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Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Easter stories

April 7, 2013 by Mary Frances 15 Comments

Easter table set with sugar eggs, orange tulips and antique Easter toys.Why is it that Easter is the shortest holiday, that one Sunday only? All the days leading up to it are sad and then it’s just that one day and then back to work on Monday. Thanksgiving has the long weekend afterwards. Christmas has the week between Christmas and New Years. Even Passover gets at least two days of attention, but Easter is one.

Easter was my mother’s favorite holiday. She was a devout Catholic so no wonder. I remember her scrubbing the house spic‘n span in the days leading up to it, washing windows and all the sheer drapes, sending the rest out to the cleaners. That fresh clean smell was intoxicating to me, so memorable even now, her Spring cleaning was deep. And then Easter. She even had me wear a hat when I was little, a new one every year, along with her new hat for church. She passed away the Monday after Easter, that year in April, 1995. One of her last words to me were, “Did you color eggs?” She wanted to make sure I was keeping up traditions with with my boys. She used to color eggs the old fashioned Polish way with onion skins. (Don’t ask me how!) Well that year, did I color eggs?? I colored six dozen of them! We lived in New Jersey at the time and two of my brothers were visiting, each of them having two boys each, plus our two, and our neighbor across the street (they had six kids) always held a neighborhood Easter egg hunt and you were required to deliver to them a dozen eggs for each child hunting. So there you have it – six dozen eggs – yikes! Easter table set with Pierre D

We had 9 people for Easter dinner this year, a lovely party with extended family, roommates and girlfriends. One guest saw my table and said, “Oooo what fun!” Exactly what I loved to hear. But I didn’t color eggs this year. With no little ones around, I don’t, but I do like to decorate the table with the antique Easter baskets I inherited from my mother. The rectangular box even plays “Here Comes Peter Cottontail.” It skips a few notes around the hippity-hoppity part but we all get a kick out of it every year. The food ended up to be a bit of a pork fest.

My sister-in-law and her mother brought the appetizers – deviled eggs and a red pepper dip with crudités and delicious homemade sesame crackers made with almond flour – gluten free!

We started our dinner with a yummy traditional Easter Polish soup that our youngest son made. It was vegetable broth based with bacon and two different kinds of garlicky Polish sausage. The broth was light and lemony, perfectly paired with a New York Finger Lakes Riesling. We then moved on to a baked, organic free-range ham (from Mike and Cindy’s Thunderhill farm in upstate NY) with a clove, honey, mustard and dark rum glaze, Italian beans with pancetta, chrzan, and roasted asparagus. The chrzan was rousingly potent with German horseradish from Greenpoint, Brooklyn and the beans were such a hit. I believe everyone had seconds on everything except the asparagus. I got a thank you note on Friday from a guest requesting the bean recipe and describing them as “silky”, which is apt. You kinda want to wrap yourself in them. I promised this recipe to you all after Christmas and I have yet to get off my butt and do it. It is complicated, which is why I haven’t done it, but I promise I will soon. My brother, Steve brought some amazing California Pinot Noir, (rare and unavailable outside of the vineyard in California – he and his wife just spent eight weeks nearby as test living arrangement) which paired beautifully with the meal. For dessert, I made a sour cream topped cheesecake and some chocolate dipped strawberries. One guest said the top of the cheesecake was so smooth, it looked like a skating rink! She took the one piece left over home – along with the jelly beans. One problem here, I was having such a good time, I forgot to take photos of the food!Eadter table set with sugar eggs, tulips and antique Easter toys.

Hope you had a fantastic celebration, whether it was Passover or Easter, filled with family, friends and LOVE.

Filed Under: Dinner Tagged With: antique Easter toys, cheesecake, chrzan, Easter stories, Easter Sunday dinner, ham, Italian beans, jelly beans, silky beans

Christmas dinner 2012

December 29, 2012 by Mary Frances 15 Comments

Crown roast of pork with sauteed apples, Italian beans, and roasted asparagus on an antique Wedgewood plate on a beautiful tableclothI wish I could have shared this with you before Christmas, just like they do in the magazines. I hope now this may guide you and be helpful for New Year’s Eve or a New Year’s Day dinner party.

A big holiday like this requires a big presentation. Last year, I made a whole beef tenderloin. This year I did a crown roast of pork. Too big really for our party of eight, but I do have some big eaters, and one of my sons and one guest had four chops each! And then the leftovers were divine. I think I’ve already mentioned that I really enjoy and truly taste the nuances of a huge meal like this the next day, as leftovers. The busyness of working to get it all right, the timing and making sure each guest is happy, preoccupies me during the main meal. However, even I could tell, this was darn good!! Impressive and beautiful to boot!

