The Elf Blog

Do Entertaining and Dieting Mix?

Last month, I discussed my diet. I still hate it, but I'm having good success so far. But I really wondered if I would still be able to throw parties without destroyng the diet. I love entertaining. It's a part of me. I'd hate having to give it up -- more than I hate limiting my pizza intake.

On Easter, I'm attempting to host brunch without blowing the diet. I modified a few of my go-to recipes and pulled others from the Cooking Light website. I'm doing several salads instead of several desserts. In shopping today, I also took much more care in limiting the quantities of ingredients that I purchased. Hopefully, that will mean that I won't have tons of leftovers that will tempt me to pick. I've also decided that whatever I have left will either go into the freezer, in to work, or into my lunchbox within the first few days of next week.

I'll report back how it goes.

Easter Brunch

I'll be hosting Easter brunch this year.  Here's the menu I have planned:

Glazed boneless ham
Quiche (spinach and cheese, roasted red pepper and asparagus, quiche Lorraine)
Green salad
Pasta salad
Ambrosia
Devilled eggs
Hot cross buns
Chocolate nut eggs
Cherry cheesecake
Meyer lemon tart with lavendar whipped cream
Mimosas

I may decide against the hot cross buns and replace it with a fruit salad as a healthier option.

Planning Ahead

With Easter and Passover about two weeks away, this weekend is an excellent time to plan your celebrations.  If you are hosting a meal or meals, you'll need to finalize your guest list(s) and menu(s).  Also, schedule in the tasks you'll need to do between now and then so you'll find it easier to stay on top of things without becoming overwhelmed.

When planning yuor menus, keep in mind the light fresh tastes available now that spring is here.  Consider a trip to the farmers' market to see what is in season.  Talk to the farmers about what you can expect in the next few weeks and what is looking especially good.  The farmers know their crops and they want to do all they can to help you enjoy the bounty.

Easter Foods - Part 4

And now for the last installment in our discussion of Easter foods: breads and desserts.

Traditional Easter breads are typically made with lotsof eggs and often have hardboiled eggs woven into their braiding.  Another traditional Easter bread is hot cross buns -- sort of a cross betwenn yeast bread and sticky buns.

When it comes to dessert, you can't go wrong with chocolate.  A nice display of chocolate covered eggs and chocolate bunnies on Easter grass makes a lovely centerpiece that you can eat!  For a healthy option, you can serve mixed fresh berries. 

I am also a huge fan of pastries shaped like bunnies.  You can use frozen bread dough to make dinner rolls shaped liked bunnies.  You can use sugar cookie dough to make a huge bunny cookie or use two cake rounds to make a bunny cake.  

To make the cookie, divide the dough into two equal sections.  Make a ball of one half and flatten it to make the body.  Divide the other half into a half and two quarters.  The half gets rolled into a ball to make the head and the quarters are shaped into the ears.  Place the four pieces on a very large cookie sheet and bake as usual.  Cool completely.

To make the cake, use your favorite cake recipe to make two nine inch rounds.  After they have cooled completely, one round will be the face and the other round will be divided into ears and a bowtie.

In both cases, frost the bunny shape with the store-bought or homemade icing of your choice.  If you'd like, you can top the frosting with coconut.  The coconut can be colored with bits of food coloring.  I use pink for the inner ears, blue for the bowtie, and green for grass surrounding the bunny.  Create the face and decorate the bunny using chocolate chips or jelly beans with licorice whips for whiskers.

The hard part will be cutting into it!

Easter Foods - Part 4

And now for the last installment in our discussion of Easter foods: breads and desserts.

Traditional Easter breads are typically made with lotsof eggs and often have hardboiled eggs woven into their braiding.  Another traditional Easter bread is hot cross buns -- sort of a cross betwenn yeast bread and sticky buns.

