Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Where I'm Going, Where I've Been and How I Nailed Easter

I haven't looked at this blog as more than a blip on my favorites tab in a long time which is coincidentally about how long it's been since I've written anything of substance. Once I became pregnant with Maddie I was too tired to keep up with baseball and blogging about the Phillies. Barely being able to stay away through an entire game (and forget about those 10 PM starts) was enough to keep me off my game for the entire nine months and 12 days I was waiting around for this hurricane of a kid to get here.

Fast forward a few months and I thought I could make a crack at the mommy-blogging game by starting with my manifesto about going into labor naturally and my resistance to being induced despite a miserable two-week overtime persiod. Six months later I followed up with my grand attempt at baby-led weaning (it was a rousing success, by the way). I guess my head still wasn't in it as that's the last thing I wrote since almost a year ago. That or I've had an infant/baby/toddler keeping me just as tired as I was when I was pregnant.

So now I find myself expecting Babby 2.O' at the end of July (or as I like to call it, mid-August) and trying to make plans for going to back to work, deciding if I'm going to continue full-time or go part-time, stay on my current schedule or adopt a new one entirely, and other things that come with the nine-month freak-out that is "how the hell am I going to do it with two little hurricanes when I feel like I'm barely keeping up with one?"

I guess I'll start chronically my thought process now as well as updates on how I've chosen to raise Madeleine in both conventional and maybe not-so-conventional ways and how we're going to add her little sister into the mix shortly. I'm not sure how long I'll keep it up, but at least the intention is there for now. And maybe if I'm so blessed to be able to stay home with both little munchkins after Mr. Mom is out of the Navy,  I'll have something to do to keep my brain from not turning in PlayDoh mush.

I feel as though I've had a lot of successes as a mom in my short tenure. One of my not-so-shining moments was this past Christmas in which my dinner didn't live up to the Next Food Network Star standard I've set for myself over the years. But Easter? I haven't been able to celebrate Easter since 2006 because of my work schedule and for the first time since then I was free to cook for an Army just because I felt like it and I have to say - I really feel like I nailed it.


Maddie came with me to Target on Friday to fill up her Easter basket. The day before, the checkout girl at Harris Teeter was going on and on about how much candy was going in her barely two-year-olds basket. Since this made me a little sick to my stomach I veered away from anything edible at all. Not even a carrot. She's 15 months. She doesn't even care about stupid Easter baskets yet. And if I'm really being honest, I only make her one so I have photographic evidence of caring about her happiness when she looks through the photo albums when she's older.

Here's what wound up in her basket:



From left to right: a three-pack of bunny themed Just One You (Carter's) onesies, sunglasses (they kept her entertained while I browsed the store), a stuffed bunny, pack of hair clips, new toothbrush, chick sippy cup, Easter plate and bowl set, a bath book, The Runaway Bunny, Peter Rabit's Sleepy Time, and The Carrot Seed books.

Probably more than I needed to get for a one-year-old, but she'll get use out of every last item in there. Plus it was all they really had left two days before Easter.


Actually I probably could have just given her the sunglasses and she would have been happy.

So I started putting my dinner menu together a few weeks ago on Pinterest and was pretty happy with how it was shaping up. A few days before showtime I had narrowed it down to the following:

On Friday night I made the carrot cake and wish I had gotten a picture of it because it looked as good as it tasted. I didn't intentionally seek out an eggless recipe, but I needed something that would work in my bundt pan because I'm not a baker and I don't even own so much as a spring form pan (more on that later). I wouldn't change a thing about the recipe. It kept very well in the fridge and the longer it's in there the more the consistency reminds me of a perfect banana bread. Super moist, and incredibly rich for there not being any icing.

Saturday my cousin had posted on Facebook about the cheesecake she was baking for the dinner she was hosting. I thought to myself, "Gee. I have sour cream, cream cheese, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and graham crackers in my kitchen. I'll make that, too." And thus, when I returned home from work I decided that in addition to everything else I planned on cooking ahead of time, I was also going to make a cheesecake. And I had never made a cheesecake before.

I used this recipe as a guide until I realized that the mixture wasn't going to fit in the (one) cake pan I had so half of it is still sitting in my fridge until I can make some cupcakes out of it to freeze or something. The recipe said to leave the cake in the oven after I turned it off so it didn't crack. Well, it had already cracked before the timer even went off so I let it hang out for a little while and the second I pulled it out it deflated. So I was left with this:


I remembered I had some topping or filling of some sort from a visit from my mother-in-law in my pantry. No clue what flavor, no clue what it was meant for, but it was going to be a solution if I had anything to say about it.


And now it's a raspberry cheesecake.


While the cheesecake was baking, I prepared the dough for the herb bread and threw that in the fridge to bake the next morning. I also made the dip and prepared all the veggies for both the dip and the orzo salad so it was less work to do on Sunday. Finally I put together the green bean casserole and threw that in the fridge to bake off right before dinner.

