Christ is risen; let’s eat!

Just in case you’re wondering: If you wait until Easter Day to check the supermarket for chocolate bunnies in a moment of caving (because, after all, there will be Easter baskets at Daddy’s this year, and you were FULLY PLANNING to skip the whole deal, but then a certain child with big hopeful eyes and a quivering lower lip informed you that SANTA comes to both houses, so SURELY the Easter Bunny will do the same!), you will find row upon row of empty shelves where the bunnies used to be.

Also, if you were wondering: The only Easter candy left which is orthodontia-approved is then a 5-pound sack of assorted chocolate temptations (peanut butter eggs, KitKats, malted milk eggs). But! It’s on sale! So it’s okay! But you will load up those baskets and still have way, way too much candy left over and calling to you later.

Sorry… what were we talking about? I was busy rolling around on my bed in all these empty candy wrappers.

This week I decided that my foray into pizza crust was so successful, I should really just go ahead and make some bread. In fact, when I received an invitation for Easter dinner, and asked what I should bring, before my friend could answer I blurted out, “Hey! I know! I’ll bake some bread!”

I’ve always been a passable cook, but baking is not my thing. I think it all goes back to the time I made a pie crust that would’ve been suitable for shipping fragile items. Pie crust gets angry when you over-handle it, see. And for years I had ignorantly assumed that ALL dough items were similar. When I made the pizza crust last week, though, I discovered that bread LIKES to be handled. We had pizza crust… we had breadsticks… I even made cinnamon rolls from that dough. You really can’t destroy it by overworking it, the way you can pie crust or a weak man.

So my confidence in my baking ability has been somewhat restored. But just in case, I figured I should pick a recipe and try it out prior to Easter. That just seemed like good planning.

On Friday I selected my recipe, neglecting to read down to the bottom of the instructions to discover that said recipe makes enough dough for SIX loaves of bread. I figured it out when my mixer started to sound like an airplane running out of gas, though. From that point on I abandoned the mixer and made the dough by hand.

(Don’t my arms look awesome? It turns out that kneading dough is really good for your triceps.)

I got the dough made, risen, punched down, risen again, and shaped half a dozen rolls and baked them as my test run. They were PERFECT. I was incredibly impressed with myself. I then looked at the remaining mountain of dough and made a few mental calculations. No problem. I shaped a couple dozen rolls for Easter dinner and put them into a gallon zipper bag and into the fridge. Perfect! All I’d have to do on Sunday would be to take out the bag, put the rolls onto pans, and bake. The remainder of the dough was shaped and put into bags and tossed in the freezer.

Well here’s the thing. Did you know that yeast is a persistent little bugger? I was sure that yeast needed a certain amount of warmth to do its thing, but I guess it only needs to be warm to get started.

So that bag of shaped rolls I put into the fridge? I went into the fridge on Saturday and the bag was swelled up with one gigantic clump of dough about to explode. When I took the bag out, the zipper popped open and the bag HISSED at me.

[Fortunately—despite my lack of a basic grasp of the working of yeast—I was still able to make the rolls today without a problem. And they were, again, very yummy.]

And today was finally Easter. I went to church this morning IN THE SNOW (actual snow falling from the sky on my drive there, because I currently live in Hell) to discover that our new choir robes had arrived. We used to have these delightful robes purchased in 1950 or so, made of grey polyester so heavy that little old ladies in the choir regularly keeled over from heat exhaustion. We finally ditched them a while back and have been robeless for quite a while. When we ordered the new ones, everyone had to get measured, which cracked me up because I already knew I was moving away. I kept asking if this meant that after my move they had to find not only another alto, but an alto exactly the same size as me.

Anyway. I was assigned a number that corresponded with a hanger, and gleefully scooped up my new robe. (It’s much easier to dress for church when you wear a robe, and I am nothing if not lazy.)

Now, I didn’t KNOW that we would have robes today, and it’s Easter, after all, so I was dressed up. Including shoes with a pretty tall heel. And my new robe? The one I was measured for? Came almost to the FLOOR.

God wants me to wear my sluttiest shoes to church, apparently.

I rushed home after church to bake my rolls, then went over to my friends’ house for Easter dinner. Where I was very helpful with the dinner preparation, parking myself at the kitchen counter so as to help “test” items as they came off the stove or out of the oven. I was particularly vigilant about “helping” with the ham.

[Otto: Why do we eat ham on Easter if Jesus was Jewish?]

Then after we sat down, I ate my weight in ham and all the fixings and vowed to skip dessert, right up until I saw the cherry pie. And the ice cream.

Later I picked up the kids and came back home and we all put away laundry (this whole “keeping the house spotless” thing is getting really annoying) and read together and the kids went to bed and then the remaining 4.8 pounds of Easter candy began calling for me with its sweet siren song.

And you would think that I was too full of ham and pie to sit here mindlessly eating chocolate eggs, but it’s hungry work, pairing socks.

I’m thinking of making another sign for my mudroom, to put under the sign about taking off your shoes. This one will say “Free lifetime supply of peanut butter eggs with every house purchase!” I don’t know if that will speed the sale of the house, but it’s my only hope for still fitting into my wedding dress.

26 Comments

  1. hollygee

    “You really can’t destroy it by overworking it, the way you can pie crust or a weak man.”

    Snort.
    Good one.

