Hi Friends!  Sorry for being away so long.  You all know how quarter end at work gets the best of me and my time.

And WOW ~ it is Easter already!  And on the weekend of Quarter End at the office, having just got back from a work function in Vegas, running 100 miles a minute in all different directions…that means I had to scale it down to a basic luncheon for my family’s celebration since 55+ hours at work last week had me totally exhausted.

The Menu

a Variety of Deviled Eggs

Smoked Salmon

Fruit ~ Pineapple & Strawberries

Strawberry Spinach Salad

Bacon Wrapped Asparagus Bundles

Pork Loin with Fig & Port Sauce

Cookies & Carrot Cake Cupcakes

My sis-in-law, Amanda, made the most amazing chipotle deviled eggs.  I’m not ashamed to admit I kept the leftovers and had them for a midnight snack.  Didn’t share a single one.

I, on the other hand, tried this new recipe from Pinterest for guacamole deviled eggs to add some variety.

While they were stunning plated, very easy to make and lower in calories, there weren’t what I was looking for in a deviled egg or a guacamole.  I think texturally I was missing the crunch of a chip for the guac and the richness of traditional deviled eggs for the eggs.

Quite the conundrum…although no egg was left standing, so I guess they weren’t totally texturally amiss.

Joel’s not big on green beans, but he is big on bacon.  And loves roasted asparagus.

I trimmed and wrapped these beautifully young and tender asparagus bundles with two pieces of center cut bacon each.  Laid them seam sides down in a baking dish and topped with a bubbling mixture of brown sugar, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, butter and fresh smushed garlic.

Yep, smushed.  My mother-in-law got me this cool kitchen gadget for Christmas.  It sits on my windowsill at the ready should I ever need to quickly turn this:

Into this:

Not only is it brightly painted and interesting looking, but it does a heck of a job smushing fresh garlic in 5 seconds flat.

The main attraction was super easy pork loin (recipe courtesy of Giada the Great).  No pics, but I promise I’ll post one the next time I make this.  Because there will be many, many re-makes of this totally awesome and super easy dish.

Topping it all off was chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies and c-c-c-carrot cake cupcakes.

Oh baby, were these delicious.

I slightly tweaked Ina the Awesome’s recipe and made my own vanilla candy toppers (less oil, regular eggs, canned crushed pineapple, 1lb of cream cheese (half regular/half neufchatel), softened but not room temp).

Homemade candy toppers ~ easy, peasy.

Melt vanilla candies and add food coloring, if necessary.  I used green colored vanilla candies from Aiden’s super hero party, but didn’t have orange.  So I melted down white vanilla flavored discs and added red and yellow food coloring to make the ‘carrots’.  Add the melted candy to sandwich sized  ziplocs, snip one corner and pipe onto wax paper.

Pipe the orange first, then add the green tops.  Piece of cake ~ a-ha-ha-ha-ha.  Pun totally intended.

I felt I owed Aiden a do-over since his birthday cupcakes were an abysmal disaster.

These outta do it.

So we ate our way through Easter on Saturday with my family and Sunday with Joel’s.  Stuffed to the gills in a good way with food, family and with scripture.

How did your family celebrate Easter (if it does)?  However it was spent, I hope it was a good one!

Much Love,

~pw