Spring & Easter

easter-bunny.jpgIt’s April 1993, and I have just woken up on the living room couch. My eyes feel a bit sore from trying to stay awake in order to catch a certain creature hopping through my home.

Gosh, how I would have loved to have caught that white-haired—or brown-haired animal, red (dye) handed—with a now-naked hardboiled egg on the floor beneath him or her and a half eaten carrot in the opposite paw.

But I didn't catch what I had imagined to be a five-foot, eight-inch bunny, that night. In fact, all I caught was the back of my eye lids, and whatever I dreamt that night (probably sweet succulent dreams of chocolate eggs filled with caramel...

I couldn’t say if it was the year after that—or five years later that I discovered the truth behind the Easter Bunny, but each year I still debate sleeping on that couch, straining my eyes until they can’t take it to catch my five- foot, eight-inch tall mother in the act of hiding an egg behind a picture frame and another behind the pillow of the opposing couch. Was it a coincidence that the bunny I had imagined and my mother were the same height?

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easter-lamb-recipes 1395649420We always eat lamb at our house for Easter. As a child we ate lamb twice on Easter, breakfast and dinner. Walking or rather hiking through snow for half a mile to our camp on the lake for our breakfast lamb feast. Yes, it took a while as we helped our father navigate with foot braces on both legs. It was my father’s happiest place on Earth, so he pushed himself to walk that long half-mile. My mother was happy to put together a ‘lovely’ breakfast in the middle of nowhere. In recycled grocery bags, we each ‘carried in’ marinated 2 inch thick chops, 2 per person, cherry tomatoes seasoned with garlic and oregano - ready for a quick skillet sauté and the cutest ‘breakfast’ size baking potatoes. The paper grocery bags had a duel purpose, they created a fire long enough to char 2 marshmallows each before they flamed out.

The first thing once the door was unlocked at camp was to take the fuse breaker out of its hiding place and electrify the place. My sister and I ran from room to room turning on heaters to high while my mother turned on one of the ovens to bake the little potatoes as my dad set the long harvest table he constructed. My sister and I played outside on the ice-covered lake and slid on beer trays down the hill as the scent of garlic and oregano grew stronger. We knew when breakfast was close as the smell of garlic went from sharp and pungent to mellow and sweet. We were always hungry - we ate non-stop because we played non-stop.

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Peeps-Chocolate-Donut-Nests-from-Noble-Pig-1Easter is almost here and while many of us are planning the main meal, whether that's brunch or dinner, we can't forget about treating the kids (or adults) to something sweet for breakfast while they are hunting for those eggs. 

I'm not sure if these Peeps Chocolate Dipped Marshmallow Chicks are new this year (I haven't seen them before), but they are sure cute. I imagined them sitting on a nest of chocolate and thought baked donuts would be the perfect perch.

My kids eyes lit up when they walked in and saw these. I had to fight them off while I photographing as they wanted to just dig in and try them. I don't blame them.

The brown Peeps are chocolate mousse-flavored and very yummy. The chicks have also been pre-dipped in milk or dark chocolate.

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easter-bunny.jpgMy mother thought organized religion was one of the problems with the world, this extended to the Girl Scouts and the PTA (a somewhat convenient belief for a mother of 4, since you can’t ask someone to go against their beliefs).  She also believed that children shouldn’t be allowed to act.

I have never quite understood how I talked her into letting me enter the Beverly Hills’ Miss Easter Bunny pageant when I was 8 – one of the prizes was a screen-test – but I did.     

I don’t know what I was thinking.  I think I thought it would be fun to ride down Beverly Drive in an old white cadillac with the top down sitting next to the Mayor of Beverly Hills and wave at the throngs of people I imagined would be lining the streets.  I think I thought I was going to win. 

Little did I know, the fix was in. 

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lemoncookiesMy mother was a 30-year-old new mom when she made her first batch of Italian lemon egg biscuits. She wrapped a few in cellophane and gave them to my older brother to give to his kindergarten teacher. The story goes that the teacher called up my mom begging for the recipe, claiming they were the best cookies she had ever tasted.

Since that day, my mom has baked thousands of lemon egg biscuits. Infused with lemon extract and coated with a sweet, crunchy lemon icing, these cookies are light, cakey and refreshingly citrusy. They're a perennial favorite in her Christmas cookie trays; they appear at every family birthday party; and they grace the dessert table every Easter Sunday.

The kids in our family have always adored lemon egg biscuits. I grew up making them with my mom, and now she is passing on the tradition to her granddaughters. The dough is soft, springy, and easy to roll, making it ideal for children's little hands. The best part is icing and decorating the cookies. Kids love to watch the confectioners' sugar and milk transform into a smooth, creamy white, sweet icing as they stir and stir. Of course, nothing pleases them more than dipping the cookies in the icing and decorating them with loads of colored candy sprinkles.

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