Being that I started this endeavor at 8:30 in the evening and am six-months pregnant, I got done around 11. Maybe midnight. I don't even remember. But it was longer than I thought it was going to take which made me all the more grateful that I got it out of the way the night before because I would have severely underestimated the amount of time I needed on Sunday.

Sunday morning Maddie had at it with her Easter basket and while Mr. Mom kept her occupied I got to work on the rest of the food.

The orzo pasta salad was the first thing I tackled. While we ate breakfast, I cooked up the pasta and immediately chilled it under cold water when it was finished. I used about a whole box of the pasta and added the vegetables from the night before. The salad included one small zucchini and one small yellow squash quartered and chopped, one container of grape tomatoes quartered, one container of feta cheese, one red onion finely diced (although next time I think I'll just use a shallot. The onion was a little much this time), a touch of olive oil, lemon juice, and salt and pepper. I've made this dish a few times before, but I think I want to try it with some mint next time to play off the feta and lemon flavors. I'll report back on that :-)

The first thing in the oven was the herb bread. I had wanted an enamel coated cast iron dutch oven for specifically this recipe for the longest time so when I got one on Valentines day I knew this bread was getting baked for the very next special dinner I hosted. And I must say, it came out PERFECT.


I made it exactly as the recipe was written with chives, but I've made it in the past with rosemary and thyme and it's been amazing no matter what herbs I've used. This bread is so addicting I thought about making another loaf today while the baby napped because it's just that easy. Seriously, if you have 10 minutes to spare and the ingredients and tools on hand, make it. Immediately.

While the bread baked away I tasked myself with prepping the skillet apple pie. I had never made an apple pie before. I had never made a pie before. And I had especially never made a skillet pie before. Or my own pie crust. But I'm a little insane so I took this on the morning of the meal. Of course, if it didn't work out I had the carrot cake and the cheese cake to back me up, but this was the dessert I was most excited about.

The peeling, coring and chopping of the apples was probably the most time consuming part of the entire menu, but I couldn't have been happier with the results. It tasted like the amazing apple dumplings I crave often from the Dutch market back home usually when it would be the least convenient time possible to make the 300 mile drive to go get one. Which is always.


It might look a little rough around the edges, but I like it that way. Served warm out of the pan with some vanilla bean ice cream after dinner was the highlight of my entire day.

The pie took about an hour to bake in the oven so while that was working away, Maddie was down for a nap and I could shower and get my life together for company. At dinner, my best friend Kat (who's wonderful husband Robert provided the potato salad and deviled eggs for us) repeatedly said she couldn't have pulled this off and she's not even pregnant. At the time it felt like nothing. I was just hungry and was on a mission to eat as much yummy food as possible that day. In retrospect, yeah. I probably should have taken it easy. But where's the fun in that?

No baby belly is going to get in the way of a kick ass dinner service. Period.

Once the pie was done, it was time for the ham to warm in the oven for a couple hours. It was just your run of the mill spiral ham from Harris Teeter with some kind of brown sugar glaze. I'm not a huge fan of honey ham as an entree but it's fine on a sandwich if you're into ham sandwiches. It came out the way you expect a spiral cut grocery store ham to come out. Just fine. No fuss, no muss, it's ham. While it warmed, I toasted some pine nuts and put the veggie tray together with the goat cheese dip and sat and admired it for a few minutes before setting it out. One note about the dip: I added more pesto than the recipe called for and even cut it with some ricotta cheese to tone down the intensity of the goat cheese a little. The result was really smooth without taking away any of the prominent flavors of the original recipe.


Of course it was color coded. Have you met me?

I threw the bread and green beans in the oven to warm while the ham rested and had the dinner table set and ready to go about an hour before I anticipated we would eat. Thankfully everyone was already at my house and starving so we dug right in.





 So I say again, I kind of feel like I nailed it! Everyone was fed and happy, there was tons of food and something for everyone, and even though we have a lot of leftovers, even those haven't been lasting too long. My daughter love the carrot cake, I'm OBSESSED with the potato salad recipe Robert used, and Mr. Mom has been going to work on the ham.

After dinner we just enjoyed eachother's company and played with Maddie who looked super cute in the dress her Nonna bought for her.



For a relatively big dinner, the dishes were easy to make individually, they just required a lot of prep work. I would repeat this menu again if I wasn't feeling particularly inspired to come up with something all new, but without a doubt some of these dishes are going to work their way into my daily rotation. Namely the potato salad and the herb bread now that I remember how easy it is to make.

Now that that's out of the way, the next adventure on our list is to head back home for the Phillies home opener on Friday baring anymore illnesses claiming this household, namely me. So we'll see how that goes between my health, the weather, and Maddie's mood. Last time we were back home over New Years she took one - one. - nap the entire week we were visiting so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a better experience this time around!

Now if you can excuse me, I'm off to have some of that cheese cake.





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