I'm not making anything special. And I am working Easter anyway. Easter has never been one of the holidays I look forward to. An Easter basket and an egg hunt were never enough compensation for all the church time and Lent requirments required for this holiday growing up, I should fell guilty to admit. (I do not, but I should) Neither my mom nor my sister has asked me to cook anything and one of them is always the holiday host, me the cook, so I assume they are not doing anything or are keeping it in house as the other holidays were. If I WAS cooking, the menu was always the same: Ham,roasted shrimp cocktail,potato salad,devilled eggs, chips and dip, mac and cheese,cheesy olive bread,maybe a fruit tray and always a raw veggies tray,against my wishes.

Only 6 of our family of 24 are vaccinated and none have had the virus so we are still keeping to ourselves. I would love to have a big leg of lamb but what the heck would I do with the tons of leftovers? This last year has been so sad. But I am expecting to be a great-grandmother in June so life goes on and one day we can celebrate properly.

I'm no fan of Easter myself and still not feeling any kind of holiday enthusiasm, sadly.

Our Jewish side of the family is far away, so that won't be happening. No little kids for baskets and bunnies either.

Glad that some are keeping up traditions tho. Enjoy☺

I actually had to ask, "What holiday?" My Jewish roots have long since faded away and my girlfriend doesn't celebrate Easter. But any excuse for leg of lamb is okay by me.

There will be 7 of us...all had Covid and all vaccinated. Grilled lamb's (butterflied leg) on the menu, but not sure about the rest yet. I'll make tzatziki and probably a Greek style panzanella. Gotta chat with our daughter about the other dishes.

So far, we're not planning a special meal. We've just now been allowed admittance to my mothers facility as of this last weekend (only I had been allowed in and that just took place two weeks ago). Her apartment is tiny, she'd be overwhelmed with too much company at once. We are not welcome any place in the building but her apartment, no common spaces and none of the several dining rooms. I don't know yet what the chef is planning for her meal, they have been delivering to her apartment 3 times a day all these months. In normal times, we would take in their brunch with a reservation for a family table....food is quite good there. All holidays have been planned around making a nice day for her.

They are also suggesting if taking her out, we use only their transportation. That's not going to work on Easter Sunday ;0)

All of us are vaccinated other than my younger brother and his young adult children. Still being quite careful while we wait to see what falls into place with more data collected and how well these vaccines work at protecting people. Two Easters now we haven't gathered as a family. And our anniversary is the day before, we're putting that on hold too. With DHs family so darned large and family dynamics, there is no way to have a small gathering. It's big and varied or not at all.

I'm craving a bone-in ham, so I hope they'll be on sale this week. I'll buy the smallest one I can find, and have lots for the freezer.

Grrr..... I lost my cooking afternoon to wrestling with a hoity toity printer. :(

The store didn't have a small bottle of prepared horseradish, so now I have a quart of the stuff!! I hope someone will want to take it home...

I'll make Spätzle for Passover, but I haven't decided on anything for Easter, as we do not eat any of the traditional Easter meals - especially not lamb. I think my mother used to bake ham for Easter, but it might have been pot roast. She did not cook lamb either, even though my father raised sheep for a while. I was not even aware that we had sheep until someone at school asked me how our sheep were doing, and I told them that we did not have any. Then they told me that they had seen them in our pasture, and so I had to go outside to see if there were any there. As it turned out, we had quite a few. I avoided going outside as a child as much as possible.

My grandfather raised goats in west Texas, and I definitely remember seeing those. I prefer goat meat to lamb but only eat either in restaurants.

I will not be boiling eggs for Easter, and I'm not fond of deviled eggs, although I will eat them. I prefer egg salad, but I do not think that is very festive. Chocolate eggs might be nice.

You can make egg salad festive with colorful bell peppers and other crunchy veg, and a shot of cayenne. :) Too funny about not knowing there were sheep in your pasture. :) My father's best buddy had wooly sheep of several exotic varieties. But we ate a lot of California lamb when I was young. There isn't hardly any left, but the farm has some. I think it would have been going to restaurants under normal circumstances. Passover spaetzle have to be made with matzah meal (cake meal works best) or potato starch--no flour! Otherwise they're just spaetzle. :)

I'm sorry so many of you sound so down. Doing what we're doing this year would have been impossible last year. Too sad. Now, just the pod + 1 feels like a party. I made a couple of edits to the Ten Minute Seder, which is an English version of the actual Haggadah, and after hours of trying to bring the devices to détente, what the printer coughed up looked close enough to a hairball to make me think it's part cat. + 1 has printed it, including a big print for Mother, and will make that his contribution. I've put some of our little song pamphlets by the door. Just that much will feel so good, even though we'll miss the kids and the family and the commotion.

