Easter 2011 Review

Easter's a bit of a funny old holiday really isn't it? It's kind of like Christmas but kind isn't. I know that I should feel uncomfortable celebrating Christmas because I don't really believe in the guy whose birthday we're celebrating but nonetheless I get on with it. Easter however definitely does make me feel a little awkward. I feel that in a way, Easter must mean more to Christians than Christmas because you're talking about Jesus rising from the dying for our sins and then, you know, rising from the flippin' dead - a much bigger deal. I feel like sitting at home and eating chocolate is completely missing the point.

But this is not a post about religious philosophizing (mostly because it took me about 20 attempts to write 'philosophizing' and I'm still not sure I got it right.)

Easter Sunday saw me de-camp to my Mum's house. We were going to be playing host to my brother and sister-in-law and my youngest nephew and niece. Happy days. Mum had decided to just do a buffet kind of lunch, her house is pretty small and it would be nigh on impossible to fit everyone around the table. I decided to make my own little offering and got myself in the kitchen.

For some time now I've been obsessed with the thought of making my own sausage rolls and Lorraine Pascal's Baking Made Easy came up with the goods. And she aint joking, this really is easy. I know this won't be a big deal for all you culinary competent people out there but this was a huge achievement for me and I did a celebratory dance around the kitchen when I took them out of the oven.

I decided I was clearly on a roll (geddit?! On a roll. Man I crack myself up.) and tried my hand at the Mini Egg Tiffin that was featured over on The Goddess's Kitchen. Oh. my. god. So good. So so good that I might have made two because I knew that one wasn't going to be enough. You know what I love about this? How bloody easy it is. As in, no baking required. And yet it looks bloody fabulous. A little like my sausage rolls. I know that Jesus went to all the effort of rising from the dead, but I'm afraid I took the easy route in the kitchen.

I set up an Easter egg hunt for my nephew. One that had a false start when Fred and Lily decided that they would hold their own Easter egg hunt. They were surprisingly good. Cue gathering all the mini eggs back in and opening another packet to replace the ones that had already been found and licked or batted across the house.

I remember how much I loved Easter egg hunts around the house when I was a kid. Hey I won't lie, I'd still like to do one now. Watching my little nephew's face as he went round the house gathering up all the eggs made my cold heart melt a little bit. Hearing him go "Oh LOOK!" when he found another one was lovely. And we even hid some foil wrapped eggs in the garden seeing as the weather was so nice. And bless his little heart, he shared them with us and each of us got our very own egg.

The rest of the day was spent playing in the garden, games of football and skittles and a particularly hilarious game of hide and seek where our wires all got crossed and we all ended up hiding from each other. There was lots of smooching and cuddling of my niece, who is now 6 months old and at the best age ever. There was lots of smiling and lots of kicking and lots of blowing raspberries, which is the funniest thing I've ever seen a baby do.

And there was also lots of eating...

Salad and home-made coleslaw and sausage rolls and garlic bread and sticky chicken wings. And meringues and cream and strawberries and mini egg tiffin. We ate until we nearly exploded.

We weren't the only ones to get in on the Easter action. Fred and Lily enjoyed themselves too. Mum had collected some twigs from the fields nearby and painted some eggs and had a very cute Easter tree thing going on with little ribbons tied round.

However Fred felt like it was missing a little something...

I'm not entirely sure which of us got in more trouble; Fred for knocking the whole thing over or me for taking photos of him instead of stopping him.

All in all, whether I should be 'celebrating' it or not, I declare Easter 2011 a winner.