Susan Senator
All happy families are not alike...
All happy families are not alike...
Easter Shpiels
Ned sent me this great blog post about making Cadury creme egg cake! The guy who did this substituted Cadbury creme eggs wherever the cake recipe called for real eggs. This is what vacation weeks are all about, in my mind: fun and decadence. Maybe later in the day we’ll do the same, but with brownie mix. However, if I am to stick to my Atkins, what the F*** do I do with all that delicious chocolatey stuff lying around?
I make Nat eat it. Nat, the string bean, always hungry. At Passover, (my Pesach table shown here) 
he ate three plates of my brisket and potatoes), loves intense flavors, just like his Mommy, and so I know he will eat as much sickeningly sweet chocolate confection and not even feel it! (Also like his Mommy: I have an infinite tolerance for fudge, chocolate, etc. Or I used to, pre-Atkins. Now sugar does make me ill. What a wimp!)
So, first we’re watching King Kong (the new one), which is pretty good. Although I don’t know why they had to “add” to the story by putting in dinosaurs and giant bugs, for God’s sake! What kind of mishegos island is this, with an oversized ape, dinos, and insects? And why didn’t the natives — who are smart enough to build this bridge-like catapult contraption to get across chasms on the island — figure out a way to leave the damned place? Instead, they choose to live in abject fear of all the grotesque life forms that surround them? That is where I refused to suspend my disbelief.
But Max likes it. Nat wanders in an out, waiting for lunch. I think after lunch I will try to take Max back to the fabric store, if they’re open — what is open on Easter Sunday? Not much, I would bet. Easter is a bit more of a mystery to me, a Jew who has never celebrated it; never even so much as an egg hunt! When I was little, my friends had those colorful baskets filled with ribbons of fake green grass and candy, candy, candy, while I had to munch on matzah. But unlike Christmas, I don’t know what they really do on Easter. My guess is: Church, brunch, family, egg hunt, candy-eating, special dinner? I’m sure my readers and friends will enlighten me, or even invite me next year!
If we get to the fabric store, it’s going to be an entire day of making Sith robes, for Max’s Star Wars movie. I’m going to have to buy like 20 yards of the cheapest black cloth and cut out robes for 7 boys. I figured out a quick and dirty way to do it: fold over three yards, cut out a slit for the head, cut out arm shapes, staple the whole thing together. Then, drape more cloth for a hood. Trouble is, Max is such a perfectionist that quick and dirty often upsets him.
The problem is, the outdoors beckon. I want to plant stuff! Mom brought me California poppies, the sexiest, most male-like plants around because of their black fuzzy buds that hang so provocatively, like testicles. Some have opened and there is this incredible lollipop orange blazing against the chocolate brown earth.
Another day with not much planned but enough beauty and peace around me to keep my heart full.
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Haha! Another Jewish girl here, trying to find something open on Easter. Not even Walmart. So…my poor kitties went hungry. In the meanwhile, I engaged in some pagan fertility rituals and we dyed spring eggs (notice “spring”, not Easter), which Jakie immediately refused to eat, as they are cold and slimey. Oh well…maybe some of your brisket would have been more to his liking 🙂
I’ve done both — Easter as a girl, Passover as an adult. (Convert).
Easter was almost as exciting as Christmas — waking up early on a cool spring morning, the grass still wet beneath my little feet as I searched for eggs behind trees and bushes in my parent’s yard (search for Matza?)Easter lilies for grandparents. My family was not religious so we didn’t go to Church. When I got a little older and my parents wanted me out of public school, they got me into an all-girl’s Catholic high school. We met Catholic boys from St. Michael’s Choir School in Toronto (my old friend is now an Opera star — Michael Schade — with whom I say in school plays).
The one and only thing I miss is Sunday mass from my high school days only because the choir sang and the organist (a real cathedral organ). This is a choir that sings in concert halls around the world. All of this sent shivers down my spine. I consider all the times when I go to schul now and listen to the cantor — that all of Western music is based in the church. I so wanted to take Adam yesterday — only because we both love music so much.
So many similiarities though, between Pesach and Easter (except the Christ-thing of course). Eggs, matza (the host in Christianity) and the seder table was the setting for the last supper. Equinox, renewal…
As I think of hard-boiled eggs, we are all pretty much the same.
Ah — the message.
Cadbury creme egg cake? Can I come to your house for Passover next year? 😉
We spent Easter at my great aunt’s house, having brunch. (There were lots and lots of doughnuts). Then we went to visit my uncle, and dropped off some birthday presents for my friend’s children. We didn’t go to Church (we’re bad Catholics).
I’m with Max on the new “King Kong.” It’s good, if a half hour too long. (Nor was I a fan of all the slow-mo: does Adrian Brody need to type S-K-U-L-L I-S-L-A-N-D in slow motion?) There were dinosaurs in the 1933 “King Kong” as well–although not nearly as many–and Peter Jackson says that the giant bug scene is a re-creation of a “lost scene” from the original. Though my aunt says that it should have stayed lost 🙂
Liz again. To make you laugh: Turducken is a chicken, stuffed into a duck, stuffed into a turkey. It’s actually rather good (I’ve cooked two).
Somebody made a peeps turducken:
“Until now.
Making Easter turducken is, fortunately, much easier than a traditional turducken, as it abandons all that pesky protein while fully embracing the empty carbohydrates and fat. While technically Easter turducken is a dessert and traditional turducken a main course, they should never be consumed in the same meal. That would be heresy.”
A Cadbury egg, stuffed into a peeps, stuffed into a hollow chocolate bunny.
Instructions (with illustrations) here:
http://asteroid.divnull.com/?p=70