Recipe For a Delightful Easter

What’s your recipe for a delightful Easter? For me, it’s warm air, sunshine, good food, family, gussied-up kids, and an uplifting church service.  Some years we get everything but the warmth and sunshine.  Raise your hand if you’ve ever worn your Easter finest under your parka.  It’s just not the same.  Some years it’s just been Mike and I and the kids.  Nice, but I love a house full of people.

Yesterday I was blessed with all of the above.  We woke to sunshine and balmy weather.  We made it to the 8 a.m. service, all looking quite lovely and dashing, and neither Mike or I lost it in the process (not to diminish the Resurrection in any way, but that really is an Easter miracle).  We returned home to baskets and eggs, conveniently hidden inside this year to avoid any repeats of last year’s carnage.  

By noon our home was filled with family and delicious food.  The traditional ham and scalloped potatoes, of course, but also a few unexpected treats.  My Uncle Tom’s wife, Julie, brought her homemade egg rolls, still warm from the fryer.  I usually only get these at the family reunion, where they’re gone before they’ve even had a chance to cool off.  This time we had as many as we wanted, and we didn’t even have to beat the old and the weak back to get one.  They also brought a jar of pickled asparagus, grown in their garden and pickled using their own special recipe.  My mother found an adorable lamb cake, which Mike kept calling “The Lamb of God Cake.”  Well, it was adorable, all nestled in its bed of coconut grass, until someone asked for a “nice piece of tail” and Elena starting gnawing on its ears.

We spent the afternoon playing croquet and cards, grabbing an egg roll or another nibble of ham here and there, blissfully ignoring how many jelly beans the kids had consumed, laughing and soaking up the sunshine.  A perfect recipe indeed, with plenty of lovely leftover memories to hold us over until next year.