family feasts

Holy Week and Easter

Lent went by especially quickly this year, and Holy Week was no exception…it was a complete blur!

On Palm Sunday, Ladybug turned my palm into a cross as she always does:

On Monday, we baked hot cross buns:

Tuesday, Chickadee and I visited the Tulip Trail at Eckert’s with the hope of cutting our own tulips for our Easter table…that didn’t work out, but it was still a beautiful experience!

On Wednesday, I made one of our favorite Lenten dinners, fish tacos:

Thursday found us at church for the first service the Holy Triduum:

Before Church on Friday we made this year’s Paschal Candle, and Bunny and I did some pre-Easter baking:

On Holy Saturday I prepped some salads and our mini donut tray for the year…I found a record 18 different kinds!

The Great Vigil of Easter is still my favorite church service of the entire year (even when we have to start indoors because rain made the church garden too mucky)!

After church, we stoped at Wendy’s for fries and a Frosty for everyone:

Easter morning was a bit chilly, but clear and beautiful!

The church looked glorious, as always:

And we got a nice family photo after the service thanks to our field worker from the seminary:

Easter is the one day a year we have a big, fancy breakfast…I even put a little extra effort into setting the table, using some pretty plates I found at Aldi a few years ago that are just the perfect color palette for the day:

We had a pretty traditional meal…biscuits with a choice of sausage gravy or Pflaumenmus (plum butter), scrambled eggs, sausage patties, brie (also good with the plum butter!), fruit salad, pomegranate and orange juices, and did I mention mini donuts?

We had a fun afternoon watching the first two Big, Fat, Greek Wedding movies, and then it was time to reset the table for dinner:

We went Italian for Easter dinner, featuring Peposo (beef cooked with garlic and peppercorns in red wine), lemon-parmesan risotto, braised radicchio with a balsamic glaze, breaded baked artichokes, antipasto salad, and Colomba di Pasqua (a sweet Italian Easter bread) with more Pflaumenmus.

And for dessert, panna cotta with a blueberry-lemon sauce and fresh berries:

This was a great, although busy, Holy Week and Easter! Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

Opening Day Eve

Happy Opening Day Eve!

The Cardinals home opener at Busch Stadium is tomorrow, but we decided to have our traditional ballpark dinner a day early. We started with nachos:

The main course was hot dogs and brats, with lots of toppings…my favorite is still the Chicago dog!

We had the same dessert as last year…a homemade cookie cake with Schnucks Cardinals ice cream on the side:

Hopefully this will be a good season!

St. Patrick’s Day, Observed

Happy (early) St. Patrick’s Day!

We decided to celebrate today because it was the best day this week for a family feast. We started by setting the leprechaun trap…at this point, I can only assume that “Lucky” is taunting us!

Of course there were Lucky Charms:

And I made myself my favorite green drink this afternoon…the lavender matcha!

I love baking soda bread:

And we had our traditional corned beef dinner with all the fixin’s:

For dessert I made Guinness mousse to go with the Guinness cake Bunny baked:

This is truly one of my favorite dinners of the whole year!

A Trio of St. Louis Favorites for 3/14

Two days ago we celebrated Chicago on 3/12, and now it’s St. Louis’ turn…in honor of the original telephone area code for the metro area, we observed 314 Day!

We had a few St. Louis favorites…(frozen) Imo’s pizza for dinner, with the St. Louis classic, Fitz’s root beer:

And a homemade lemon gooey butter cake for dessert:

The celebratory season is far from over…tomorrow we’re having an early St. Patrick’s Day, and then the two March birthdays in our house within a week!

Chicago-Style Pizza and Portillo’s Cake for 3/12

Happy 312 Day, a day to celebrate the great city of Chicago based on the city’s (and my) original telephone area code. I made our favorite Chicago-style pizza for dinner, and Bunny made a Portillo’s-inspired chocolate cake for dessert…it was a most delicious day!

Bolognese and Cannoli Cake for MAR10 Day

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!

Tasty Tuesday–Festive Feasts and Holiday Baking

Time for a last look back at the festive feasting season!

We started Thanksgiving week by baking…Christmas Funfetti cupcakes? There’s never a bad time for Funfetti!

Of course, the main attraction Thanksgiving week was the turkey dinner:

And seven pies!

We celebrated Nikolaustag with chicken Döner Kebab and gingerbread tiramisu:

The next special dinner was a week later, for Santa Lucia Day, featuring potato pancakes and kielbasa, with cranberry fluff for dessert…and let’s not forget the lussekattes for breakfast!

