Easter!

Easter is coming! I love Easter.

I am vaguely aware that some people attach a religious significance to the holiday, but for me it just marks the start of spring and being able to entertain again. (Our driveway is terrible in the winter, and we lose something like 90% of our available parking once the snow becomes more than just a dusting.)

Several years ago, we were talking with a bunch of friends over lunch and discovered that none of us had anything to do for Easter-- my family was going to their in-laws, my sister-in-law was having HER in-laws down (though I think that fell through and she ended up coming to our house anyway), Tom was on call so he wasn't going with his wife and kids down to Alabama, Brian's family didn't really "do" Easter, and I forget why Matt wasn't accompanying his wife down to her family.

Sounds like an excuse for a party to me! I got a ham, invited everyone over, and had so much fun that I did it again the next year and every year after that. The invite list is largely random. I pretty much spam people in my address book, and whoever shows up shows up. Once in a while I think about some other person whose family is out of state, like a former boss of John's whose kids lived in different states, and then I extend an invite out to them, too. Sometimes they come, sometimes they don't, and it's all good.

One of the things that I love about Easter is that it's a very casual holiday. Ham is a breeze to cook (and, in fact, my Mom usually requests that I put some aside and not cook it at all, because she likes her ham cold), side dishes are less demanding (fruit salad: wash, cut, put in a bowl, mix it together a little, serve) and if you put out lots of Easter candy then the need for desserts drops dramatically and can be handled by walking over the the "thaw and serve" portion of the grocery freezer section.

This year, we're having my world-famous mashed potatoes (recipe: "Tell Lisa to bring it". In contrast, the recipe for my homemade mashed potatoes is "peel potatoes, boil water, ask Lisa if they're done and repeat every 10 minutes until she says yes, drain off water, give pot to Lisa, wait while she performs super-secret black magic, serve". The hardest part of both recipes is finding a Lisa. Fortunately for me, my husband came with one.)

This year, there will actually be a bunch of children around, so I get to do an egg hunt, which I love. I have.. um, more plastic eggs than I care to admit to thank to the Live Game last spring. The only downside is that the weather is a little too nippy to send the kids outside to search the acreage for brightly-colored plastic eggs, so I'm limited to just inside the house. But it's a big house, so I think I can cope. :-)

I may have went a little overboard while grocery shopping this morning, as I have what can only be properly described as "an orgy of chocolate" (two bags of Dove Promises dark, two bags of Dove Promises milk, two chocolate oranges (one dark and one milk), a Starbucks Chai chocolate that looked interesting, and then a mixed bag of fun-sized bars for the kids and a bag of Reese's mini-cups. And maybe a couple more bags that I'm forgetting), plus 5 bottles of wine (the best time to try new wines is when there's other people around to help you drink them) and 2 bottles of sparkling grape juice (for the kids and the designated drivers). There's some real food too, stuff with actual nutritional value and such, but who cares about that? Sugar and alcohol for the win, baby!

There's a backstory to the mashed potatoes recipe: When we first moved into this house my grandparents lived with us and the thought of trying to take them anywhere for Thanksgiving gave me nightmares, so I decided to host it myself and let them fight, whine about not remembering who anyone was, stomp off after an argument with each other, go to bed at 5pm, or do laps around the main floor off the house whenever they wished. The only problem was that I had zero clue how to cook a turkey. Lisa generously offered to come over very early and show me what to do, which she did. Then we turned to getting other things prepared, and she asked me where the potatoes were for mashed potatoes. I pointed at a box of Potato Buds. Lisa (who was 8 months pregnant and nesting like nobody's business) gave me a look that said she thought I was the spawn of the devil, threw me out of my own kitchen, sent her husband to the store to buy potatoes, and proceeded to cook the entire rest of the dinner herself. As far as I'm concerned, that was the best possible outcome because I didn't have to do any actual work, but to this day I still don't know how to cook a turkey (even the early bits that I did get to witness have been wiped out by the memory of the Mashed Potato Incident).

