It was thrown together. And boring. But since I wanted to see more, I'll contribute. Deviled eggs, rolls, ham, loin roast (sans delicious sauce because I managed to botch every last ingredient), green bean casserole (a guest brought it), and carrot cake. Son ate ham, happily. He's never eaten it. He's one of those picky eaters and I was shocked. Guess, if you starve them enough, they'll eat anything. The GBC bringer was running late, and I asked mom what veggie she had in the fridge for a backup plan. Sis said, yea, like we'd be brokenhearted over no veggies. Let's eat cake!

:)

LOL! There are, technically, vegetables in the carrot cake. :) It sounds like a nice meal, and also like the people weren't boring even if you weren't excited about the menu (sounds good to me!). Sorry about your sauce, though--I hate it when that happens!

That's what we said! I'm just sure the sauce would be good. If you use the right ingredients. Bob's posted it before.

"I also commonly make a sauce to serve with the tenderloin as follow:

Ingredients:
1 jar Polaner All-Fruit Apricot preserves
4 oz apple sauce
1/2 cup medium-dry Madeira
1 medium onion chopped
2 tbsp butter

Cook onions in butter until they are translucent, then add the Madiera, the apricot preserves, and the apple sauce and heat it until it is thoroughly bubbling."

I'm sorry the sauce didn't turn out. As with many of my recipes it started from ingredients I had on hand. On a recent trip to the grocery store, they no longer carry that brand of Apricot preserves, and no longer have medium-dry Madeira (only the sweeter medium rich) so I'm not sure I could make the sauce following the above recipe.

A friend had a potluck Easter brunch yesterday. The food was very asparagus-y. I made a asparagus-mushroom quiche, someone else made steamed asparagus with a cheese sauce, and another dish was roast asparagus with a balsamic vinegar dressing. There was also roast diced potatoes, hummus and pita bread, and homemade venison Italian sausage.

Bob, what size jar of apricot preserves? TIA. Wonder if a bit of dry sherry could be mixed with Madeira?

Well, as usual, the pictures go where ever they choose, I can't move them or control them. You see, we had tiramisu, LOL. I had also come here for some inspiration, and finding none, I didn't think about it until the last minute.
Mine was also kind of thrown together, as Elery's son, DIL and their three kids had just spent Sunday through Wednesday here the week before, and we had our Easter dinner on Saturday so both of my girls could also go to their in-laws' homes.

Elery put a leg of lamb in the smoker, along with some chicken thighs. I made a turkey breast, some scalloped potatoes, Mustangs' fig and prosciutto salad, the last of the butternut squash from the root cellar, honey wheat rolls, Sol's white honey rolls, devilled eggs, some quail eggs pickled with beets. Makayla made tiramisu, even made the custard and whipped the cream, I'll post her pictures in another thread. I made a raspberry cheesecake and some blueberry crisp and we had vanilla ice cream.

Between the visitors and Easter, all I wanted today was a pot of beans and some cornbread!

The smoked chicken was the big winner, the lamb was left on the plates, no one would eat the stuff but Elery. No one ate the quail eggs either, so the entire jar is sitting in my fridge, staring at me. (sigh)

Oh yes, and Peeps. Ours were blue, if you couldn't tell, LOL.

Annie

No pictures of our Easter brunch and it wasn't terribly novel anyway. But we had a great Easter egg hunt. There aren't many little kids left in our circle, so we had an Easter egg hunt for adults.

The "eggs" were various single serve containers of alcohol, like mini bottles of wine, small beers, some painted colours to symbolize eggs. A few volunteers hid them, really well since we are talking adults here. Then the guests were let loose in the yard and boy were they enthusiastic. A good and avaricious time was had by all.

During the process of hiding the "eggs" we opened a disused access hatch to our under porch crawl space and discovered that someone has been "camping" there. For how long I'm not sure. Sad and bizarre.

Great Peepface, lol. John, I hope your squatter was temporary.

The Kid was getting ready for a work trip so we didn't do a dinner and I was happy to spend the day in the greenhouse planting garden starts

DH was mortified that I didn't make a ham ("But it's Eeeeeasterrrrrrr"). We're out of hams and I wasn't about to go buy one when we have a boatload of meat in the freezer. So I made a boneless lamb leg roast with a nice red wine pan sauce, roasted potatoes, fennel and garlic, and sort of a ratatouille with some tomatoes and vegies that needed to be used up. Dessert was an America's Test Kitchen recipe that I tested... brownies that involved dried tart cherries. I'm not always impressed with their recipes, but these were pretty darn good.