We had a gingerbread layer cake filled with gingerbread mousse and frosted with molasses cream cheese frosting on Christmas Eve:

And our favorite cherry coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas Day:

But the best meal of the year is the Christmas Day pick-out dinner!

For our “fancy” Christmas dinner, we had bolognese, breaded artichokes, and fresh baked Italian bread:

In keeping with the Italian theme, we had cannoli for dessert:

On New Year’s Eve, we had black bean soup and corn bread:

And our traditional hot chocolate bar, of course!

Our New Year’s Day dinner was enjoyed a day late…I made pork medallions and spaetzle:

And we had a Glühwein-Kuchen for dessert:

We also had a special “Lord of the Rings Day” celebration (on Tolkien’s birthday!), featuring one of the fanciest chicken recipes I make, and “Westfarthing Fairings” from the Recipes from the World of Tolkien cookbook:

For the last feast of the season, Ryan’s birthday dinner, (which also happens to be Epiphany), we had fry bread and chili:

And Boston Cream Pie for dessert:

We did lots of other baking along the way, including a pair of Italian Christmas cookies for Christmas school:

And all of our favorite fancy Christmas cookies…chocolate crinkles, linzer augen, chocolate peppermint, raspberry almond thumbprints, peppermint meltaways, and fig thumbprints:

With the addition of a few of the pudding cookies Bunny made, they created a beautiful Bunter Teller!

For our New Year’s Eve hot chocolate bar, we baked two kinds of hot chocolate cookies:

In addition to the Christmas cracker candy I usually make, we also tried a new recipe that had sliced almonds on top:

And on the last day of Christmas, we baked and decorated sugar and gingerbread cookies:

I made a couple of bonus pies along the way, too:

And a bevy of festive drinks, including standards like egg nog and wassail, and some frappe kits from Aldi:

And just as we made a special dessert at the beginning of Thanksgiving week, we ended Epiphany week with a carrot cake:

I think that’s it for festive feasts and holiday baking…I’m ready to close the Markel bakery for a bit!

A Feast for Epiphaday

Today is Epiphany, but it’s also Ryan’s birthday, and we had one last festive feast to celebrate!

I made chili for dinner, and making chili means also making fry bread to go with it:

And for dessert, I baked a Boston Cream Pie…it’s been years since I attempted this particular cake, and back then, I had a problem with the filling being too thin and running out of the cake. If anything, this time I over-thickened it, but it tasted good, and it stayed put!

The days have long since passed when I used to make baklava every year on Epiphany, and our church doesn’t have an extra service during the week, but I still wore my favorite star-shaped brooch from Erstwilder…it is the absolute perfect star for Epiphany!

I still have one more cake to bake yet this week, and then the festive feasting season will draw to a close!

Stretching Out the New Year

Thanks to the very unwelcome guest influenza, plus work schedules, we stretched out our New Year’s celebration over three days instead of the usual two!

On New Year’s Eve, I made black bean soup and cornbread:

And we had our customary hot chocolate bar, with a twist…Turkey made the hot chocolate from scratch for us! Chickadee helped me bake two kinds of hot chocolate themed cookies to go with it, too:

And somehow I managed to stay up until midnight to ring in the new year on Gloriana:

New Year’s Day was a pretty quiet day, lacking our usual trip to the mall and the Lego store, and we had our celebratory meal today instead. We spent most of the day watching the last few Christmas movies in our annual rotation, and I made some peppermint frappes from a kit I got at Aldi:

I went with a German theme again this year for dinner, featuring Schweinelendchen mit Pilzrahmsoße (pork medallions with a mushroom cream sauce) and spaetzle, plus roasted carrots and green beans with bacon.

For dessert, Bunny and I made a Glühwein-Kuchen (mulled wine cake).

I wasn’t intending to begin 2026 with illness, but at least we still had a few nice meals to end one year and begin another!

Tasty Tuesday–The “Fancy” Christmas Dinner, A Few Days Late

It’s kind of become our custom to have our “fancy” Christmas dinner a few days after Christmas, instead of on Christmas Day or the day after like we used to. But this year, I had to stretch the definition of fancy, because with grocery prices the way they are, there’s no way I could justify buying something like a beef tenderloin or standing rib roast or pork crown roast like I have in the past. So I decided to run with the Italian theme of our Christmas school, and make bolognese, which isn’t exactly fancy, but is really nice, and also a favorite of everyone here that I don’t get to make a lot because it takes a lot of time. I also baked Italian bread and some breaded artichokes, and made a tossed salad to go with it…it might not be the traditional definition of fancy, but it worked for us!

For dessert, I made cannoli, and if that isn’t fancy, I don’t know what is!

It may have different from our usual Christmas fare, but I’m really happy with how it turned out!