Spring & Easter

In many homes on Easter Sunday, a succulent ham shank, crusted with brown sugar and mustard, is brought to the dinner table glazed and bubbling, surrounded by creamy scalloped potatoes. This will happen again in just a few days in many homes, but not mine.

Ham has never been part of the Easter meal tradition at my house. Growing up with a German-Czechoslovakian father meant every holiday dinner involved a roasted loin of pork, crusted with flavorful caraway seeds and softball-sized dumplings to soak up the drippings from the pork and lots of creamy sauerkraut.

After I got married, though, I discovered ham and scalloped potatoes. I tried to learn to prepare a moist ham and creamy scalloped potatoes. But, I almost always wound up with dry ham and curdled potatoes. I gave up and went back to the familiar pork dinner that I was more comfortable with in the kitchen. My favorite guy missed the cheesy scalloped potatoes, but adapted well to the more German-style Easter meal.

Calling Vermont winters “long” is like saying I have “salt-and-pepper” hair. My hair is gray, the winters are endless, and even the craggiest New Englanders start to get a little squirrelly once Christmas is over. This situation is exacerbated by something called, “the January Thaw;” a cruel, meteorological joke which, somehow, allows the weather to warm up sufficiently for a couple of days to melt all the snow.

This sends giddy people who ought to know better, rushing onto the roads in jogging shorts and into their yards to chip golf balls. Then 48 hours later, another storm thunders in, the temperature plunges below zero and everyone slinks back inside to retrieve their long underwear from laundry baskets and fire up their wood stoves.

Around Valentine’s Day, however, we start to get indications that liberation, in the form of an actual spring, is on the way. Even though it’s still so cold the air is blue, seed catalogs being arriving in the mail. Next, we read in the paper that the Red Sox are heading to spring training. Soon we’ll actually be able to see them running around on the field down in Florida if a nor’easter doesn’t knock out the satellite dish.

My youngest son has taken it upon himself to write to the office of the governor of different states.  While he has sent out many letters, the first returned was from Governor Mark Parkinson of Kansas.

He felt quite proud receiving his letter as well as some other materials teaching him about life in that state.  He couldn't wait to take it to school and share it with his class.

To celebrate, what could be better than a cake replicated as a sunflower, which happens to be the state flower of Kansas.  Coincidently, it just so happens to be the time of year when Peeps are available everywhere, easily making the petals on this cake.

Overall, the cake is very striking and would look beautiful on your Easter table.  I also think it would make an adorable birthday cake for a little girl's "Sunflower and Ladybug's" party.

As Spring slowly arrives in Maine and the snow stubbornly retreats, I push back the compost covering my rhubarb patch that has been growing for as long as I can remember. The day is sunny and kinda’ warm, what that means around here is, the mid fifties.

The air smells alive, the birds are flying happily and my rhubarb is poking through the winter protective covering. With the spring rain it will grow at lightning speed and keep growing as I madly pull at it to make many Spring and early Summer treats. 

In my house this is the first pie of the year and the first food out of our garden, making us dream of what pies lie ahead, small sweet strawberries, fragrant raspberries and mounds of wild Maine blueberries. But today we “make do” with rhubarb....