Easter has not changed but Easter dinner has.
When my children were young, the week before Easter was a busy one with plans for helping out the Easter bunny deliver baskets, plans for getting church clothes ready, and planning for Sunday dinner to be special but also much of it made earlier in the week as to be ready not long after returning home from Easter services.
I no longer have the stamina for all of that but I sure do miss it. And those the Easter baskets were hidden for.
I have a general idea what I'll fix for Sunday dinner this year but last year, for just the two of us, I made Jacques Pepin's Poulet a la Crème featured by blog friend Sandra on her At Table--Maison de Jardin. Here's a link to her post where it's found.
It was delicious! I think the fresh tarragon added so much to the taste. Our tarragon has come back every year and is ready for clipping from already. It's planted in the ground inside an old terracotta chimney pipe.
I made a salad to go with our chicken and rice but later found a recipe in the April/May issue of Garden & Gun that became a favorite of ours and would be perfect with it.
Here's a link to Garden & Gun's recipe for Simple Chile and Honey Asparagus.
And for the dessert I'm most craving, the rice pudding I made at Christmas from Ruth Reichel's My Kitchen Years.
Reichl used the famous Longchamp's recipe that was her father's favorite dessert. I followed it exactly except that I doubled the raisins and soaked them the night before in cognac.
It was so good that RH ignored his lactose intolerance and had two servings. The next night he ignored it again. The third night he regretfully had to say no and it was all mine.
[It's a well known fact that rice pudding is even better ice cold.]
I have been trying to catch up on appointments that were postponed during the years of pandemic. I went to the dentist on Monday for the first cleaning in ten months and on Wednesday to get new glasses and computer glasses ordered. My eyesight has grown worse and when everything I try to read on my cell phone is doubled I have about given up using it for anything other than phone calls. I'm really looking forward to getting them. And next is a dermatologist visit. My doctor retired and I've put off seeing a new one but after two skin cancer surgeries over the years it's time I took care of it.
And then there's the spring cleaning list that needs to be whittled down.
But first I'll focus tomorrow on what to cook for Easter dinner. And try to complete the Easter centerpiece I started four days ago. But I no longer need to help the Easter bunny make Easter baskets, which by the way was what I did in a local store when I was a teenager. And I'll watch Easter service online from the beautiful Covenant Presbyterian church in Nashville instead of attending church in person. Our youngest son used to take me to special choral and orchestra concerts at this church before he got married and they and the magnificent pipe organ were some of the most beautiful music I'd ever heard in person.
And now I'll stop rambling and wish everyone a blessed Easter.
