Celebrating Easter

How are you celebrating Easter? What a wonderful holiday, the pastels, the outfits, we dye Easter Eggs, stage egg hunts and it’s such fun to plan the dinner.  One of the beautiful things about blogging is that I get to document family traditions. Steve and I have a blended family so we take a bit of his and a bit of mine and then forge our own way navigating through parents, children, grandchildren, siblings, adopted family, etc.

How do you find inspiration for your holiday menu? For me it’s easy, I head down to the local Whole Foods. It’s my special place, where I’m inspired to create our new family traditions at the dinner table and beyond.

Walking into the store, the flower display is front and center. It makes me so happy to see the amazing array of color. The tulips are front and center and they are gorgeous.

In planning my Easter menu I want to feature the fresh produce and the beautiful colors that signal spring. The produce display is just as stunning as the flowers. It’s a tough choice but I emerge with some Easter egg radishes. They are beautiful purple, pink white and red. This is such an easy appetizer, just wash, slice, arrange them on a platter, compliment them with butter and sea salt.

I can’t resist the fresh beets in gold and pink. These will be perfect in a salad with spinach and Meyer lemon. I pause at the cheese counter for fresh ricotta to top the salad.

Other items to round out the meal are multicolor carrots, fingerling potatoes and haricots verts (French Green Beans).

In Steve’s family ham is the traditional Easter dinner, I like to celebrate it with a Leg of Lamb. There is no reason we can’t combine the two to make everyone happy.

The butcher helped me with a beautiful boneless leg of lamb that I will stuff with Cava Tzatziki before I roast it.   Then on to the hams on display I found a Nimon Gold Foil Ham to serve with biscuits.  It is truly the best.

Now for dessert, My favorite is the Elegant Dessert Platter from the Whole foods bakery.  That gives me an assortment of desserts that will make everyone happy. It’s the perfect complement to the jelly beans, chocolate bunnies and all of the easter goodies that come with the Easter Baskets.

 

Easter Menu

Appetizers

Angel biscuits with Niman Gold Foil Ham

Easter Egg Radishes with Butter and Salt

1st course

Roasted Beet Salad over Spinach with Lemon Scented Ricotta

Main Course

Roasted Leg of Lamb stuffed with Cava Tzatziki

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes

Sautéed Carrots with Meyer lemon

Steamed Haricots Verts

Dessert

Whole Foods Elegant Dessert Platter

*Recipes are linked here so make to click the highlighted items.

Where do you find your inspiration to celebrate Easter? I look forward to reading your traditions, menus, etc. in the comments below.

I am so grateful for the Annapolis Whole Foods who provided all of the amazing produce, meat and cheese for the creation of this post. I’m a devoted Whole Foods shopper but any opinions or findings you read here are solely my own.

As always, I am most grateful for you, my community and will always do my best to serve you in introducing products that you will find the most useful, amazing, helpful, to keep you sane in the kitchen, at home and on the streets.

*This is a post from 2016 and has been revamped.  The menu is one of my favorites so I’ve brought it back!