But, I digress. . .
Planning for Easter begins in the fall, when Mother-In-Law gets her pig butchered. She gifts us with pork every year. Of what we are gifted, I need to make sure I save one ham for Easter dinner. It must go into the deep freeze and everyone at this little place here must know that it shall not be eaten before Easter arrives, or else! (insert ominous music here)
It's not just the ham that needs to be set aside ahead of time. Eggs also must be designated for Easter and set aside in the Beer Fridge (aka the extra fridge retrofitted with a tap for dispensing Homebrew) to age at least three weeks. Less than three weeks and they don't make hard boiled eggs that peel cleanly for the most aesthetically pleasing deviled eggs. (I also annually contribute deviled eggs--roughly six dozen of them--to our church's Palm Sunday Potluck dinner).
And then there are the pies. The pies need to be made the day before, mainly because Easter morning is full of church, and by the time we get home from church and construct pies from scratch we wouldn't be eating until evening. Which doesn't work when you are hosting relatives that have a bit of a drive, who want to be back to their own homes at a reasonable hour.
The ham also needs time to cook after church and before being served as the main meal of the day sometime around 2:30-3:00 p.m. The rolls need enough time and warmth to rise before cooking, and everything orchestrated so the ham is sliced, the potatoes mashed, the gravy made (always homemade gravy, canned gravy from the store would be a sacrilege!), and the veggies hot and ready to serve when the rolls come out of the oven hot, fresh, and golden brown. It is the chef's ballet.
My particular ballet had a few rough spots this year, due to the electricity going out on Saturday afternoon shortly after I put the apple pie into the oven. I also had our weekly bread to bake (dough rising and timed just so it would be ready to bake when the pie was done cooking) and a lemon meringue pie to finish. The pie shell for that one had been baked prior to the apple pie going into the oven, and was cooling as it waited to be filled, meringued, and put back into the oven.
The power was out for about three hours (gusty winds had toppled a tree a couple miles down the road; the tree had pulled down the power line). Just when I was begging a neighbor on a different electric trunk line to let me use her oven, my electricity was restored. Hallelujah!
I had to estimate how cooked my apple pie had gotten based on it's appearance, and guess how much longer to cook it. Evidently I guessed right, because this is all that was left of it after Easter dinner:
The lemon meringue pie came out well too. It was completely from scratch, no boxed lemon pudding mix. The DDs zested and squeezed the lemon for me (and licked the spoon used to stir the filling as it cooked). As you can see, it was pretty tasty!
I had to laugh when the day was over and the relatives gone home. My brother's girlfriend I've only met twice. They've been going out for about two years, but don't live nearby, and last year holidays were really messed up due to work schedules, our Grandma's emergency surgery cancelling Thanksgiving, Brother having kidney stones at Christmas. . . So Brother's Girlfriend hasn't been fully exposed to my non-typical-ness yet.
When they arrived on Easter, I was just getting ready to make my rolls and put them into the muffin pans I was using to shape and cook them (I was feeling lazy and cutting corners on shaping fancy rolls). I took the bowl of risen dough (white bread recipe, easy, easy!), removed the cloth covering it, and gave the dough a poke, then a good punch.
Brother's Girlfriend's eyes flew open and she said "What did you just do?!?"
I explained that I was making the rolls and had just tested, then punched down, the dough. As I spoke, I divided it in half, then each half into half again, and then half yet again, and each small piece into three pieces. From there I rolled twenty-four balls and put one ball into each greased hole of my two muffin pans. Then the cloth went back over the dough, and I set them aside to rise again.
Brother's Girlfriend looked at me like I was crazy, and asked, in all seriousness "You do know they sell bags of rolls at the store, right?"
I just smiled. When those rolls came out of the oven smelling like heaven, I smiled more when I heard the exclamations over the delicious aroma. Much later, after the relatives were gone, DD1 informed me that when Brother's Girlfriend had buttered one of those rolls and bitten into it, she had said "This roll is awesome!" Of two dozen rolls, this was all that remained after the meal:
I have to show you pictures of our Easter eggs. We still love to dye and hide the eggs even though two of the kids have reached adulthood and the other two like to think they are. It's been eons since I've bought an eye-dyeing kit (so long, in fact, that the two little wire egg dippers I have saved from kits are considered sacred heirlooms by my kids!). Kits aren't necessary. All you need is some cider vinegar, some food coloring (I use gel, for nice strong colors), some water, and coffee mugs.
For each color, I put 1 Tbsp cider vinegar and a bit of gel coloring into a coffee mug. Stir with a plastic spoon to distribute the color (the spoon can also be handy for removing the dyed egg from the mug), then add 1/3 to 1/2 cup cold water. Put in your hard boiled, cooled, dry egg. We like to vary the time the egg sits in the color to get different shades. Also, the natural color of the egg (ours are various shades of brown with the occasional light green or olive Ameracuana egg) affects the color tone.
Our eggs remind me of jewels once they are dyed. The colors are just beautiful and deep. I only made five colors of dye: yellow, red, green, purple and sky blue. Here's pics to show you all the variations we got using just those five colors and our naturally shaded eggs.
The giant blue w/speckles one in the carton at the top of the picture is a turkey egg. :0) They are good eating, too.
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