"So," asked the MiL yesterday on the phone, "How do you have Easter for kids when you can't get to the store?"
WELL. Let me show you!
Dyed eggs for hunting courtesy of curry powder and paprika:
The lighting here doesn't show the yellow to good advantage. It actually came out a pretty bright yellow.
(There were originally eight eggs--two for each child to find--but Poppy and John helped me and so we had a couple of fatalities.)
Easter baskets courtesy of Miss Amelia, my mother, and the tiny store in the village:
Randomness in a basket.
My mom sent an enormous box of modeling clay about a month ago, which I've been saving and divided up into the baskets. The peanut butter cups from the village store stand in for chocolate bunnies, and there are some marshmallow bunnies and chicks (like Peeps, but a different shape) that Miss Amelia gave us over a month ago. I've never actually eaten a Peep, so I had to ask A. if they're supposed to be so . . . hard. He waved this away, saying, "They're all sugar. They can't go bad."
Right. Tooth-breaking fake Peeps for all!
Easter dinner courtesy of me.
I made two chocolate cakes yesterday to be made into a bunny cake today (stay tuned for pictures of what is sure to be the Ugly Cake to end all Ugly Cakes), along with some ice cream from the village store.
We're having lamb gyros using a rolled leg of lamb from the wether and sourdough pitas that I will attempt for the very first time today. No cucumbers for tzatziki, but I do have a bit of lemon juice I had frozen way back for Cubby's birthday cheesecake in case I didn't have lemons when I needed to make it, so I can still make a yogurt sauce for the gyros. And we have greens for a salad, plus a few of the last homemade olives (which I will DEFINITELY soak before using this time) and some anemic tomatoes to make it a Greek salad.
So that, my friends, is how you have Easter without going to the store. A little luck, a little ingenuity, and a lot of substitutions.
Happy Easter to all, and to all a good day.
Blessed Resurrection Sunday to you and your family!
ReplyDeleteIt was a beautiful Saturday. Warm, calmish winds, sunny. Today, Sunday, it is raining, WINDY, and we are suppose to get 1-3" of snow by nightfall.
I have not planted any of my garden because of this, not even the potatoes which I almost always put in on Good Friday. My new garden plot which was fluffy and beautiful was tamped down by a well-meaning person (tree-cutter we hired to cut brush in the pasture). Why he decided to mess with someone else's yard; doing what was not in the contract, is beyond me???? Anyway, Farmer has been field cultivating it and we'll let it mellow through the storm and till the dickens out of it and hope the clods dissolve.
Our Easter dinner is courtesy of my freezer. I bought the spiral ham & frozen roll dough balls on sale after Christmas. I had froze in bags, a big can of tropical fruit salad. We always have eggs. I also always have on hand the ingredients for cheesy potatoes. Salad &/or peas on had. We also purchased the required pb eggs when they first appeared in the stores.
It will just be the 2 of us with the weather but will celebrate with the local kids soon. The grandbabies' baskets are ready to fill with items I purchased online earlier.
It pays to be a planner. :)
Am sure everyone will be as happy as ever, the year mom made do!
ReplyDeleteSounds like a lovely Easter!
ReplyDeleteLinda
Still wish I'd sent the crosses, but after the one time all the chocolate melted on the way to NY, I'm a believer in waiting to deliver in person. Hard peeps, yum!
ReplyDeleteThe yogurt is the best part of tzatziki anyway. :)
ReplyDeleteOur kids' Easter baskets were made up of a toy I've been saving for months for the boy, a book I won on a random contest a week before for the girl, and a bag of chips and a bag of m&Ms each that my husband salvaged from the high school where he teaches after they shut down. The kids were happy with them.
We did manage to go to the store a couple weeks before Easter to get some food stuff, so not totally store free tho.