Omgosh, John. Who was camping in your welcoming crawl space? Probably attracted to it by the wonderful smells from when you are cooking or swmbo or dd,. All cooks extraordinaire.v I'd hang there for the perceived hope of a crumb.

It wasn't your recipe Bob. I will absolutely make it again. Iris, it's a 10 ounce jar of all fruit. That was my first mistake. I got sugar free. NOT the same. I knew it wasn't, so how I had it? Dunno. All Fruit, exists in other brands. I assume you could you use Sherry as it's also a fortified wine.

I made dinner rolls using Martha Stewart's recipe on the weekend and they didn't turn out. I have no idea what I did wrong, but it seemed that other people had success based on the comments.

Annie, you mentioned Sol's dinner rolls. I'm going to do a search for them. That would be a trusted source!

And that is, in a nutshell, what's so wonderful about CF! In the Martha Stewart rolls battle, Sol's recipe is from the trusted source! (I concur though I haven't made them.)

Iris, yes it is a 10 oz jar of Apricot Preserves. The brand I mentioned doesn't add sugar or any artificial sweeteners. You could probably substitute sherry for the Madeira, but the next time you go to buy sherry, I would encourage you to buy Madeira instead. I developed an affinity for it while visiting the isle it is named for, and in my opinion it has a deeper, richer flavor than any of the sherries I've ever tried, plus even after it is opened Madeira stays relatively unchanged for months.

westsider, dunno who was camping in the crawlspace. I inventoried the objects, and it is interesting; not the usual homeless person's stinky stuff, but pretty nice outdoors type clothes for a male and one expensive sleeping bag, all dusty but otherwise clean and good condition. Also an iPhone charger, a book, a few other things, and a bag of women's clothes, those were clean and stylish and size 4 (one of my guests wanted those).

The person probably isn't a long-term homeless; maybe a recent runaway? Maybe the women's clothes are a friend's. Someone suggested a transgender teen runaway, but the men's and women's clothes are very different sizes. Puzzling.

I removed all the stuff, folded up all the clothes and rolled the bag, put it all in a black trash bag w/ a note and $40 taped to the outside, left the bag outside the crawlspace access hatch, and padlocked that hatch.

No ill feelings toward the person, he was camping there very discreetly, kept the space as tidy as a crawlspace can be, and never stole anything from me. I hope they come back and get their things, but as of this morning the bag was still there.

Jasdip, Sol has Martha Stewart beaten all ways! Here's the recipe, my family loves it, especially if I brush the tops with melted butter so they are soft and "squishy", LOL.

Sol's Honey Rolls

1 Cup milk
1/2 Cup honey
1/2 Cup butter [1 stick]
2 Tsp salt
1 -2 tablespoons granulated sugar*
2 pkges. dry yeast
1/2 Cup warm water [110º-115ºF]
2 large eggs lightly beaten
6- 6 1/2 cups All Purpose flour

Heat the milk, add butter and salt. Set aside while butter melts. Stir in the honey.
In another bowl, combine the warm water, yeast and sugar. Let it sit until yeast is completely dissolved, about 6-7 minutes.
Combine milk mixture with yeast mixture. And stir in the beaten eggs.
Beat in 4 cups flour. Add enough remaining flour to make a soft, but not sticky dough.
Place dough in greased bowl, turning to coat both sides. Cover and allow dough to rise 1 hour. Punch dough down, and allow to rise another hour.
Punch down again, and shape dough into rolls. Let it rise again 45 minutes to an hour or until doubled in volume. Preheat your oven to 375F and bake rolls for 25 minutes or until a deep golden brown. For a very soft crust, brush rolls with melted butter as soon as they come out of the oven.

Note: You could omit the sugar from this recipe altogether. I sometimes use about a teaspoon of the honey called for in the recipe to feed the yeast instead of the sugar.

Happy Easter!

Annie

Annie, I love the tiny tot eating the peep!
John that was so nice of you to do. I would be totally oogied out by someone living in my crawlspace!

I had 2 Easter feasters this year. My sister & brother-in-law went to my Mom's and I joined them there. My brother-in-law is vegan(ish) - his description. He will eat breads & cookies that have some egg and / or butter in them but generally sticks to a vegan diet otherwise. My sister is vegetarian. So all of the Feast was vegetarian, most of it was vegan. I wound up making most of it. The second feast was with the DH.

