Category Archives: Easter

I Hate You Ham

Per my last post, I should have started the ham last week. How can a 10 pound, spiral sliced, pre-cooked ham take over 4 hours to get to a safe temperature? Why did it make me not only uncover, but take apart, spread out in the roasting pan, up the oven temp twice just so we could eat by 5. IT WENT IN THE OVEN AT 12:30!!!

Ugh, stupid ham. So of course Guitar Boy had seconds.

But everything else was good. Went with the Spinach Artichoke Stuffing mentioned in the last post, Carrot Slaw from Once Upon a Chef, asparagus, lots of fruit, and the hit of the day, made by my mother, was Aunt Carol Wetter’s Cheez Whiz Scalloped Potatoes. Yep, you read that right. Cheez Whiz is the secret ingredient.

There was an epic egg hunt. Make them hard to find, they said. Challenge accepted.

And to answer your question, why yes, that is a Death Star bird feeder. #nerdfoiles

It was so hard to find these eggs that they couldn’t even take a group cousins picture without one half of all participants closing their eyes. But we did get one with GG on her 103rd Easter!

Justifying my large light up bunny purchase at Homegoods were the table favors – white and gold bunnies!!

Guess which favor was Baby D’s?

When GG used to host Easter, she always bought you a ceramic bunny or egg and wrote the year on it, so my favors this year were an homage to GG. Here’s some of the collection:

You may have seen on Instagram, but my sister sent me a picture of a “joke” centerpiece saying “you should do this”. Additional challenge accepted!

So after all that Cheez Whiz goodness, we need to lighten it up tonight with grilled halibut with purchased pineapple salsa. As a side, I made Skinnytaste’s Yellow Rice. Perfect with the fish, I highly recommend it (minus cilantro of course because, blech). Her cooking method made perfect fluffy rice and I made my own spice blend (minus coriander because CORIANDER IS CILANTRO!). And I didn’t have any.

We had beautiful weather for Easter weekend but not to worry, it will be 40 degrees again by Thursday. That doesn’t mean I didn’t just buy clearance garden markers at Target and started planning. And place cards for next Easter. And gold plastic cutlery. Stupid dollar section.

Have a great week everyone!

Easter Guinea Pigs

No, not actual guinea pigs for Easter dinner, how horrific! We were just pig sittin’ (and yes, when you are pig sittin’, you don’t use the second g). But I’m talking about the humans who tested my practice Easter dishes. Though the thought did scare the April Fool’s Day donuts!

So for one of the practice Easters, I made up my own ham glaze with 1 10 ounce jar peach preserves and 1 tablespoon each brown sugar and dijon mustard. Now this was a tiny spiral ham for only 5 people and it still took approximately a jillion hours to get to the safe internal temperature. The glaze was great, but I think I’m gonna start the Easter ham this Thursday.

I might have accidentally bought this bunny with a light up egg. Ok, two. But, you’ll see come actual Easter, there is….a theme! (name that movie).

I made Cooking Light’s Artichoke and Spinach STUFFING. Yes, that’s right, stuffing. Because any reasonable 10 year old would know that if this were called a strata, it would be disgusting. And heaven forbid if one called it bread pudding, then it would be straight-up G-ROSS. But when it is a stuffing, well then, we’re in familiar territory. And it was delightful.

The only thing I did differently was used a mix of Gruyere and Fontina cheeses because that’s what I had handy. And I used canned artichokes hearts and just chopped them up a little, which I would definitely suggest.

Ok, let’s talk about this amazing simple Asparagus and Arugula Salad, also from Cooking Light. Just greens (I used Spring mix), asparagus and hard boiled egg.

I grated one egg over the salad, tossed, and then grated another one. Also added 1/2 teaspoon mustard to the dressing. Don’t be tempted to add more to the dressing, I had thought about dill but then was very glad I didn’t add it. It is luscious as is.

Kevin doesn’t like asparagus so he picked it out, but still liked the salad. I guess I could make it with other green vegetables instead like peas (Kevin – Nope), pea pods (Kevin – Nope), broccoli (Kevin – Nope). But why mess with a classic?

Does anyone want a cocktail? Will be making the Porch Punch from Imbibe Magazine though I cut the proportions down significantly from the 21 cups of tea and 2 bottles of bourbon! How many people does Imbibe Magazine’s porch hold?

Porch Punch

WHAT YOU NEED
5 cups boiling water
3 Earl Grey tea bags
1 mint tea bag
1 cup sugar
.25 ounces orange bitters
.125 ounces orange blossom water
juice of one lime
lemon and lime slices

WHAT YOU DO
Put the sugar and tea bags in the boiling water and stir to dissolve sugar. Steep the tea about 7 minutes then strain into a pitcher and cool. When cool, add the bitters, orange water and lime juice. Refrigerate until ready. Serve with lemon and lime slices over ice. If you had fresh mint, that would be a lovely garnish, but don’t go out and get it just for this.

When buying the boys Easter shirts at TJ Maxx I might have also accidentally purchased these rose gold sandals.

