Happy Easter

                                     

Easter has always been my favorite holiday. I don't know why exactly. Perhaps the pastel colors, the bunnies and chicks, the old fashioned Beatrix Potter Victorian/Edwardian gentility of it all. Whatever it is, I look forward to it every year, planning the menu weeks ahead of time, retrieving the carefully packed decorations (some of them as old as me!) from the garage and deciding where to put this bunny and that chick, and looking forward, with all the delight of my child self to putting together my Easter ensemble, from hat to gloves and everything in between.

I grew up in the deep South and every Easter our grandmother, who was a Belle until her last breath, made our Easter dresses in secret, yellow for the ginger baby (me) and pink for my flaxen-haired sister and presented them to us on Easter morning along with new white shoes, gloves, and straw hats trimmed with ribbons and flowers to match our dresses. We were then dressed and taken to church, returning afterwards to beautiful Easter baskets and a delicious lunch that lasted all afternoon.

Although I have no little girls of my own, but having been a Nanny for several years before I decided to become a Chef, I have tried to continue these traditions in other ways and with other families. This year was my ninth as the head of TheChamCham's household staff and our second as a couple and I had made plans for weeks but my mother decided to move last month and wanted me to supervise everything. I am the "organizer" of the family and my sister conveniently lives in France, so it fell to me. The packing and move were uneventful and I stayed for two weeks to see that the unpacking, arranging and decorating were done to my mother's satisfaction. I then returned home and continued my Easter plans. There is a saying (adapted from the Robert Burns poem "To a Mouse") ............... 

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

My mother took a fall last week and I was packing instead of filling Easter baskets. Seeing my disappointment (I love my mother dearly but her timing has always been...ironic to say the least.              I have resolved not to tell her when we choose our wedding date because I know she will "accidentally" lock herself out of her house that day and I will have to board a plane wearing my wedding gown to go and let her in) TheChamCham very sweetly offered to go with me so that we could still celebrate Easter together (when they made him they most definitely broke the mold) When we arrived there were no decorations, her grocery order had not arrived, and her maid had gone to spend the holiday with her family in another city. The next day was Easter. 

TheChamCham calls me Mini Martha (as in Stewart). I have no such illusions. I also do not have assistants to help me. No offence to Ms. Stewart, but no self-respecting Southern woman would allow someone else to set her table AND hard boiling and dying 250 eggs for an Easter egg hunt with only 28 children and being nonchalant about not finding all of them is a sin! I could not help but think of No Kid Hungry when I read that. 

By the afternoon the groceries had arrived and been put away, I had raided my mother's sewing baskets for ribbon and assorted trimmings, blew the contents out of a dozen eggs, fired up the glue gun and we had an Easter tree

and a centerpiece, I stayed up most of the night making lunch and filling Easter baskets for my mother and TCC and fell asleep at the kitchen table. I once threw together an Oscar party with only two days notice. It turned out surprisingly well, but working under pressure is very exhausting and requires too much caffeine, which in turn causes all sorts of problems.

Despite all of this, I will remember Easter 2017 as one of the nicest ever. Lunch was enjoyed by all, ( so much so that I had to make more deviled eggs the next day to take the photo because all 36 halves had disappeared between lunch and breakfast. I cannot imagine who could have eaten them. Or can I?)
 Later, we watched the charming (and be warned: SAD) "Miss Potter", the James Stewart classic "Harvey", and "Easter Parade".  My mother and TheChamCham, who do not love each other but who both love me, were actually very cordial to one another for the entire weekend of our visit. My mother is healing nicely and has inquired as to whether WE will be visiting her for Mother's Day. I reserve the right to not answer that question for two weeks.

Oven fried chicken (trying to eat a little bit lighter these days. TheChamCham is a breast man, chicken breasts that is, but my mother's freezer is full of nothing but drumsticks. I told TheChamCham that he would have to settle for legs. He settled for four) potato salad, Waldorf salad, cornbread, sweet tea (in a jar, yes. It should be a Mason jar of course, but strangely I could not find even one in my mother's kitchen and had to settle for a jelly jar! Shudder. And yes, the jar should be above the knife but it took me so long to find it that I was frazzled and did not notice until I was uploading the pictures. I am simply mortified but I was not going to redo the pictures. Pobody`s Nerfect.) ,pickled red beets and coconut cake with fresh strawberries. Deviled eggs (pink from the pickled beet juice).I think they look more like Easter that way.

                                Happy Easter from Tess d'Urberville and TheChamCham.