"It's not that Easter is really about excess, because it isn't. But we always think it's a lot of fun to have a lot of sides at Sunday dinner even if you just eat a little bit of each one...and since it's a 3-day weekend (or a 5-day weekend for some of us), we figured it was time to get cooking"
Nora Ephron's Apricot Jello Mold
Sauteed Asparagus with Hazelnut Crumble
Broccoli Rabe with Garlic and Hot Pepper
Green Beans with Toasted Almonds
Looking for ways to use up Easter egg-hunt leftovers? Make an egg salad sandwich. Actually, make several egg salad sandwiches, one for each day this week, because today marks the start of National Egg Salad Week in the U.S. Yup. We love egg salad so much that we devote an entire week in its honor.
Our love for egg salad sandwiches runs deep, all the way to 1896. That's when one of the earliest printed recipes for a sandwich made with egg salad appeared in The Original Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, written by Fannie Merritt Farmer. Then with the introduction of sliced soft white bread in the 1930s, egg salad sandwiches became a brown-bag lunch staple as well as a common item at delis, diners, and cafeterias.
It's no surprise that the majority of egg salad sandwiches are eaten after Easter when many people are looking for tasty ways to use up Easter egg-hunt leftovers. While there are various ways to make egg salad, I favor grandma's fuss-free version: tangy, sweet, and creamy.
Easter in our house, a tiny hovel on the east side of Kansas City,
Missouri, was always fraught with tension generated by my Mother.
She was not used to entertaining and on holidays we hosted my cousin, a Jesuit priest, for Sunday dinner. We usually did Turkey and Fixings’. Mama would get up in the middle of the night to put the big Tom turkey in the oven.
No wonder by dinnertime it was dry and tough. But she made pretty good gravy and it was the most requested part of the meal. “Any more gravy, Irene? My, my! That sure is fine gravy! Please, pass the gravy!”
The moistening effect on the dry turkey was just what was needed.
From the L.A. Times
Every spring as a kid, I reveled in the same Easter basket filled with
store-bought candy that all of the other kids in the neighborhood tore
into: plastic eggs stuffed with foil-wrapped, peanut butter-filled
chocolates, marshmallows machine-molded into pink bunnies and yellow
chicks, and jelly beans nestled with tiny, speckled malted milk eggs in
whorls of green plastic grass.
But somewhere along the path to adulthood, I realized my basket could be so much more.
No doubt fueled by the memories of those toothache-inducing mornings,
I've since become an avid candy maker. It's no wonder then that Easter
– nearly as synonymous with candy as Halloween – now signals the time
to skip drugstore sweets and celebrate old-fashioned candy making at
home.
This year, I've decided to make three of my favorite candies for our
Easter baskets: sugar-dusted marshmallows, cream cheese mint straws and
hand-dipped chocolate eggs with almond butter centers.
I have to admit I'm a little miffed that the Greeks seem to get all the attention for their Easter traditions. Armenians roast lamb and even dye their eggs red. My mother never baked those eggs into a loaf of bread but we did play a game with them called egg tapping, another one of those Pagan rites taken over by the early Christians. The point of the game is to break your opponent's egg without cracking your own.
One of my favorite dishes always served at Easter is Cheese Beorag, the Armenian version of Spanakopita. Our family even came up with their own version of this cheese and filo ecstasy that makes a perfect addition to an Easter Brunch. It's easy, can be made ahead of time and baked just before you are ready to serve it and I've yet to come across anyone who didn't love it and come back for more.