For the last few years, we’ve really looked forward to celebrating MAR10 Day on March 10th. I usually make something Italian in honor of everyone’s favorite plumber…this year, it was bolognese, with a cannoli cake for dessert. I also found some Mario-themed Bubly water, which was an extra special treat!
I love these whimsical celebrations!
It’s MAR10 Day!
It’s become a tradition to have Italian on 3/10…this year, I made marinara sauce for spaghetti (but the meatballs and garlic bread were store-bought.):
For dessert, I tried a new recipe for a cannoli tart, since I didn’t have time to make cannolis. It captured the flavor well, even without the shells!
This is just the beginning of a week of themed meals…we have Chicago Day (3/12) and STL Day (3/14) coming up, plus an early St. Patrick’s Day dinner on Saturday!
Time for a look back at another Markel Family Easter, which started, as it does every year, on Maundy Thursday:
On Friday, I made hot cross buns (again), but this year, I tried a new recipe:
The Good Friday service was, as always, lovely and moving:
On Saturday morning, while we watched Rick Steves’ European Easter, we made our Paschal Candle for the year…I think this may be the nicest job we’ve ever done!
While I did have work to do on Saturday to prepare for our Easter dinner, most of the day was really spent waiting until it was finally time for my favorite service of the church year, the Great Vigil of Easter:
After church, we stopped at Wendy’s for Frostys and fries:
We’re still getting used to the fact that we don’t have to get up for a sunrise Easter service, so we felt a little more leisurely about getting ready. We were still at church early enough to take pictures outside:
And some indoors, including our traditional by-the-baptismal-font Easter pictures:
The church looked especially beautiful!
Ladybug even got to acolyte:
And we got a nice family picture after the service:
When we got home, I made Easter breakfast, which included Kaiserschmarrn (the Kaiser’s torn pancakes) with Rhabarberkompott (rhubarb compote), hard-boiled eggs (this is really the first time we’ve ever dyed eggs…you’ll see why in a minute), and pomegranate juice:
While we watched Easter Parade and My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding, I found time to play a little Animal Crossing: New Horizons so I could visit with Zipper T. Bunny. I also caught up with Roald, who was wearing an egg suit…I wonder if that’s what he looked like when he hatched?
I spent most of the rest of the day working on dinner and setting the table:
I chose an Italian theme for this year’s dinner. I served the same lamb in the slow cooker we had last year (technically Greek, but more generically Mediterranean, so close enough), lemon parmesan risotto, insalata caprese, roasted cauliflower, panzanella, breaded artichokes, capers, olives, Italian Easter bread, and lemon Italian soda.
I stuck with the Italian theme for dessert…we had cannoli and Italian sprinkle cookies:
This was an especially nice Easter. Maybe it’s because things felt more “normal” (I actually shook hands for the first time in over two years!), maybe it was because the church services were so meaningful, maybe it was because this may be the nicest Easter dinner I’ve ever made. Whatever the reason, I’m thankful we had such a wonderful celebration of Christ’s resurrection!
Today we wrapped up the first-ever Markel Family Tour di Pizza!
Last year, we came up with an idea to try lots of different styles of pizza from places we don’t normally frequent. We decided the perfect day to start this event was on MAR10 Day (March 10), and we decided to kick it off with Jet’s Detroit-style pizza, which was delicious!
On Friday I made Chicago-style pizza, since there’s just no place around here that makes it as well as I do. This was definitely the most familiar item on our list, but you can’t have a Tour di Pizza without stopping in the Windy City!
On Saturday we had the craziest day of our experiment with California-style take and bake pizzas from California Pizza Kitchen. Their pizzas are pretty small, so we tried three varieties…the ever-controversial Hawaiian, shrimp scampi, and California Club. Even though they were unusual as far as pizzas go, they were all delicious (although the shrimp scampi variety did fall apart a bit in the oven!).
Since I had some time on Saturday, I made the perfect dessert to accompany pizza…cannoli! I don’t think I could have made them any better…the shells were perfectly flaky and crispy, and my work to thoroughly drain the ricotta paid off, making the filing just right!!!
Yesterday we tried New York-style pizza from Papa John’s. I don’t know if it’s because I have a bias against New York-style pizza as someone who grew up in Chicagoland, or it’s just that Papa John’s isn’t my thing, but this was my least favorite pizza of the event.
We wrapped up our Tour di Pizza today, 314 Day, with St. Louis-style pizza from the hometown favorite, Imo’s. I’m not going to lie…this generally isn’t my favorite type of pizza (it’s a crust thing…I like something with more substance than a Saltine), but I do really like that they use provel cheese, and it’s not so bad for a special occasion!
Since today was also Pi Day (convenient that we could have pizza pies for dinner, don’t you think?), I made pies for dessert to cap off our dinner event…s’mores and chocolate hazelnut, with decorations courtesy of Bunny:
This was a really fun, silly thing to do for a few days, and it also gave me a break from making dinner for a few nights, which was really nice!