Easter 2022

[gfweb]

21 hours ago, heidih said:

If we were not all different - how boring would life be? I don't like gravy either

 

Not a gravy fan either. Esp on mashed potatoes.

 

Sauce mostly under the meat is a fine thing though.

 

 

[rotuts]

""  Not a gravy fan either. Esp on mashed potatoes.  ""

 

[Katie Meadow]

 Since you brought it up I will just add to the chorus. Two things I don't like are chocolate dipped strawberries and most examples of what people call gravy.  A good strawberry in its birthday suit is heaven. As for gravy there are a couple of exceptions: my husband's thanksgiving gravy, which is more like "au jus" and has minimal thickening and also I find Red-Eye gravy made with coffee to be pretty interesting. Gravy that's pale, milky and floury is the work of the devil and I can do without, thanks.  The concept of biscuits with gravy has never seemed appealing. I adore a good biscuit but with butter only, or jam if the jam is tart. 

 

@Kim Shook your love of gravy AND dipped strawberries are two things I pretend don't exist, and never dampens my admiration and affection for you!

[rotuts]

@Katie Meadow

 

""  Gravy that's pale, milky and floury is the work of the devil ""

 

I completely agree .

[gfweb]

41 minutes ago, Katie Meadow said:

 Since you brought it up I will just add to the chorus. Two things I don't like are chocolate dipped strawberries and most examples of what people call gravy.  A good strawberry in its birthday suit is heaven. As for gravy there are a couple of exceptions: my husband's thanksgiving gravy, which is more like "au jus" and has minimal thickening and also I find Red-Eye gravy made with coffee to be pretty interesting. Gravy that's pale, milky and floury is the work of the devil and I can do without, thanks.  The concept of biscuits with gravy has never seemed appealing. I adore a good biscuit but with butter only, or jam if the jam is tart. 

 

@Kim Shook your love of gravy AND dipped strawberries are two things I pretend don't exist, and never dampens my admiration and affection for you!

 

Yup re gravy.

About the only gravy I make is turkey for Thanksgiving and its often thickened with starch rather than flour.  And I make a classic white heavily seasoned sausage gravy for biscuits (and chicken fried steak).

Otherwise, sauces please.

[rotuts]

Gravy vs Sauce ?

 

here we go 

 

Gravy for me , is just lots and lots of sauce .

 

Gravy needs the same attention and thought

 

that goes into Sauce 

 

 

 

Edited April 16, 2022 by rotuts (log)

[Katie Meadow]

Easter Sunday in Atlanta: my husband is making biscuits for breakfast. My daughter is making lamb kofta for dinner. I'm doing nothing which is just perfect. Praise be.

[Owtahear]

On 4/14/2022 at 10:06 PM, blue_dolphin said:

That all sounds pretty amazing!  
Though I must say the old school Catholics of my upbringing would certainly look askance at the appearance of prosciutto and chorizo on Good Friday 🙃

LOL.   I know.   I chickened out from doing this and just had monkfish sautéed in a butter wine sauce.  Dammit!  Stupid religious rules!!!!  

[rotuts]

Happy Easter !

 

even if you are having Ham !

 

for review purposes :

 

[Shelby]

 

Happy Easter!!!

 

The cooking has commenced.  I'll post more later  

[Katie Meadow]

On 4/14/2022 at 4:31 PM, heidih said:

In my local farmers markets I associate asparagus with Easter and strawberries a little further out. Of course we live in a global food world with transport and imports from other weather and growing zones. How are the berries looking at this time for you? Whatt kind of lamb does daughter favor?

This morning we went to the farmers' market in Avondale Estates, where my daughter lives, in the greater Atlanta area. There were good strawberries, way less pricey than Driscolls or anything we've gotten yet in the Bay Area. They actually were red all the way through! And we scored some very good pencil asparagus, which we just had for an early Easter dinner. There were also beautiful little heads of garlic and spring onions. 

[chileheadmike]

No pictures, but we did baked ham, asparagus, deviled eggs and potatoes dauphinoise. 

Pretty standard, not hugely exciting for the three of us. 

 

The potatoes though. What a broken, oily mess. Tasted OK, but wow that's a lot of oil and I only used a little butter on the casserole dish. I should have known better than to try something new for Easter dinner. I followed Bourdain's recipe exactly. Not sure I'll try this one again. 

[Shelby]

22 hours ago, Shelby said:

 

Happy Easter!!!