So here's the list:
Apricot bread
Cardamon fig bread
Carrot Habanaro Soup (vegan)
Pea, Pistachio & Parsley dip (vegan)
Asparagus & Artichoke salad (vegan)
Carrot Salad (vegan)
Mediterranean Potato salad (vegan)
Vermicelli & Cilantro Salad (vegan)
Pierogies (Mushrooms for one type and potato & onion in the other) (vegan)
Cookies - sugar cookies, peanut butter flower pots & pistachio & dark chocolate drop

Second feast was much abridged:
Ham (Kirkland spiral - thanks to those who told me Costco hams were good - they are!)
Roasted asparagus
Pierogies
Cookies (same as mentioned above)
and Easter basket treats

We celebrate both Passover and Easter. Passover is generally just my immediate family (DH and 4 kids) and I admit it can be somewhat harder for me as I have no foundation for it and hubs does not like me messing with his traditions (unless it is something he wants to change, like have lamb). I was also worn out that day so we had brisket (which my 17 year old did in the crockpot), haroseth, salad and a almond-lemon torte with berry sauce. I did enjoy the seder as the 2 youngest ones were able to participate fully and help with the reading. Dh tries to go without leaven the whole Passover week and my 13 year old daughter wants to jump on that bandwagon, so I will do my best in that regard this year and next year will plan things out better to accommodate them.

Easter morning, our church holds a potluck breakfast. I made a low carb upside peach coffee cake. It was made with coconut flour and it is a recipe I hope to play with more in the future. The nice thing with a breakfast potluck is it seems more people are willing to bring food that they did not pick up at Wal-Mart so it was quite filling. After church, I was ready for a nap but we went to my sister's house for her Easter dinner. They generally eat differently than we do and we were quite full but still partook. My contribution to that was a chocolate cloud cake from Nigella Lawson. The cake is flourless and there was a large mound of whipped cream on top. I will have to make that again sometime soon, I had forgotten how good it was. We grabbed a couple of rosebushes that were on hold on the nursery since we were in town and when we came home, I was happy to not eat anything else until the following day.

John, thanks for responding. Yes, indeed that is sad as homelessness, even temporary, is sad. I wonder if it is someone who knows you and your house and crawl space-knows that the space is livable and that you are kind. Sounds like, maybe a middle class or richer runaway. Yes puzzling. A little planning as they brought a nice sleeping bag. I hope things are better for your guest.

We had ham & roasted asparagus too - along w/ honey wheat rolls, corn pudding & scalloped potatoes, a fruit platter & vanilla cake w/ strawberry buttercream & fresh strawberries - everything buffet style. I made the rolls, pudding & cake. The buttercream frosting was made w/ fresh strawberry puree in it.

westsider40 - are you positive it was just 1 'camper' under there? It does seem kind of spooky - & you seem like a caring, careful person as well.

John, the first person that came to mind was the friend with the drinking problem who stayed with you a while, but I'm probably way off base on that. You are a kind person, and I do hope the "visitors" come back for their belongings. It'd be good to know who it was, though.

Boo, that's my newest grandchild, Maci Annelyse. She likes Peeps a lot, although I watched carefully, not sure she should be given marshmallows yet.

Annie

Massive smile here! All the best qualities of a grandparent: Spoil them with candy, but make sure they don't choke. :)

Great family pictures, as always Annie!!!

We didn't do Easter, since Mom passed, holidays have mostly gone by the wayside.

John, what an incredibly thoughtful thing to do. Wow, my eyes are tearing.

Plllog and Tishtoshnm, I just found out this morning that quinoa is the only grain allowed for Passover. I love quinoa.

Jasdip, it's more complicated than that. There are different traditions that allow different things, and families sometimes have unique customs passed down as well. Quinoa is technically a seed rather than a grain, which is why the Ashkenazie rabbis generally allow it. They forbid "small things", which generally refers to grains and legumes, but allow nuts and seeds. The point is to not mistake or substitute, so it's more about tradition than science at this point. Other groups do not have an issue with the small things, though a Persian lady I know said that rice was forbidden in Persia because people would take it home and make flour from it. In my family, they're all allowed, but not for making into flour. That is, we eat hummus (garbanzo beans and sesame seeds), and might stuff the lamb with rice, but never grind either or soak and mash or in any other way make a cake from them.

Speaking of lamb, one tradition is that they forgo lamb for Passover, or just Seder, since the fall of the Temple, will others just avoid it for the first night, and others yet have a tradition of always having lamb (hence Tishtoshmn's husband's desire to change). There's a tradition long past in my family for newborn lamb stuffed with rice and cooked whole, but I don't think any of us has actually done it for a hundred years.

Thanks Rob and Bob. That sauce sounds inspired. A nice change. I usually have Madiera (med. sweet) as well as dry sherry on hand. Yum to everyone's menus.