WIAW 18 – Easter Sunday

Normally, my goal here is to give a snapshot of a very average day. It is fun, though, to feature a special day, a holiday, every so often…

Easter, this year, was relatively low key. We’re still both a bit low energy, in the last stages of recovery from that flu or whatever…  And Easter isn’t a holiday for him – if I want to do something, that’s fine, but he doesn’t care one way or the other. I still like to do some recognition of it, though…

As I said last week, I’ve been baking corn muffins. And, well, strawberries for Easter are a Thing in my family… going back well over 100 years, to a grocer in Upstate New York who brought them in every Easter as a luxurious treat for his customers (since they don’t grow in that region until late June.) Now, they don’t grow here until early June…  but usually, in the name of luxury and tradition, I’ll get fresh, from Florida… This year, though, everything I planned to do with them involved cooking – so I just used frozen. And I cut some up and put them in my muffins. Note – they’re certainly not as pretty as blueberries, baked in a muffin – but they still tasted good… Otherwise, my breakfast was cheesy scrambled eggs, and a cup of tea.

For lunch – well… when you write a post about stuffing 18 eggs, your family will be eating 36 stuffed egg halves… I actually made up the pretty plate that day, and we ate them for lunch. (We’ve been eating the rest a few at a time all week.) Then, in a mood to be nibbly and a bit silly, I treated myself to nachos (no picture, the battery was recharging, I need a reserve battery.) No, no vegetables, yes, I usually eat vegetables… not a typical day…

Dinner had vegetables… Another favorite of mine for Easter is an artichoke. Again – it’s not the season *here* – we can actually get a few in the Fall (they’re an annual, here, not a perennial) but this is when they start turning up in the grocery stores – big lovely globes, that mean Spring to me.  And I’ve loved them since I was a kid – my mother used to talk about me turning the leaves upside down to eat them when I’d lost my two front teeth! Cutting the thorns involves a little fuss, but it’s not really too much. I sometimes make a more complex sauce, but this time – classic melted butter.

I bought a fully cooked spiral ham. I really like to have ham in the freezer – it is so versatile, and a little adds a lot of flavor to many dishes. This time – low key – instead of baking the whole thing for the attractive presentation, I just cut it right up and put most of it straight into the freezer. (Including the bone – that’ll be a nice soup, one of these days!) And I pan fried a few slices for our dinner – which browned them nicely, and really brought out the taste. I’d gotten a couple of big Idaho baking potatoes (when I thought I might bake the ham…) so I baked them right in the toaster oven… and dolloped sour cream on them. And, well – frozen broccoli… low key, easy, cutting corners…

We don’t normally eat dessert – but I like to do something for a special meal. And I had discovered that I still had some local rhubarb I’d frozen last year! I haven’t seen any yet this year, but I thought doing a strawberry rhubarb something would be nice. This was the reason I was cooking strawberries… rhubarb has to be cooked.

The original concept was a crisp, or crumble, or some kind of baked thing… but… low key, easy… we had a Compote. As in – I stewed the rhubarb and strawberries (and a couple of apples for added sweetness – rhubarb is very tart) and just served it warm with another dollop of the sour cream. Quite tart and refreshing – we like tart – and we liked the complexity of the sour cream (which, honestly, I had for the dilled eggs and the potatoes…  but which worked well.)

As usual, I’m joining Jenn (and a guest host!) at Peas and Crayons for What I Ate Wednesday.