 

The cooking has commenced.  I'll post more later  

The rest of Easter here

[Kim Shook]

23 hours ago, Shelby said:

 

Happy Easter!!!

 

The cooking has commenced.  I'll post more later  

I love seeing that dish!  

 

5 hours ago, chileheadmike said:

No pictures, but we did baked ham, asparagus, deviled eggs and potatoes dauphinoise. 

Pretty standard, not hugely exciting for the three of us. 

 

The potatoes though. What a broken, oily mess. Tasted OK, but wow that's a lot of oil and I only used a little butter on the casserole dish. I should have known better than to try something new for Easter dinner. I followed Bourdain's recipe exactly. Not sure I'll try this one again. 

I had the exact same problem with that recipe!  I've never had it do that before. I used NO butter at all (I sprayed the dish with Pam), but something caused what looked like melted butter in the bottom of the baking dish.  Would it have been the Gruyere (same brand I always use) or did my heavy cream break?  It tasted great, but wasn't terribly appetizing looking.  

 

I have to say that I adore gravies and sauces.  As a matter of fact, I truly don't see the point of some foods without a good gravy.  Roasted chicken, turkey, or beef all need gravy.  Most potato dishes are improved with gravy.  I like some kind of gravy or sauce with pork roast or chops.  Rice and gravy!  Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and biscuits NEED white gravy.  If I have really good bread, I can even bypass the meat altogether and just have bread and gravy.  I think growing up part of my life in the country in the south has influenced my tastes - there wasn't ever a dinner (lunch) or supper I can remember in NC without a bowl of gravy.  The tenants on my granddaddy's farm didn't have a lot of money (they worked for my grandparents part time instead of paying rent so they could save enough to build their own home), but they had plenteous meals with chicken legs or 1/4-inch pork chops, a pile of white bread, free-from-the-garden tomatoes and beans, and lashings of gravy.  I still judge meals by their standards.  

 

Hope everyone had a happy beginning to the Easter Season!

Edited April 18, 2022 by Kim Shook (log)

[Smithy]

6 hours ago, chileheadmike said:

No pictures, but we did baked ham, asparagus, deviled eggs and potatoes dauphinoise. 

Pretty standard, not hugely exciting for the three of us. 

 

The potatoes though. What a broken, oily mess. Tasted OK, but wow that's a lot of oil and I only used a little butter on the casserole dish. I should have known better than to try something new for Easter dinner. I followed Bourdain's recipe exactly. Not sure I'll try this one again. 

 

I've never tried Bourdain's recipe, but once I tried Jeffrey Steingarten's version I've never tried another. It's delicious, it works, and it's perfect. The recipe is in his book It Must Have Been Something I Ate, and the book makes for fine and hilarious reading. Click here for the recipe in question.

[FauxPas]

4 hours ago, Kim Shook said:

Hope everyone had a happy beginning to the Easter Season!

 

Another couple invited us over for Easter Sunday dinner last night. We were just heading out the door when I got a phone call and heard there might have to be a change of plans. My friend had carefully cut, stuffed, rolled and tied a lovely big pork loin roast and had prepared yams and potatoes for roasting. Everything was ready to go in the oven once we arrived and she set the oven to preheat. Then checked the oven a while later. It was cold. Done, like un-dinner.  🙂

 

There was no real option to dine at our house as we are still mid-kitchen-reno and we have no sink and no countertops and I have no idea where most of my cooking supplies and pots and pans are. They are all boxed in various places but the painters moved a lot of them around while they were doing the house last week. I know where the cat bowls and cat food are, the rest is a muddle. And of course we have no dishwasher. 

 

But her husband remembered a family member who lives in town was away for the weekend and realized we could probably drop in and use their house. That was all OK, so we all met over there and brought our various groceries in and got set up. Looking to make drinks and pour some rosé, I searched the freezer in vain for some ice. A few of us wanted ice. So, my husband drove back to our house (the closest one) where I had fortunately had the foresight to fill a few ice cube trays after the water line to the icemaker had been disconnected due to the renos. There weren't enough of us to justify buying a bag of ice, so he brought the trays from home. 

 

Tricky showing up at an unfamiliar house and making a meal in short order. We never did find the placemats, had to do a search party for the lightswitch for the dining area and the stove started smoking in a startling way soon after turning on. Turned out to be nothing too serious, fortunately. We excavated a couple of kitchen drawers to find a meat thermometer and soon we had pork roast and veggies ready to go. Some steamed broccoli and all was plated and it was delicious! The rosé was a good match, I was relieved. The carrot cake for dessert was decent. We all enjoyed it. It was fun! 