A Delayed Easter Recap

It’s been a long two weeks. It all started Thursday night (Maundy Thursday – who knew?!) with a work-related ladies poker party. Once we got someone from the Audit Department in there, the rules were official…and then I started to lose. But completely fun nonetheless.

cards

We moved immediately into Good Friday Pizza Night with a visit from Grandma and our Duxbury Guilfoiles.

dux Then onto, of course, The Block’s Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday.

egghuntsign Here they come.

egghunt1

And there they go.

egghunt2 Remember that scene in the movie Parenthood where Rick Moranis’ kid knows French and Steve Martin’s kid is all “he likes to hit things with his head” with a bucket on his head? Yeah, well, welcome to my world.

buckethead Easter was a lot of the same food as seen in past Easter posts.

sign

Hint: Pasta Blanco is just plain butter noodles but thanks to Uncle Tom I learned how to class the joint up a bit. But there was the addition of this Crunchy Spring Salad from The Kitchn.

salad

Super bright and springy. I added thinly sliced carrots too for color. Of course, we busted out some new desserts. Well, there were three planned, and two more showed up. As it shall be. I mean really, there are 30 people, you need at least 5 desserts right?

sign2

If you need something simple, this Chocolate Toffee Trifle from Or So She Says is super easy as you used boxed cake mix and Heath pieces.

dessert Bunny Garden Pudding (bottom right) is just bunny Peeps in Smitten Kitchen’s Best Chocolate Pudding Ever in graham cracker tart shells. Some of the bunnies fainted from the deliciousness.

And lest we forget a new cocktail! Grapefruit Daiquiris from How Sweet It Is are delicious, not too sweet and would be fantastic if the weather here ever warms up (to quote my friend Laura T. with respect to this weather – “Mother Nature, I think you are drunk”).

final1459975419941

Table favors were teeny, tiny succulents from Mountain Crest Gardens in bunnies.

succulent

And my new purple highball (yep, I said highball) glasses from Crate and Barrel.

table1 table3

And then, of course, our own McNamara/Guilfoile/Kuhn Easter Egg Hunt with these fabulous ladies.

mia

alfab

molly Egg won’t fit.

eggdontfit

But D don’t care.

And all the cousins in a selfie taking process (which makes for a better picture when they don’t know we’re watching).

selfie

I don’t mean to bring the post down, but we ended on a sad note Monday when my step-father Jim passed away. What can you say about a guy that has five daughters and marries my mom who has four more?

McGovern wed

Only that he was a strong, strong man who loved us all very much. We will miss you Jim.

And so we don’t end that way, and now this.

And this is picture of me trying to write this blog post tonight with “help”.

help

We’re going to a trivia contest fundraiser this weekend that involves TV related costumes (which was NOT disclosed to me in advance of me writing the check). So you have those pictures to look forward to.

Have a great rest of the week.

Happy Spring Break and Easter Happenings

Hello all. We’re back from a fun, but lacking in sleep, trip to the Wisconsin Dells. There was:

Surfing

surfing

Lazy rivering

Partying (Hulk say, “Drinks too small”)

And…sitting inside the waterpark watching Spongebob.

But a good time was had by all.

Then of course the 9^th Avenue Egg Hunt:

Then, right on to Easter for 30 people at my house. Yikes.

Main dishes were my standard roast salmon (see prior Easterpost) and glazed ham using The Pioneer Woman’s glaze with its secret ingredient:

This glaze is for you, Fake Sister.

Also made a wonderful Melon Salad with Prosciutto from NotWithout Salt

And the rest of the sides were asparagus, green salad, scalloped potatoes, lemon jello (even better when you eat it with your hands, says Baby D):

and of course, the spécialité de la maison – buttered noodles.

For dessert: Lemon Cupcakes from The Alchemist with Fresh Blueberry Frosting from White on Rice Couple. I am not responsible for the use of the word “moist” in the recipe’s title.

Look at the rest of the cute desserts from the oh-so-talented Ellen Anderson

The boys and I tried to make dyed Rice Krispie easter eggs. Essentially just use the Rice Krispie treat recipe, add food dye to the marshmallows when stirring. Note to file: in the future, do not try to make purple marshmallow krispie eggs unless you realllllly like gray food. Do not blame Ellen for the gray eggs!

And the Easter drink this year was Pineapple Sangria from How Sweet It Is.

The Tables

For grown up table favors I went with the pretty blue and purple Mason jars as vases.

For grown up table #2, I busted out my napkin folding skills.

For the kids’ table, little Easter take out food boxes with Game of Thrones dragon eggs. Fine, they aren’t GoT but are called dinosaur eggs (with a tiny dinosaur inside) on Amazon. But the Mother of Dragons can dream, can’t she?

By the way, I accidentally went to TJ Maxx/Homegoods last week and bought pretty dishes. What?! You never see twelve of anything at HomeGoods. It was a sign from above. And when my sister went to her TJ Maxx/Homegoods to look for extra plates for me, she found the mirror she had been looking for. Divine intervention indeed.

Mother Nature again cooperated beautifully for the egg hunt.

Even the dyed eggs got dressed up.

And in the end, it was good day to relax. On a couch. In the yard. Seriously, why won’t anyone on Craig’s List buy this couch. Best offer. Text me. Drummer boy not included.

Happy Easter everyone!

McNamara/Kuhn Easter 2014

It’s Easter, so you know what that means: Banana Dolphins!

(courtesy of Aunt Kate)

Thank you everyone for a lovely Easter and a big shout-out to Mother Nature for her cooperation. Continue reading →

Lucky Rhino

For the recipes and pictures I promised to send, but never do.