I hope you all can find some Springtime joy and Zoom hugs and ice cream. :)

I love ham for Easter, but have a difficult time finding one that is not overtly smokey, because I no longer am able to enjoy smoked foods. When we had Easter dinners, I would make asparagus mimosa, a corn soufflé with cinnamon sugar on the top, some kind of fruit chutney to go with the ham and scalloped potatoes.

seagrass

if we have it ... I will smoke a leg of lamb ...

Yes, but it will be just us (but it's been just us for a long time) -- rack of lamb, roasted potatoes, roasted asparagus, deviled eggs, and a lemon Easter pavlova for dessert.

Even if just me alone, I will cook something special for the holidays....any holiday! And sometimes, it may be more than just a single holiday meal (although not on the same day) as many holiday themed foods are on sale at that time and much more affordable than at other times of year.

My local grocer carries small bone-in kurobuta hams or half hams but usually only at Christmas and Easter. One of those is definitely on my list as leftover ham is great for so many uses and the size is right. But I adore lamb so a grilled butterflied leg of lamb is looking very strong for Easter dinner! The ham may be a week before or after :-)

btw, WA state lamb is excellent!

Martha, a lemon Pavlova sounds wonderful!! Would you care to share the recipe?

Traditionally it would be a leg of lamb here. I dont know if we'll be able to see anyone as rates of covid are very bad here and vaccination far too slow. Sob!

We had planned a first time family get together for the first time in way over a year, of course still taking safety precautions and wearing masks. However, with the upsurge in COVID-19 cases and our s....d governor removing all masks requirements, we probably will not do so now. My current thoughts are that I will cook either a small ham or some lamb chops for myself.

Our province (BC) is now allowing a gathering of 10 outside, socially distanced. You have to choose 10 people and stick to that. Not 10 today and a different 10 tomorrow. You also must include yourself in the 10. (I'm being very stingy about the other 4 to make up our 10!) So, DH and I, our two daughters and their boyfriends will gather on our deck for Easter dinner. It will be Saturday as RN daughter works on Sunday. Our holiday meals don't vary much, we are all about tradition. So ham, the potatoes with sour cream, cheddar etc., rolls, asparagus, peas, broccoli with cheese sauce (for the BF who doesn't do carbs) Angel food cake with lemon curd and whipped cream for dessert. Have to stuff daffodils in the hole in the cake! Thinking prosciutto cups stuffed with something and devilled eggs (a given) for appies. And yes, even though our "children" are over 25, there will be an Easter basket for each.

Small gathering for Easter - just 5. Ham and either mac&cheese or scalloped potatoes. Nothing fancy -- just simple holiday comfort food :0)

No gathering this year and I'm recovering from oral surgery way too slowly, so I have no plans for a special Easter meal. I may set the table with pretty dishes anyway, even if I'm still limited to eating pureed soup and scrambled eggs.

Just two of us here at home. I don't usually do holiday dinner per se, but I do like to take advantage of the sales. Couple briskets got corned and done Holiday style last week. I'll pull the small ham out of the freezer on Sunday to cook off next week- a round of ham for eating and a couple packets for the freezer and I've a hankering for bean and ham bone soup. We haven't been as hammy over the last several months since the winter holiday when I picked up this small ham and still had ham packets in the freezer, so I'll skip the spring sale this time.

And at this time is when I stock up on the Manischewitz. Matzo ball soup, matzo if I need it, potato pancake mix, sometimes a tube or two of dry soup mix. Though I haven't had Passover surprise in ages, I might pick up a packet of matzo and make some. It's a veggie and béchamel lasagna using the matzo instead of noodles.

Ramadan is coming up too, so curries and tagine of chicken, fish, and lots of chickpeas and lentils with spring greens to have fun with :)

I once made an Osem potato pancake mix under camping style circumstances. Odd texture because the mix was powder, but it tasted really good. My way of stocking up on chicken soup is the 8 qts. i made, and froze most of, yesterday. Do the matzah balls keep well in the jars? I’ve only frozen them in a container without liquid. I'm trying to wrap my head around the items you mentioned. What I stock up on at this time of year is potato starch.

For Ramadan do you ever do rosewater treats?

Oy.

That was a haul, but worth it. It really did feel like a feast even if it was just five of us. I managed not to get sweaty! My obligatory new dress is thin crinkle rayon and very light, and I wore my thinnest apron. I even managed to match my mask to the apron. :) It was worrisome that I didn't get any pre-prep done and basically just had yesterday afternoon. The cake fell, but was still good. I don't know what happened. The meat and kugel were a little over, but still tasted really good. Mostly, as usual, it was a vegepalooza.

The quart of horseradish was disgusting! I'm used to horseradish, vinegar, and salt. Sometimes there are a few other ingredients, like a drop of oil, or water, maybe some vitamin C. There were all kinds of weird chemicals in that thing! "Bitter herbs" can be anything from scallions to romaine. I made up separate dishes for everyone, especially since one was from outside the normal pod. There was romaine, parsley, watercress, sugarsnap peas, little tomatoes in three colors, red bell pepper wands, slices of watermelon radish, and I made radish roses out of some round red radishes. No more bulk on each plate than a small dinner salad, but it was a nice presentation and a good way to handle a few people at a big table. Plenty to choose from for dipping in the salt water and for the bitter herbs. Everybody also had their own little dishes of charoset and salt water. It made for a very quick Seder, which is best for my mother.

