Day 27 - "Celebrating" Easter

I find it peculiar that I "celebrate" religious holidays for religions that I don't practice.  It is Easter Sunday and I prepared a feast of roast lamb, freshly made flatbreads, three kinds of salad, and a ginger cake topped with vanilla pastry cream and rhubarb.  I have not lived within easy driving distance of my family for 20+ years and am accustomed to spending holidays alone with Rick.  For years, I was embarrassed that I didn't do more for holidays, that I didn't have something special to do.  I think that by making my own special meal, it helps me to connect with my family as we have that shared experience of food to talk about.  Rick and I do now celebrate Thanksgiving and Easter with friends, but of course, not this year.

I think also that I continue to prepare a special meal for holidays because it connects me to my past and my family.  My fondest memories of Easter are from my aunt and uncle's house, where Uncle Jim would grill chicken out in a snowstorm...

 

...and Cousin Emily, Molly Dog, and I would play in the snow (this is Duluth, MN after all!)...

...leaving Cousin Sam hiding in a canvas bag! 

And so it's fitting that on this Easter Sunday, I am surrounded by snow yet again. 

Snow-covered garlic plants

In anticipation of home-grown artichokes, we had a salad of artichoke hearts, radishes from the root cellar, and sweet onions, tossed with a chimichurri sauce made last fall.

We still have leeks, cabbage, potatoes, and radishes in the root cellar!

It is time to put those artichoke seedlings, biennials, outside to trick them into having gone through winter, in hopes that they will send up their coveted flower stalk this summer.


                                          

I'm quite disappointed that on Easter, of all days, my pita breads failed to rise.  Instead, we have flatbreads wraps, still perfectly good for scooping all kinds of yummy foods.

And the lamb.  In my family, ham has always been the traditional Easter meat, but I forgot to take it out of the freezer in a timely fashion, so with lamb being on sale, that is what we are having.  Marinated in ample garlic, lemon, olive oil, and salt for the last two days, it slow-roasted for the rest of the afternoon after the morning's baking had been done.

And dessert!  Rhubarb is poking its nose out of the ground and will be ready for harvesting before I know it!

I wanted to do something with the rhubarb I'd canned way back in 2015!  I've had cake on the brain, so was thinking upside down cake, then moved to poundcake with rhubarb on top, and settled on ginger cake with the pastry cream and rhubarb!  Wanted to make buttercream, but felt intimidated.

Or maybe what this is all about is just an excuse to cook and eat a lot of good food!