Quick and Easy Easter Recipes

Easter time is a time of early spring, rebirth, pastels, Easter egg hunts, and family gatherings with tasty foods.

Many think of ham, lamb, or turkey as the main dish for an Easter celebration, and those are truly wonderful meals. The side dishes like cheesy potatoes, mint jelly, and stuffing are great as well. Add a spring vegetable like asparagus and the Easter meal is complete.

For those of you, however, who are not entertaining twenty-five people for dinner, do not like a roast, or are vegetarian, these meals don’t quite fit the bill.

Or, if you are doing one of these meals but want a supplemental dish that complements your spread but is unique as well, this meal is perfect.

I’m convinced, although I’m not by birth, that somehow I am Italian. I adore the Italians family values and their embrace of a huge spread on holidays and ANY day!

Pasta Primavera literally means spring pasta.

Pasta Primavera

Ingredients:

• 3 carrots, peeled and cut into thin strips
• 2 medium zucchini or 1 large zucchini, cut into thin strips
• 2 yellow squash, cut into thin strips
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 yellow bell pepper, cut into thin strips
• 1 red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon dried Italian herbs or herbes de Provence
• 1 pound farfalle (bowtie pasta)
• 15 cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan



Directions:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
On a large heavy baking sheet, toss all of the vegetables with the oil, salt, pepper, and dried herbs to coat. Transfer half of the vegetable mixture to another heavy large baking sheet and arrange evenly over the baking sheets. Bake until the carrots are tender and the vegetables begin to brown, stirring after the first 10 minutes, about 20 minutes total.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until al dente, tender but still firm to the bite, about 8 minutes. Drain, reserving 1 cup of the cooking liquid.
Toss the pasta with the vegetable mixtures in a large bowl to combine. Toss with the cherry tomatoesand enough reserved cooking liquid to moisten. Season the pasta with salt and pepper, to taste. Sprinkle with the Parmesan and serve immediately.



I recommend using a whole wheat pasta cooked according to the directions as it offers a nutty flavor and a strong dose of fiber.

In addition, I’d offer a multi-grain baguette for a side as well as a delicious tossed salad.

And, since dinner is so healthful, and it is Easter, I’d serve a sinfully delicious dessert!

Here’s the offering. With Easter Baskets overflowing with cute egg-shaped candies, I thought this would be an adorable and tasty way to serve them!

Chocolate Easter Egg Nests

Shredded Wheat or Rice Krispies and melted chocolate make perfect nests for candy coated Easter Eggs and they are quick and easy to make.

Hands-On Time: 20 minutes
Ready In: 3 hours
Yield: 8 chocolate nests

Ingredients:

5 large Shredded Wheat (or 2 cups spoon-size)
1/3 cup good quality milk chocolate chips
1/3 cup good quality bittersweet chocolate chips
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter
3 tablespoons golden syrup, such as Lyle's

mini candy coated chocolate eggs

OR

3 cups Rice Krispies
scant 1 cup good quality semisweet chocolate chips
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup, such as Lyle's

Directions:

1. Crush the Shredded Wheat into a bowl with your fingers. Put the chocolate chips into a saucepan together with the butter and golden syrup and melt over a gentle heat.
2. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Stir the Shredded Wheat into the chocolate mixture and spoon eight mounds onto the lined cookie sheets, shaping into rounds with a dip in the center.
3. Chill in the refrigerator for several hours until set, then peel the nests carefully away from the parchment and fill with mini chocolate eggs.



These can be filled with jelly beans, foil-wrapped eggs, or the decadent Cadbury Mini Eggs I am so wild about. If you are expecting a lot of guests, definitely double or triple the recipe to be sure and have enough.

Wishing you and yours a very Happy and Healthy Easter/Spring! A very Happy Passover to those celebrating that holiday!

How Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward Saved Me By: Candice Smith

 

Recently I took the six hours needed to watch Ethan Hawke’s documentary called The Last Movie Stars (HBO Max) and was blown away.

If you don’t know who Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were and are, then research needs to occur before reading this piece any further. For the rest of us, these two were a part of the fabric of my American upbringing. I knew their movies, I knew their love story, I knew their politics, his racing, her theater, and their philanthropy. I thought.

Watching this comprehensive documentary with their words, their children, and their images completely transformed how I looked at them as individuals, as a couple, and, more importantly to me, how I looked at myself.

Like many in the world, my first world, I suffer. I suffer with self-esteem issues. I suffer from mental issues. I suffer from the post-COVID world. I suffer from having teenagers. I suffer from anything and everything and nothing at all.

Watching Newman and Woodward on my television for six hours brought a profound understanding, a clarity that I had heretofore never experienced in my life. Ever.

They were enraptured with one another when they met. Their passion ebbed and flowed but never disappeared.

They were equally impressed with one another’s talent, perhaps more he than her.

She sacrificed to raise a family, his and theirs. She did it brilliantly if not perfectly, but it wasn’t the path she would choose again perhaps.

He was an alcoholic. She stayed despite the pain, uncertainty, and boorishness it brought.

He took up racing at 47 years of age. She rooted him on race after race.

They were a couple, a team, a family.

And, yet they were pulled together and apart like any marriage.

They continued to reinvent themselves.

They continued to make mistakes. The same mistakes.

They loved, hard.

They shared tragedy.

They shared joy.

They shared recipes with America and made millions for charity when no one else was doing this. Is ANYONE doing it even now besides them?

And while watching and learning and gleaning and sitting transfixed, I couldn’t help feeling good about myself.

Good about my marriage.

Good about my future.

You see, I’m nothing like them, and I’m everything like them.

My marriage is happy and joyful and flawed and terrible.

My desire to reinvent myself shows promise and then winds back onto itself to normalcy.

Creatures of habit.

My world has been dark of late. Problems that will remain unnamed yet are real and heavy and robbers of joy.

They affect my marriage, my family life, my serenity.

But, by seeing that Newman and Woodward had problems, too, I see a different perspective. That they suffered and endured. They reveled in one another and persevered, I am able to feel an optimism that has escaped me for far too long.

Perhaps I’d held myself, my husband, our marriage, and our family to far too high a standard.

We’re doing pretty great, thanks.

Oh, we still have problems, we’ll still fight, and we’ll be grumpy, scared, and over it, but we’ll never quit.

See, we love each other.

We’re imperfectly perfect for one another.

We love our children, our home, our lives, and each other.

And, if two crazy movie stars can muddle their way through life and keep a marriage together for 50 years, there’s no telling what two regular people like my husband and I can do – we’re nearly through the first thirty years!

So, thank you Ethan Hawke for saying yes to the project and putting a human light on two of Hollywood’s biggest deities.

Thank you, Newman children, for opening up about your parents, their story through your eyes, and for letting us know how much you loved your flawed parents.

And, thank you Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, for doing your thing for all of those decades. Right or wrong, good or bad, love or hate, drunk or sober, knowledgeable or ignorant, you provided one type of roadmap for this lady to consult when she’s feeling lost.

Lost I felt – and will feel again, no doubt – but this documentary about your lives makes me feel that whatever Life throws my way, I can navigate it with my husband by my side.

Thanks.