When it comes to dessert, you can't go wrong with chocolate.  A nice display of chocolate covered eggs and chocolate bunnies on Easter grass makes a lovely centerpiece that you can eat!  For a healthy option, you can serve mixed fresh berries. 

I am also a huge fan of pastries shaped like bunnies.  You can use frozen bread dough to make dinner rolls shaped liked bunnies.  You can use sugar cookie dough to make a huge bunny cookie or use two cake rounds to make a bunny cake.  

To make the cookie, divide the dough into two equal sections.  Make a ball of one half and flatten it to make the body.  Divide the other half into a half and two quarters.  The half gets rolled into a ball to make the head and the quarters are shaped into the ears.  Place the four pieces on a very large cookie sheet and bake as usual.  Cool completely.

To make the cake, use your favorite cake recipe to make two nine inch rounds.  After they have cooled completely, one round will be the face and the other round will be divided into ears and a bowtie.

In both cases, frost the bunny shape with the store-bought or homemade icing of your choice.  If you'd like, you can top the frosting with coconut.  The coconut can be colored with bits of food coloring.  I use pink for the inner ears, blue for the bowtie, and green for grass surrounding the bunny.  Create the face and decorate the bunny using chocolate chips or jelly beans with licorice whips for whiskers.

The hard part will be cutting into it!

Easter Foods - Part 3

Today, our food attention turns to the non-meat dishes.

When I am hosting an Easter brunch, I always make at least 2 kinds of quiche.  Rich in eggs, cream, and cheese, they are the opposite of Lent's deprivations.  They are also a good option for vegetarian guests.  If you have leftover quiche, it's good hot or cold for a light lunch or dinner. The portions should be relatively small because it packs a calric and cholesterol punch.

All quiche has the same base, a deep dish pie crust (store bought or homemade), shredded cheese (I typically use Swiss or Jarlsberg, but you can use what you like), and a cream and egg mix. Then you mix in the vegetables of your choice. (If you don't want to keep it vegetarian, diced ham and crumbled cooked bacon make good fillings.)  Defrosted and drained frozen spinach is a good add in.  Broccoli is also good.  One of my favorite combinations is asparagus and roasted red peppers.  Green peppers and diced onion is another good combination.  Basically, any veggies that taste good together generally will be good in a quiche.  If you use fresh vegetables, steam them lightly before you add them to the quiche so that they will be tender.

When cooking a quiche, I strongly recommend putting a pan underneath.  I've scraped way too much quiche off the bottom of my oven.

Now, on to other side dishes.  Think about produce available in early spring:  new potatoes, baby carrots, asparagus, and peas.  Asparagus is lovely steamed lightly.  If you want to serve it cold, steam until very tender and top with a reduced orange juice and some zest.  Peas are just lovely cooked lightly and topped with some butter.  Same with baby carrots which should be served whole. 

New potatoes taste wonderful roasted.  Scrub them and cut them in half.  If they are on the large side, in quarters.)  I mix them with a smidge of oil, some crushed garlic. coarsely chopped rosemary, and salt and pepper.  No fuss, no muss, and lovely flavor.

If you dyed Easter eggs, you'll have lots of hard-boiled eggs sitting around with nothing to do.  Devilled eggs are a quick and easy way to use them.  I mix the yolks with 2 parts mayonnaise and one part salad dressing (like Miracle Whip), plus a small amount of dijon mustard.  You can use the same base mixed with chopped hardboiled eggs to make egg salad.

Now that the main course is finished, tomorrow, we'll look at dessert!

Easter Foods - Part 2

Yesterday we talked about some of the reasons for Easter food traditions.  Today, we'll look at how you can translate some of those traditions to your table.

The traditional Easter meats are ham and lamb.  If you want to serve ham, I strongly recommend buying a pre-cooked ham so you only have to heat it through.  Much, much faster.  A ham needs a glaze of some sort.  A glaze can be as simple as ginger ale.  I like a mix of flavors in my glaze so I like to do one with brown sugar, whole grain mustard, and cider vinegar.  Another simple glaze is apricot jam.  To allow the glaze to penetrate the ham, I like to score the top in a diamond pattern, then brush the glaze over it.  I brush more glaze on several times as I cook.