But truly, the best part about a big celebration like this is that my whole family pitches in and we work together to pull it off. They helped to set up the bar area, chop herbs and clean vegetables and yes, even helped with the clean up in a major way. Our last guests left a little after midnight. Then all four of us worked to clean up and then we stayed up talking until 3 am! For my husband and me, spending time like this with our boys is the most precious of all.

One of our guests at our Passover celebration evened remarked about how well we all worked together as a family, to get the dinner on the table and make our guests feel comfortable. I feel proud that our boys have learned to entertain and that they enjoy sharing their love of good food. Serving and sharing love and food makes everyone happy – what could be better?

Here’s my whole menu:

– Straight up martinis with great olives for many of us at cocktail hour
– Homemade cheddar cheese straws – finally I found a stellar recipe for these from The New York Times – make ahead and they will keep for a while – recipe to come
– Texas smoked salmon tartare on blue corn chips
– Warm artichoke dip with red pepper, celery, fennel strips and crostini crackers
– Bowls of mixed olives, toasted corn nuts and lightly salted cashews

THE DINNER:
– Roasted butternut squash soup with bourbon, served with homemade Polish bread
– Crown roast of pork with fennel, sage, garlic and lemon
– Italian beans – the best – recipe to come!
– Sautéed apples in a little butter with cinnamon, nutmeg and a touch of lemon
– Roasted asparagus with olive oil and lemon zest

– Homemade Christmas cookies – all recipes are here on the blog plus special bakery cookies
– Fantastic coffee from our older son

I’m noticing here that it might seem as though I had a lot of lemon going on, but the meal did not taste that way at all. Everything worked together beautifully and was delicious!!
Crown roast of pork with fennel, lemon and garlic paste/marinade.Crown roast of pork with succulent chop cut from first cut.CROWN ROAST OF PORK WITH FENNEL, LEMON AND GARLIC – adapted from Melissa Clark and The New York Times
–
serves 12 – 16

2 heaping tsp. fennel seeds
Rosemary leaves from 4 – 5 bushy sprigs
7 – 8 large cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
1/3 cup fresh sage leaves and tender sprigs
Lemon peel strips from 1 lemon – thinly peel the lemon with a vegetable peeler
2 tsp. fennel pollen (optional)
1 heaping tbs. plus 1 pinch coarse kosher salt
1 heaping tsp. cracked black pepper
7 tbs. extra-­virgin olive oil
1 crown roast of pork (18 ribs)
4 large onions, peeled and sliced into ¼” slices

In small skillet, toast fennel seeds until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes.

Place toasted fennel seeds, rosemary, garlic, sage, lemon peel, fennel pollen (if using) and all of the salt and pepper in a food processor. Pulse processor to chop everything up, then add olive oil slowly, and blend until the mixture becomes a paste, scraping down sides occasionally with a rubber spatula.

Wipe pork very dry with paper towels, then smear the herb paste all over the meat, making sure to coat the middle and the crevices on the sides of the chops.

Wrap in plastic wrap and let marinate for 24 hours in the refrigerator.

Bring the meat to room temperature for at least 1.5 hours before roasting.

Heat oven to 450 degrees.

Put a thin film of olive oil in the bottom of your roasting pan and spread it around with your fingers. Place onion slices down to form a rack for your roast. Drizzle a bit of olive oil on top of the onions and salt and pepper them. Place your roast on top and roast for 20 minutes at 450 degrees, then turn heat down to 350 and continue roasting until meat registers 145 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours longer. Let rest 20 minutes before carving.
Sauteed apples in butter with cinnamon, nutmeg and lemon; roasted asparagus with olive oil and lemon in a red holiday bowl.Christmas/holiday cookie platter with Cognac sugarplums, hello Dolly Squares, date bars, sugar cookies, pecan crisps, and special bakery cookiesStarting at eight o’clock we enjoyed Cognac sugarplums, pecan crisps, Hello Dolly squares, cut-out sugar cookies, date bars and special bakery cookies that a guest brought. With a great cup of joe, this is a very nice way to end a big meal.

Filed Under: Dinner, Meat Tagged With: butternut squash soup, Christmas dinner, cognac sugarplums, crown roast of pork, date bars, fennel pollen, fennel seeds, Hello Dolly Squares, holiday dinner, Italian beans, pecan crisps, roasted asparagus with olive oil and lemon, sauteed apples, sugar cookies

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Mary Frances

Mary Frances

Spread love through cooking.

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