Sharon’s Egg Bake

A dear lady in my Bible study brought this classic egg dish to a recent brunch, and it was so delicious that I asked her for the recipe.  She graciously shared it with me–it’s a winner for brunches and potlucks.

Tuscan Pesto Chicken Panino

At 5:50 p.m., my husband asked me, “Is there a plan for dinner?” And I stared blankly at him. Thirty minutes later, we put this on the table:

I will post the things we put on it, but I do hope you realize the point of this post is to show you how to produce something fabulous with what you have on hand (and it WAS fabulous–eyes-rolling-back-in-my-head fabulous!) You could substitute any number of ingredients and still end up with something delish.

Post-Chinese food conversation

So we were driving home after a scrumptious dinner at PeiWei Asian Diner, one of our current favorites.  Ian, age 6, had taken a fortune cookie to go.  He asked me to read the fortune to him, and it was, “You will become a great philanthropist in your later years.”

“What’s a philanthropist?” he wanted to know.

“Well, a philanthropist is someone who likes to give a lot of their money to places that help people.”

“Awww!” he said, “I only have FORTY-NINE BUCKS!”

Marinade for grilling meat and more

It was brought to my attention (thanks, Mom!) that we have never posted a marinade for grilling meat here. That is clearly an omission of major proportions which requires immediate attention. So without further ado, here’s a bit of rambling in general about marinating, and instructions for the marinade most frequently used in my house. (I’ll let Barb chime in with her own flashes of brilliance on the subject.)

Ham Calzones

Wanna know what’s cooking in Laura’s kitchen tonight? (In Minnesota, where we are getting what I HOPE will be the last blizzard of the season–supposed to be up to 9″ of white by morning!) We are making Ham Calzones. (”Calzone” is the Italian word for pants, and these little inside out pizzas are called calzones because they supposedly are shaped like the traditional Italian-style trousers.) I’ve got a beautifully fragrant lump of dough rising in the kitchen now, and in about 15 minutes, I’m going to pull some boys in there to help me assemble the calzones.

An unusual Easter feast

Remembering last year’s unique Easter “dinner.”

This year’s Easter celebration looked VERY different than the last several years’. This year, for a variety of reasons, I (Laura) took a leave of absence from the church choir, and so I was not at church yesterday from 7 a.m. to noon, involved in all the musical hoopla. Where I would normally go home and collapse, and sometime after 4 roust myself to get the ham out of the crockpot, and serve it with only a salad and pre-made bread for accompaniment, this year’s food looked completely different, and I LOVED it!

Happy Easter

We wish each and every one of you a truly Blessed Easter and a joyous celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

Barb and Laura

Resurrection Cookies and Leg of Lamb

I want to recommend two posts by Journey-to-Mom, a blogger on our blogroll. JTM has posted recipes for both leg of lamb and for resurrection cookies. Check them out!

Barb

Roasted Vegetables ala Paul

Reposting some Easter recipes from last year. I wrote these up AFTER the fact of Easter last year, so now they are just in time for 2008:

Like I mentioned before, my brother-in-law, Paul, is an amazing cook. He managed most of the lavish Easter dinner single-handedly. I’ve had his roasted potatoes before, but this time, he made roasted vegetables that were just delicious. Best of all, they made the entire house smell scrumptious while they were cooking.

Hey, check this out!

I mentioned awhile back that my second son Nate spends a lot of time on the Instructables website. This week he posted a recipe that he snagged from my files on how to make a SINGLE chocolate chip cookie. This post is part of a contest for making pocket-sized things. At this point, my son’s cookie post is in 4th place!

Check out his post here. If you sign up for an Instructables account, you can vote for Nate!

And on a practical level, the recipe is a fun one. It doesn’t contain eggs so won’t spoil. Last night, we were visiting with some old friends who have two small children. My youngest boys helped these two tiny kids make their very own individual cookies and those kids LOVED it!