I don't cook or eat lamb as a rule, but I have made it in the past.  You can go classic with a roast accompanied by mint jelly.  If you decide on a crown roast, ask the butcher to french the bones.  You can also roast or grill the lamb.  I like to do that in a marinade of garlic, rosemary, olive oil, and lemon.  Make extra marinade and you can brush it on as it cooks. (Never re-use the marinade in which the meat rested.  It isn't safe.)  If you go with grilling, you could do a Mediterranean feast.  I recommend an accompanying salad of Persian cucumbers, tomatoes, and red onion dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, and mint.

Another thing you might want to do for a brunch is set up a charcuterie and cheese board.  Some interesting cheeses, some kielbasa, sopreseta, salami.  Add some artisan breads and good mustards and you have lovely option for your guests.

Tomorrow, we'll look at the non-meat foods.

Easter Foods - Part 1

I've always thought that Easter is the perfect day for brunch.  So many classic Easter foods are perfect for brunch.  Plus, a brunch buffet invites lounging about chatting and basking in Easter joy.

In years past, the Lenten regulations followed by much of the West were far more strict than oday's restrictions.  All non-Sundays and solemnities in Lent were days of fasting and all meat and foods made with eggs or dairy products were forbidden.  (Permission to consume fish kept this from being a vegan diet.)  For the most part, people ate bread, grains (such as oats and barley), and root vegetables left over from fall.  The fasting helped to stretch food supplies.

So, the first meal of Easter was a time to eat the forbidden foods again.  The meats most commonly available were lamb (since ewes give birth in late winter) and ham (since hams had completed curing during the long winter months).  In Slavic countries, sausages like kielbasa had finished smoking and were ready to eat. Since cows were back in milk and chickens were laying once again, eggs and dairy products were again available. 

Thus, the traditional Easter foods of ham and lamb and rich Easter breads and cheeses mark the end of Lent and the new growing season.

Tomorrow, we'll look at how we can reflect these traditions in a modern Easter brunch.

The Date of Easter

This may be a little late, but I like my holidays to fit the seasons.  The Fourth of July should be hot and sunny.  Halloween should be crisp and cool.  Christmas should be cold and, preferably, snowy.  Easter should be spring-like, with sunny skies, flowering trees, and a hint of warmth in the air.

Unfortunately, because Easter was so early this year, it just doesn't feel like spring yet.  In some places, it was snowing last week. 

That leads to some comments on why Easter was so early and why Easter and Passoer are so far apart this year.  Usually, Easter and Passover are close together. In fact, for Orthodox Christians, they are always linked. For other Christians, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. This year, the spring equinox was on March 20th and the full moon was the 21st, so the 23rd was the first Sunday, making it Easter. Because of the role the equinox plays, the key determinant of the date is the sun. The Jewish calendar is lunar in orientation, which explains why things get out of sync periodically since a lunar month and a solar month differ in length.

Easter won't be this early again for 100 years.  Next year, spring will be in full force when Easter arrives!

A Last-Minute Easter Treat

For those who want something simple to do with kids, you can make a huge bunny shaped sugar cookie with refrigerated dough, canned frosting, and candy decorations.

You'll need a very large baking sheet. I've had some luck with a foil covered pizza stone. You can also stretch foil over two cookie sheets, but that requires coordination.

You just take the tube of dough and slice it in half. The first half you roll into a ball and then press it out into a circle to make the face. Divide the second half into two and shape the ears. Press the ears onto the top of the circle.

Bake it at 350 for 10-12 minutes and then check to see if it's done. It usually takes a bit longer to bake because it's one big cookie. After it's cooled, frost and make a bunny face using licorice, jelly beans, or other candy decorations.