leftovers into everyone's Monday lunches.

Today, everything is clean and back in its place. The Easter decor is ready to be taken down. The house is empty except for me, but tonight is Monday's Family Dinner so I will be seeing everyone again in a few hours. For now, I snack on a bit of ham and say that gives me the excuse to have dessert. A little smorgasbord of leftovers and a nice cup of coffee still warm in the pot.

This is just a snapshot of a special lunch, the real meaning of Easter isn't lurking anywhere here in the plethora of food. When the boys were small, we would talk about the real meaning of Easter and make Resurrection Cookies the day before, only to find them hollow like an empty tomb the next day. This year, for a "virtual" Easter basket, I gave a donation in each family member's name to either Heifer, or St Jude. We went to our church service and had a lovely sermon. But the thing that brought the real meaning of Easter home to me was when we sang the communion song. There is a verse that never fails to make me tear up and be at that moment the closest I can be to that hillside grave...



"Let me like Mary through the gloom, 
Come with a gift for thee;
Show to me now the empty tomb,
Lead me to Calvary.

Lest I forget Gethsemane
Lest I forget Thine agony
Lest I forget Thy love for me
Lead me to Calvary."

Happy belated Resurrection Day!