Easter!

Easter is coming! I love Easter.

I am vaguely aware that some people attach a religious significance to the holiday, but for me it just marks the start of spring and being able to entertain again. (Our driveway is terrible in the winter, and we lose something like 90% of our available parking once the snow becomes more than just a dusting.)

Several years ago, we were talking with a bunch of friends over lunch and discovered that none of us had anything to do for Easter-- my family was going to their in-laws, my sister-in-law was having HER in-laws down (though I think that fell through and she ended up coming to our house anyway), Tom was on call so he wasn't going with his wife and kids down to Alabama, Brian's family didn't really "do" Easter, and I forget why Matt wasn't accompanying his wife down to her family.

Sounds like an excuse for a party to me! I got a ham, invited everyone over, and had so much fun that I did it again the next year and every year after that. The invite list is largely random. I pretty much spam people in my address book, and whoever shows up shows up. Once in a while I think about some other person whose family is out of state, like a former boss of John's whose kids lived in different states, and then I extend an invite out to them, too. Sometimes they come, sometimes they don't, and it's all good.

One of the things that I love about Easter is that it's a very casual holiday. Ham is a breeze to cook (and, in fact, my Mom usually requests that I put some aside and not cook it at all, because she likes her ham cold), side dishes are less demanding (fruit salad: wash, cut, put in a bowl, mix it together a little, serve) and if you put out lots of Easter candy then the need for desserts drops dramatically and can be handled by walking over the the "thaw and serve" portion of the grocery freezer section.

This year, we're having my world-famous mashed potatoes (recipe: "Tell Lisa to bring it". In contrast, the recipe for my homemade mashed potatoes is "peel potatoes, boil water, ask Lisa if they're done and repeat every 10 minutes until she says yes, drain off water, give pot to Lisa, wait while she performs super-secret black magic, serve". The hardest part of both recipes is finding a Lisa. Fortunately for me, my husband came with one.)

This year, there will actually be a bunch of children around, so I get to do an egg hunt, which I love. I have.. um, more plastic eggs than I care to admit to thank to the Live Game last spring. The only downside is that the weather is a little too nippy to send the kids outside to search the acreage for brightly-colored plastic eggs, so I'm limited to just inside the house. But it's a big house, so I think I can cope. :-)

I may have went a little overboard while grocery shopping this morning, as I have what can only be properly described as "an orgy of chocolate" (two bags of Dove Promises dark, two bags of Dove Promises milk, two chocolate oranges (one dark and one milk), a Starbucks Chai chocolate that looked interesting, and then a mixed bag of fun-sized bars for the kids and a bag of Reese's mini-cups. And maybe a couple more bags that I'm forgetting), plus 5 bottles of wine (the best time to try new wines is when there's other people around to help you drink them) and 2 bottles of sparkling grape juice (for the kids and the designated drivers). There's some real food too, stuff with actual nutritional value and such, but who cares about that? Sugar and alcohol for the win, baby!

There's a backstory to the mashed potatoes recipe: When we first moved into this house my grandparents lived with us and the thought of trying to take them anywhere for Thanksgiving gave me nightmares, so I decided to host it myself and let them fight, whine about not remembering who anyone was, stomp off after an argument with each other, go to bed at 5pm, or do laps around the main floor off the house whenever they wished. The only problem was that I had zero clue how to cook a turkey. Lisa generously offered to come over very early and show me what to do, which she did. Then we turned to getting other things prepared, and she asked me where the potatoes were for mashed potatoes. I pointed at a box of Potato Buds. Lisa (who was 8 months pregnant and nesting like nobody's business) gave me a look that said she thought I was the spawn of the devil, threw me out of my own kitchen, sent her husband to the store to buy potatoes, and proceeded to cook the entire rest of the dinner herself. As far as I'm concerned, that was the best possible outcome because I didn't have to do any actual work, but to this day I still don't know how to cook a turkey (even the early bits that I did get to witness have been wiped out by the memory of the Mashed Potato Incident).