Easter at my house.

Hi everyone!

I really appreciate all the feedback I got on my last post. They are really difficult for me to write because I almost re-live the experiences as I write about them. But it’s a good reminder of how far I’ve come and how awesome my life is now.

Moving on to a positive topic – Easter.

Honestly Easter was never SUCH a big deal for me – I never realized what all the hype was about. But where I live now Easter is a BIG deal and a whole lot goes into it. So just for fun I thought I’d tell you all what I did for Easter over at my house.

Easter preperations started Saturday evening with making almond butter and oat flour. The oat flour took a few minutes, but the almond butter… let’s just say I got to bed later then I thought I would.

Yup, I went through all that trouble just for that little bit of almond butter (hate all you people that can just go to the store and buy it 😛 ).

Where I live it’s traditional to do a big Easter brunch with the whole extended family (well all the ones living in driving distance anyways). We opted for a smaller brunch with just the immediate family. But I was still up an about at 7 AM Easter morning helping with preparations. I decided to bring something vegan to the table – Angela’s rustic banana chocolate chip cake. I had most of the ingredients on hand, but I substituted a few things. There were no chocolate chips 😦 , but I amped the amount of walnuts in the recipe and since I didn’t have any peanut butter, I made a banana almond butter glaze. Since I did most of the prep work the night before it was pretty easy to put together – but that didn’t mean my work was over. I was set to work on the deviled eggs and potato salad and put on kitchen clean up duty as soon as I was done. We go by the motto “He that shall not work shall not eat” in this house, so you bet I was kept busy. Anyhow half way through our preparations our relatives call and invite us to Easter brunch at their place. Don’t you just love surprises like that? To be honest at that point I started worrying, because I had the sneaky suspicion that my vegan cake wouldn’t go over so well with my staunchly meat eating relatives. But I figured even if I had to eat the whole cake myself, it was worth it to finish. It smelled wonderful coming out of the oven, and I was pretty happy with the finished product, especially after making the glaze.

I also topped it with a bit of vegan chocolate sauce – it’s the simplest thing to make ever!

All you need is:

 1 Tbsp dark cocoa

1 Tbsp vegan margarine

1 Tbsp sugar

2-3 Tbsp water (this is the minimum, you’ll want to add more if you want a runnier sauce)

The almond butter and chocolate sauce ended up working out just great! It took the cake into a “dessert” category which I was really happy. The almond butter has a softer, more creamy flavor so it tasted just like icing – only better 😉

Well we ended up eating breakfast at 10:30 and believe you me, by that time I was STARVING. There weren’t a whole lot of vegetarian options on the table, but my aunts homemade  sour dough sunflower bread was definitely the hit of the meal. It was moist, and fresh made out of 100% whole wheat flour. Unfortunately I didn’t get a good picture, as it was inappropriate in the circumstances. There were lots of eggs (I ate 2 and I can’t look at them anymore), sausages, hams, soup (yup they traditionally eat a rich soup generously supplemented sausage, spare ribs, bacon cracklings and hard-boiled egg – kinda freaky 😛 ), potato salad, spreads and bread. I got a picture of my end of the table, but in actuality it was about 2x larger.

After the meal my aunt offered us a glass of wine. Wine at breakfast? Well every thing’s worth trying at least once, so I did.

Yup, that's my glass of wine there. And I drank all of it!

A while later we had espresso and dessert. My dad made his famous cheesecake and so I very timidly brought my vegan cake to the table. I expected it to stay there till it was time for us to leave and was preparing to clean up the leftovers myself at home, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. Amazingly everyone dove for my cake first- and they loved it! My dad said it trumped his cheese cake this time.And it sure was worth loving! You simply can’t go wrong with that simple yet delicious recipe.

By the time we finished brunch it was 12:30 and I was feeling rather odd. Let’s just say a bunch of rich food and wine on an empty stomach didn’t make me feel too good. So I took a nap.

After napping I still felt odd – so I ate some cereal and yogurt. When that STILL didn’t help I tried plain black tea – it’s my moms favorite stomach calming technique – and it worked!

The afternoon involved a lot of reading (I love murder mysteries) but after a while I got hungry. I couldn’t think of dairy or eggs, or anything rich but what I was craving was zucchini. Weird? But I decided to go with my cravings and had 2 small bowls of lightly sauted zucchini with oregano, basil, olive oil and some chickpeas. It so totally hit the spot. I guess I was craving some real foods after the mornings feast (proof if you listen to your body everything balances out).

For dessert I had some snicker doodle hummus made with some of the leftover almond butter from last night (based very loosly off this recipe) a few apple slices and crackers. It was amazing! (Anyone out there that’s not a fan of peanut butter but wants to try a sweet hummus – try this! It’s delicious)

The evening was basically more lazing around and munching (I was hungry all afternoon for some reason) and a movie.

I watched this classic for the first time today – and I really enjoy it. Sometimes old movies are the best!

And now it’s close to midnight and I should be off to bed. Hope you all had a wonderful, enjoyable Easter.

Tell me one fun thing you did this Easter?