 

Tonight is a follow-up Easter dinner-light for my husband and I. No countertops, no sink (except for the bathrooms) and the whole house a bit of chaos still, so I opted for something super simple. One of these hams (see photo below), sliced for a steak and cooked in a frying pan. Packaged scalloped potatoes cooked in the CSO and some frozen peas in the microwave. I did think about getting asparagus, there is some lovely stuff in the stores, but we had a major wind/rain storm today and I just didn't have the energy to go out. Also, was a bit afraid of power failures as a nearby community had many outages but we seem ok so far.

 

 

I have another bottle of that rosé but right now I'm opting for fairly stiff cocktails to start. Hope the power stays on and Happy Easter to all of you or whatever your celebration may be this weekend!   🙂  

 

 

[Smithy]

@FauxPas, your Easter dinner story is one for the books. It reminds me of something Lynne Rosetto Kasper said (more than once, I'm sure) during her annual Turkey Confidential call-in shows on The Splendid Table: the feasts that go without a hitch are fine, but the ones with disasters are the ones that make stories to remember and laugh at over the years!

[FauxPas]

13 minutes ago, Smithy said:

the feasts that go without a hitch are fine, but the ones with disasters are the ones that make stories to remember and laugh at over the years!

 

Exactly! I believe this also!  🙂

 

[FauxPas]

Also, I should say this was a far cry from a disaster. It was a kerfuffle, but we worked it out, the out-of-town visitors were entertained and everyone was well-fed at the end of the day. And we absolutely had fun.  🙂

 

[Kim Shook]

12 hours ago, FauxPas said:

 

Another couple invited us over for Easter Sunday dinner last night. We were just heading out the door when I got a phone call and heard there might have to be a change of plans. My friend had carefully cut, stuffed, rolled and tied a lovely big pork loin roast and had prepared yams and potatoes for roasting. Everything was ready to go in the oven once we arrived and she set the oven to preheat. Then checked the oven a while later. It was cold. Done, like un-dinner.  🙂

 

There was no real option to dine at our house as we are still mid-kitchen-reno and we have no sink and no countertops and I have no idea where most of my cooking supplies and pots and pans are. They are all boxed in various places but the painters moved a lot of them around while they were doing the house last week. I know where the cat bowls and cat food are, the rest is a muddle. And of course we have no dishwasher. 

 

But her husband remembered a family member who lives in town was away for the weekend and realized we could probably drop in and use their house. That was all OK, so we all met over there and brought our various groceries in and got set up. Looking to make drinks and pour some rosé, I searched the freezer in vain for some ice. A few of us wanted ice. So, my husband drove back to our house (the closest one) where I had fortunately had the foresight to fill a few ice cube trays after the water line to the icemaker had been disconnected due to the renos. There weren't enough of us to justify buying a bag of ice, so he brought the trays from home. 

 

Tricky showing up at an unfamiliar house and making a meal in short order. We never did find the placemats, had to do a search party for the lightswitch for the dining area and the stove started smoking in a startling way soon after turning on. Turned out to be nothing too serious, fortunately. We excavated a couple of kitchen drawers to find a meat thermometer and soon we had pork roast and veggies ready to go. Some steamed broccoli and all was plated and it was delicious! The rosé was a good match, I was relieved. The carrot cake for dessert was decent. We all enjoyed it. It was fun! 

 

Tonight is a follow-up Easter dinner-light for my husband and I. No countertops, no sink (except for the bathrooms) and the whole house a bit of chaos still, so I opted for something super simple. One of these hams (see photo below), sliced for a steak and cooked in a frying pan. Packaged scalloped potatoes cooked in the CSO and some frozen peas in the microwave. I did think about getting asparagus, there is some lovely stuff in the stores, but we had a major wind/rain storm today and I just didn't have the energy to go out. Also, was a bit afraid of power failures as a nearby community had many outages but we seem ok so far.

 

 

I have another bottle of that rosé but right now I'm opting for fairly stiff cocktails to start. Hope the power stays on and Happy Easter to all of you or whatever your celebration may be this weekend!   🙂  

 

 

What a great story.  It really had all the elements for a sitcom episode - a nosy neighbor calling the police, a silent alarm, wrong house, etc.  

[kayb]

Adventure dinners are great for a change of pace!