  2. Mel

    I’m thinking a place where it snows on Easter is more like anti-Hell, some kind of punishing place for people who like to sweat but who are too evil to actually go to a fiery hell. So, thus, they go to anti-hell, which is not heaven, but the opposite of hell in all the negative ways possible.

    Or not. (Maybe para-hell, you know, a parallel universe hell.) I’m just thinking aloud here. Feel free to stop me.

  3. Kris

    Otto asks some very good questions! (I’ve always wondered the exact same thing.)

  4. Kris

    Oh, btw, snow here on Easter, too. The Dyngus Day Parade is going to be C-O-L-D. (Wonder how we can show off our pretty costumes when we’ve got full tundra gear on top!)

  5. Terri

    Brrrrr … even down here in GA we had a cooooold Easter. Nothing complements a pretty pink & white floaty Easter sundress like a black velvet winter coat. (for my 5-year-old, of course) I know you’re tired of the snow, but it would be nice to have it occasionally, as long as we have to be in winter gear and all. Although a few weeks ago if I squinted my eyes just so I could almost convince myself that the lovely yellow pollen piled everywhere could have been snow. ;)

  6. mama.smythe

    Just reading about all of the food made my gut hurt :)

  7. Rachel May

    I can so picture that bag of yeasty dough, all ready to explode in your fridge. That cracked me up!

    Glad you had a happy Easter!

  8. LadyBug Crossing

    LOL!!! I can picture your dough exploding in your fridge…

    Easter candy? Too much? I can’t imagine… I have a bag of Lindt truffles sitting on my desk calling my name… Yup. I know it’s only 7:30 am… Chocolate is a vegetable, right?

    xo
    LBC

  9. Kimberly

    Maybe they secretly already have your replacement and she’s an amazon?

  10. cce

    Oh groan, snow here AND the Roto virus. Jesus hates me. We haven’t even been able to enjoy the pounds of candy that the Easter bunny was kind enough to drop off. So we’ll be putting all that weight that we vomited away this weekend right back on with copious amounts of marshmallow eggs and jelly beans. I’m dreaming here because none of us can keep down a slice of toast yet.

  11. Sara

    I don’t really need your house, but if you’re serious about that lifetime supply of peanut butter eggs, I may have to give some thought to moving to your little hideaway in hell. Because well, PEANUT BUTTER EGGS!!!

  12. Coleen

    I suddenly have this incredible desire to encourage you to make stromboli from the pizza dough. That might be the best thing ever.

    I was pretty good about chocolate eating yesterday; had far less than I probably could (or should) have. However, some jackwad brought in their leftover Easter Candy this morning and left it in the office kitchen. And as you know, it’s not polite to leave candy like that just *lying around*.

    Dammit.

  13. liz

    It was a rough Easter everywhere. We didn’t have snow in Atlanta, but my boychild wore the same outfit to church that he wore on Christmas Eve. The sleeves were just a little short.

  14. Wendy

    I will be right over to buy the house. I would like all my peanut butter eggs in singles, please.

  15. TSM

    Never. Underestimate. Yeast.

    It can make bread rise. It can made dough explode in your fridge. It can ruin your honeymoon.

  16. Krazee Eyez Killa

    I dig some of dat Easter candy. Holla at a playa.

  17. Cele

    Hi, my name is Cele, I’m a yellow peep addict. Everyone in my family knows to bring me Yellow Peeps for Easter….Halloween….Christmas… do they make them for Fourth of July yet? The chocolate stuffed ones are yummy. Er… I digress. You need two things.

    1) be addicted to something that moves quickly off the store shelf.
    2) Tell Otto not to buy you Yellow Peeps until the day before Easter.

  18. Liise

    Dang it Mir. I just had to eat a Hershey’s Special Dark Mini after reading this! And it is only 10am! Good thing LBC pointed out that choclate is a veggie. *whew*

  19. Heather

    Tell Otto Matthew 15 10-11.

    10Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. 11What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.’ ”

    Am I a brat or what??? ;-)

  20. Nancy

    There is a special ‘bonus’ in having a spouse that works outside the home. It’s called, “Take that ziplock bag of candy to work before the kids notice it’s missing.”

  21. Heather

    Otto raises a very valid point. Now I’m going to wondering about that for quite a while heh.

  22. Daisy

    Chocolate is a vegetable? I’m saved!!

  23. Kristen

    I am so Jones-ing for those peanut butter whatevers. I felt the pressure of the in-laws and was out at 5pm at CVS buying plastic eggs and jelly beans for the impromptu Easter egg hunt that pictures will prove I DID NOT DEPRIVE my son. I really don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind when he rose from the dead, but that’s just me.

  24. Amy-Go

    We eat lamb on Easter. Because Jesus was the Lamb of God, right? But yesterday it prompted my son to ask if we were eating Jesus. Which led to a discussion of communion. Which we then took at evening services. Where he announced (LOUDLY) that he would like some more Jesus to eat, please. God help me.

  25. Juliness

    I read somewhere that nothing says “Jesus has risen!” like a thick slice of ham. I laughed out loud when I read it.

    And now I re-told it to you, giggling the whole time.

    I probably could have gotten away with the first laugh because it was in private, but the public recounting? Now I am going to hell for certain. Thanks a lot, Mir.

  26. Jenrigg

    I don’t know about in the States, but in the UK it’s “lamb” at Easter, not “ham”. Tell Otto it might rhyme, but it’s a different beast altogether!

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