Somebunny is Thankful

How great is my mom's table? She always has the prettiest set up!

I love Easter, I've always loved Easter. Every year seems to be full of different traditions, but it's always a really nice day that falls at that time of year where you are itching for something to celebrate.

We were sitting around the table finishing up Easter lunch on Sunday and got on the topic of what a good holiday Easter is. First and foremost it symbolizes what God did for us to have this amazing life on earth. His resurrection hits a little harder than a baby being born on Christmas. It hasn't been overly commercialized and it's relatively low stress. It's a great holiday if you have plans, but also not a huge deal if you don't have some extravagant day planned. It's kind of a make it what you want holiday all done for good measure. It's just a good holiday.

Growing up most Easters consisted of dying eggs then scrubbing for hours to get the multi colors off our fingers so mom could paint out nails! A fun treat when you were under the age of 12 or so. Then Easter morning we would wake up to a basket full of goodies the Easter bunny brought us. Only to dump it all out to use for the egg hunt around the house using our dyed eggs from the night before.

Then it was time to put on a special new dress we had spent extra time shopping for, head to church for a traditional Easter service, then typically go out for brunch or cook lunch at home.

The past couple of years our Easter has consisted of a beautiful church service then an afternoon of cooking and enjoying the meaning of the day with family and friends. This year it was mom, dad, middle sis and brother-in-law. Brother-in-law's family, one of my cousins and one of my closest friends. A motley crew, but a great crew!

We sipped mimosas and stuffed our bellies with ham and cheesecake.

There was a little bit of miscommunication between Kathleen and I. I blame it on our generation of only communicating through text messaging. We had been planning to make this Coconut Carrot Cake Cheesecake (a check off the Spring TDL) for about a month now. While going over who would make what and when everything would get made, I thought Kathleen was on homemade oreo duty and I was on cheesecake duty. Through our cryptic messages, Kathleen thought she was in charge of both.

We showed up having both made the cheesecake...It's better to have more cheesecake than no cheesecake right? With competitive nature we turned it into a "who made it best competition." If I were the judge, Kat won for best exterior and I won for best interior, but I'll let our guests be the judge.

My cousin just moved to the city and he loves our homemade oreos. We knew with his attendance at Easter, oreos had to be apart of the menu. It's a recipe from the archives, it was actually the first recipe I ever posted, so bare with the authenticity.

It's not a holiday at the Tucker's without a feast. To counteract all the sweets we had spiraled ham, healthified green bean casserole, cheese grits, strawberry salad, deviled eggs and my brown butter herb gruyere scalloped potatoes. I recently received this Thick & Thin Mandoline from Kuhn Rikon and I've been holding out to use it until Easter! I've never made scalloped potatoes because the task of having to hand slice 3 lbs. of russets didn't quite appeal to me. This mandoline makes it so easy. Just make sure to use the guard! I sliced a liitle piece of my finger amongst the potatoes...