I miss the crowds terribly. I did have minions, which helped a lot, especially with the cleaning, but only the pod + 1. I don't miss being worn to a frazzle making such a big quantity of food however. I'm tired enough as it is...

I only made meatloaf, using ground turkey (about a pound, I think - maybe less). Matzo meal is a good substitute for breadcrumbs, and I added a lot of mushrooms plus half a red bell pepper, three chilies de arbol, onion, garlic, oregano, thyme, and a huge amount of parsley from my back yard, as it is getting out of control. Since I used so much parsley (at least a cup after it was chopped), I did not add celery. We had it with just boiled potatoes, and more than half of it is leftover. The only liquid I added was two eggs.

We've not had crowds for years, and so we don't really miss them. Kevin got his first vaccination (Pfizer) on Friday, and he felt very tired today, and so we watched a movie this afternoon - Malenka (Fangs of the Living Dead 1969), made in Italy (Piazza Navona) and Spain (mostly in a castle in León). It is mainly a vampire/horror movie, but not all that well done. The primary language was Spanish, but the DVD had the option of English dubbing, which I switched it to, mainly because it was immediately obvious that the actors were not speaking Spanish. The English dubbing fit the lip movements of the actors, and so I was not sure why it was not released primarily in English with Spanish dubbing as an option.

We ate after the movie was over.

pillog, I don't freeze matzo ball soup, we aways eat it up before that :) and I don't make rosewater treats because we don't like sugar much. I like to use potato starch too, but that's on sale often enough that I don't wait for the holidays to pick some up.

Blessed Passover to all my friends here who celebrate that holiday.

I'll have an Easter meal, I just don't know when. We're trying to find a time working around everyone's work schedules.

Elery's middle son and daughter in law are going to be here on Thursday, we haven't seen them since last July, or anyone else in Elery's family. Now that we've both been vaccinated, Mother has been vaccinated and both the adults in that family have been vaccinated, we feel better about a visit. They will leave Saturday but Amanda, Makayla and Kevin all work on Easter Sunday so that won't work. Maybe the following weekend. Makayla only gets Saturdays off, so it pretty much has to be Saturday.

In my family both my girls and one of the son in laws have been vaccinated so other than the kids under 16, we have only one person to go! We're still not "mixing" family groups, one family will be here, then there's over a week before another one is, but at least we're seeing them and I'm not as afraid of bringing something to Mother, although the State is seeing a vast increase in cases again. Most are attributed to schools and their sports events, many at the college level. Young people think they are immune, of course. All kids in both sides of the family are still doing on line schooling, although I really think they need to get back into the classroom.

Annie

Well, have to make some calls tonite to cancel Easter dinner -- DH came down with something yesterday. Dang we're going to have a lot of ham to eat. I like ham, but not *that much* ham, I'm going to be eating ham sandwiches for about two weeks straight...

You might freeze some of that ham for later...?

And it looks like we will be having a small dinner after all - my Mom really wants to, so I'll roast a chicken and make a carrot cake. It will only be 4 of us.

A small family gathering for us. I am planning a cheesy salmon bake for the Friday, will serve with a salad. I’ve bought a piece of eye fillet to roast for Sunday with Yorkshire puddings.

We traditionally have Easter brunch out, but will have it at home this year. We are planning to serve smoked salmon, eggs benedict, and blueberry blintzes. For beverages, we will juice some oranges for mimosas. Our son is over easter egg hunts, but we will still do a nice easter basket for him.

When we were in our teens and twenties my mother put ones, fives and twenties in plastic snap eggs, lol. It was war.

I have a half ham, just delivered . I will soak and dry brine. Nice meal but I like the freezer ham portions post holiday for egg dishes, etc. One holiday meal gives back a few quickies down the road. 4-5 food saver portions. Quiche, frittata...

I remembered to pull the ham out of the freezer and cooked it off today, just pulled it out of the oven. Doing some taters and asparagus with it tonight. I've had a hankering for a good ham bone and bean soup, so already got some beans soaking for tomorrow. Some space recently freed up so I'll pack some soup away for later too :)

My sister is coming out for a visit on Saturday, so some sort of ham and something for lunch. Might depend on what comes in my Misfits box.

@Martha Scott, would you be so kind as to share your Lemon Pavlova recipe?

DD and her husband have finally made it here for the first time since Christmas 2019. I’m cooking dinner for the whole extended family tonight, 12 of us.

Roast beef and gravy, mashed potatoes, mushrooms, sweet potatoes roasted with miso and maple syrup dressing, broccoli, carrots and cauliflower cheese, followed by lemon meringue pie, pumpkin pie and brownies. 😋