WEEKLY MENU 04.09.23
We’re going Old-School during the Weekly Menu 04.09.23 with a traditional Easter Dinner followed by leftovers for days.
Easter is finally here during the Weekly Menu 04.09.23, and we’ve got planned leftovers for the rest of the week. We’re going very traditional with an easy meal of Glazed Ham from our favorite local smoked meat purveyor. We’ll round out the holiday table with deviled eggs, roasted asparagus, a very tasty Mac & Cheese and easy Scalloped Potatoes the way my Mom used to make them. Of course, we’ll finish dinner with a Carrot Cake, which just seems like good sense to me. (And so healthy!)
I’ve seen recipes for scalloped potatoes that start with a white sauce. That’s not how we roll. Thinly peeled and sliced potatoes are layered in a buttered casserole dish with a sprinkle of flour, salt and pepper and pats of butter. I add in some thinly sliced onions to one of the layers too. After it’s assembled, we add a milk/heavy cream mixture to cover the spuds and cook it, uncovered, for a couple of hours at 350 degrees.
They. Are. Fabulous.
And so easy! The mac and cheese is from a Facebook video from Cooking with Shereen. It’s Roasted Poblano Macaroni & Cheese, and it is fancy. It’s also the best tasting cheesy pasta I’ve ever had.
New to our Easter menu, but certainly old school, is Hot Cross Buns. I’ve never made them before, but they look pretty easy. Of course in a pinch, I could pick up a batch at the grocery store. The buns are everywhere in the run up to Easter because of the cross that’s made on top of them before they cook. I think they are only made at Easter.
You can link to our full menu/plan for Easter:
Easter Dinner
It’ll walk you through the whole day. But here’s our slightly modified menu for 2023:
It’s a thing of beauty, if I do say so myself.
My theory is to skip the grocery store this week, but I doubt I’ll make it. On Monday, I’m serving the scalloped potatoes and mac and cheese leftovers (because I overcook, as you might imagine) with some grilled sausage that’s been languishing in the freezer.
On Wednesday, we have more planned leftovers in the Crispy Chicken Club Sandwiches: Easter ham will take the place of the deli ham.
And on Friday, the ham is in play again with Ham & Corn Chowder. If there are any left, I’ll sub in chopped up scalloped potatoes for the regular spuds. It’ll make the soup creamy and save some time in the cooking process.
We have been decorating just a few eggs (read 10- 12) on Good Friday the last few years because A. The boys complain bitterly about coloring them and 2. Nobody eats them but me. So the Deviled Eggs will help use them up, but I do love myself some egg salad for lunch. And it makes me giggle when everyone around here gags when I eat it.
The Carrot Cake recipe is adapted from a cupcake recipe by the queen herself, Ina Garten. I make the cake as outlined in her recipe, but I cook it in my set of three round baking dishes. (Affiliate links precede and follow – see Disclaimer Page for details.) Her frosting recipe makes plenty of frosting for between layers. My mother-in-law gave me a recipe for cookies where she didn’t chop the walnuts – she threw them into the stand mixer whole and let the paddle break them up a little bit. Brilliant. I do that with the Carrot Cake recipe too – the big chunks of baked walnuts are a decadent little crunch in the cake.
WEEKLY MENU 04.09.23
