What Easter Means to Me

Ok to preface. I realise that the title of this post could easily be construed as "What prayers I will be saying on Easter Sunday and what I have given up for the Lord during Lent." Let me hasten to assure you that that is not the case.

NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT. We are just not particularly observant.



Also, to note, we're not looking particularly
Easter-y outside. This is the view out the dining room.



And this is the snowpile at the end of the driveway. Spring has . . . not sprung.

But since Easter is a)awesome and b)a holiday with a decent amount of religious significance, I should at least mention that whilst we will be celebrating Easter, we will be celebrating egg hunts, spring vegetables, and ceramic bunnies. 

This Easter I am very much looking forward to the EASTER SUPPER PARTY which will of course be documented (and I absolutely PROMS that there will be adequate photo coverage this time) because in addition to me and Mum, we will be welcoming an old family friend and one of my bffs who will be staying the weekend. I am actually going to put my bff in charge of the camera (sorry, L!) so it will be her work you will see. Giving the camera to Mum results inevitably in blurred photos of her fingers. She still hasn't mastered the SLR thing yet.



One AWESOME addition to the Easter celebration is THIS GAME that we just got in the mail. I am sooooo excited to play it. I think we're going to do youngs versus olds and see who's pantheon of random knowledge is more useful. I should say that the "olds" will include a math professor at MIT so . . . yeah we'll probably lose. BUT we've got pop culture on lockdown.





And of course the food comes into play. I'm still planning the menu, but since I don't eat lamb or pork, we will not be serving a crown roast or a ham, unless its tofu ham (which, gross.) Fish in all probability (hopefully they'll have arctic char again like they did last time . . . nothing says Christ is Risen like eating your weight in arctic char) and Easter would NEVER be complete without carrots and parsnips! I know they're winter root vegetables, but, come on, CARROTS JUST SCREAM EASTER. I went on a massive parsnip kick this winter, they are just so delicious, so it's either going to be oven roasted or braised or if I'm feeling special, mashed. And with fresh dill. obvs.

That being said, you HAVE to have something green on the table. I did leeks last week and not that you can't repeat but I feel like mixing it up. I did find this on Martha for an Asparagus Custard Tart which looks divine (although not Beetle friendly) and I'm thinking of doing it for kicks. Of the puff pastry in the freezer, the sheets are gone, but I do have a box of the little shells . . . and I think it would be beautiful to have little individual asparagus custard tarts. I can watch everyone else eat them and sigh with envy. I love peas to death and they are really so spring like, but sadly they rate pretty low on the Beetle Friendly scale. So I'm trying to figure out what I could do with spinach??? Maybe roasted fennel with baby spinach in a sort of mixed hot/cold salad? I'll figure it out and let you know.

OH I almost forgot to tell you about Bunny Cake. Ok I don't have photos of this but my grandmother used to make Bunny Cake (yes caps are needed) every Easter. Tradition. Awesomeness. White sheet cake cut to resemble a massive bunny head with ears sticking out the top. The frosting, like all good New England households, was BOILED FROSTING which is insanely complicated and and can go so very wrong if you're not careful but when done properly is the single most delicious thing on earth. (and yes, that vague sound you hear is me weeping in agony that I can no longer eat it.) This was slathered over the cake and ears, then sprinkled with coconut flakes for that "fuzzy" look. Pipe cleaners were the whiskers, and remember the Brachs jellybeans? Of course you do you can still get them but it's getting harder and harder (screw you, Jelly Belly, you'll NEVER BE BRACHS!) The giant ones than you could use as makeup if you were . . . like me . . . ok never mind maybe only I did that. THE POINT BEING. Pink jellybeans for the inner ears, and then the face.

BUNNY CAKE.

Seriously the bestest part of Easter. I made one two years ago I think in my tiny kitchen in Manhattan and it was epic. Delicious and epic. Since it's no longer Beetle Friendly, though, I've had to come up with alternatives to Bunny Cake over the past years. I made oatmeal gingerbread a few years ago and stenciled powdered sugar bunnies on top, and this year the jury is still out. We DID get a bundt cake pan at Target last year, so perhaps a lemon or ginger or lemon/ginger cake of some sort is in order? Lemon seems appropriate. And I'll figure out something for the "bunniness" of it all. Rest assured, dear reader, BUNNY CAKE WILL ENDURE.

Tomorrow we're going to dye the eggs. Key. There is a tradition in our household with the eggs. It was begun by my dad when we were all sat round the table doing our own things and he made what Mum deemed a "stupid coloured egg." (note: You can't get away with ANYTHING in this house. It's kill or be killed, adapt or die, This. Is. Sparta., etc.) He strangely enough took the criticism silently and put his legitimately substandard egg back in the carton to dry. About ten minutes passed in pleasant egg-dyeing silence. Then without speaking he held out the egg he'd been working on towards Mum, fat side out. Using the white crayon that comes in the box he'd written, excuse my french, "F**k You." Hilarity ensued. Mum took his first egg and wrote "Stupid" on it and dipped it in another colour so that it showed up. It pretty quickly deteriorated from there.

ANYWAY thus began the F**k You egg tradition. See? I told you. We're not super religious here. A lot of people see the photos of Easter eggs and go "oh how pretty you guys did such a nice job they're gorgeous" and then . . . "oh . . . wait . . . what?" The closer of my peeps know what to expect.

Once the eggs are dyed, the HUNTING begins. See the note above about our family being a bit Spartan in its approach towards everything? The egg hunts are none of this pleasant "la di da I wonder where the Easter bunny hid them this time!" nonsense. They are full scale take no prisoners every man for himself bloodbaths. People get locked in bathrooms and closets to buy a few extra minutes. Eggs go missing because the hiding places are so good the person who HID them can't remember an hour later. My grandfather was in the CIA in WWII. You wanna know how to lose an egg hunt? Have a former spy hide the eggs. No joke, three weeks later, buried in the bottom of a can of ground coffee in the back of the freezer, down the back of the toilet tank, tucked underneath the back burner of the stove (that one we found what can only be described as the smelly and messy way.) It's a free for all. A hilarious, delightful, ridiculously fun and competitive free for all.

So in summation, that's what Easter means to me. An egg that says Fuck You in white crayon, the vision of my grandmother reaching into the back of the toilet and screaming in disgust, and a cake in the shape of the biggest bunny head you've ever seen. Also making myself sick on black jellybeans because they are the best ones.

Pictures of all TK!

Postscript: because it's that kind of day, sinus headache, cover letters, laundry, I'm sharing Primrose's complete and utter lack of interest in anything.