We had a full house for Easter, just the way it should be. My daughter and BF were up for the whole weekend.
I had never cooked for Easter brunch before. I am not sure what we have done in recent years. I know when both my parents were alive we would brunch with them. I am thinking we didn't do much at all. In recent years around Easter we have had so much going on I bet it just wasn't even a thought of ours.
In wanting to make up for lost time, I decided to go all out for brunch. And I mean ALL OUT! Only the best food and finest ingredients. In searching around for recipes I found all the ones I used on Country Living, except the fruit and butter. And these recipes called for high end ingredients, which some were a challenge to find. My daughters BF works at JR Watkins, the very old food and door to door drug store of the 19th century. I had him grab some of the needed extracts and such. Plus he gets them at a great discount.
In fact we cooked well for everyone all weekend, except for Saturday night. I was pretty tired by Sunday evening between heavy cooking and cleaning.
Here is the menu, in case you are curious, or very hungry for some seriously good eats:
BRUNCH MENU
- Fancy Orange Juice (store bought)
- Honey Lime Fruit Salad
- One Bowl Banana Bread
- Croissants
- Texas Roadhouse Butter
- Coriander Maple Glazed Heirloom Carrots
- Tangy Potato Salad
- Ham and Goat Cheese Frittata
- Sausage Tomato Broccoli Strata
With the Texas Roadhouse butter there was some debate over whether mine was better than the original restaurants version. I think we were 4-1!
I really do love cooking, and cooking fancy. I am not sure if it is the creative process or chopping. It certainly isn't the eating part. I am someone who eats to live, not lives to eat, like the rest of my family. So it is a win~win. I love to cook. They love to eat. I love cutting food and paper. It satisfies me for some reason. The recipes were all new for me and some of the foods too. Honestly as soon as the food was ready I went and sat down and let me husband bring the food out to serve. I was just done! This is part of why we are seeking a remodel on the house, in particular our kitchen and master bathroom and closet.
The frittata was a huge winner. Zero leftovers and I think it was decided to double that for next year. I really liked the Strata better. But both were very very good. It was a well mixed menu. The potato salad was different, but in a very good way. And I may make that this summer.
The other thing that got crazy is I wanted to do fancy table decorations. No Easter baskets as we have no way to store 5 baskets year to year and don't like the idea of buying such limited use stuff. I had the table somewhat planned out but didn't get it executed before I had to start cooking. I had to leave it to the family to execute the vision in my head. It was lovely. I purchased a super large chocolate Dove bunny as a centerpiece. Turns out it was only a half bunny! I will pay attention to that in the future. To eliminate cat issues with the Easter grass, I even found paper grass in green. If you have cats you will know exactly what I mean. They really didn't enjoy the paper grass and it was easy to clean up and save for next year. Next years decorations will be even better. I had wanted to create little paper baskets for each Cadbury egg. One of the many things as time ran out, that I just had to let go of that idea.
Food aside, the best part of the day was having my daughter home to go to Easter service at church with us. Her BF elected to stay back and supervise the cats.
It was our first time as a whole family at this church for Easter. I know last year my knees were bothering me too much to go and I don't think our daughter was able to make it home from college. But I wouldn't quote me on that.
Lovely message of Hope in Action from the church. Everyone took Communion. This is still a new thing for our daughter. She is much more comfortable doing it at this much smaller church. We sang. Or the three of them sang. I don't sing. Period. We visited with staff. We slowly made our way home. Relaxed atmosphere. Such a change from our years of driving 38 miles or more each way for church. We would leave church feeling drained instead of refreshed and rejuvenated. The opposite of what any church is trying to provide.
And today was my husbands birthday also. But more on that in another post. Let me know if you try any of the recipes!
So that was our lovely Easter. Food. Family. Faith. Fun. Fulfilled.
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