Easter Lunch Musings

 

Last Easter was my first time to ever make Easter lunch - and I loved it. I worked on it for quite a while before Easter arrived, and I was super excited about the whole process! (Here is my post about my planning from last year if you need links to any recipes.) 

This year we are on duty for Easter, so it's up to us to make Easter lunch once again. I'm excited about it, but we had a twist this year! The local food pantry wanted to donate an Easter meal box to our building, and it just arrived yesterday. So I'm just now finding out what ingredients I have to work with so I can make my plan. I told Justine it kind of felt like I'm on a cooking show and just had my ingredient list revealed. 

So here is my plan. I'd call it my working plan, but I have to finish my shopping TOMORROW, so I think we have to skip to this being the actual, final plan. 

* They sent a big, beautiful ham, so I think I'll make this Dashing Dish ham glaze to add to it. I have all but one of the ingredients on hand, so that should be easy to get and put together. 

* They also sent a tray of warm-and-serve dinner rolls, so I'll just use those and try to personally stay out of them. ;) 

* There were a couple of cans of cream of mushroom soup and a couple of cans of green beans, plus a can of French fried onions, so that gives me an excuse to try out this ultimate green bean casserole recipe I found last fall. I don't actually love green bean casserole, but Ryan does, and this seems like a version he'd really really like. (I will have to get a few more ingredients, but it will be worth it.)

* There was also a bag of carrots in there, so I want to try this garlic/butter carrots recipe. 

* I would make deviled eggs, because they sent a carton of eggs, but I know our tenants want to dye eggs, and they also sent along a egg dye kit, so I think I'll just boil the eggs for crafting purposes.

* They sent along a tub of strawberries and some whipped topping, so I think I'll make this shortcake recipe and put together an easy little strawberry shortcake for dessert! 

Then...for the leftovers!

Since there is a LOT of ham and we'll have plenty of leftovers, here are some ideas I have to use a few more things in the box for later meals:

* There was some asparagus in the box, so on a later day, I'll make this baked asparagus recipe and we can have it with leftover ham. (If there are leftover rolls, they can even add some sliced cheese and have ham sliders.)

* There was also a bag of celery and a bag of potatoes, so I really want to make this ham/celery/carrot/potato soup to use up some of those leftover. It looks pretty yummy! 

* There was also a head of lettuce, and a bottle of salad dressing, so I might whip up a salad by using leftover ham/carrots/celery/boiled eggs and adding some cheese.

That uses almost everything in the box. There were a couple other random boxed and canned goods, so the things I can't figure out how to mix in for ingredients, I'll give to the tenants to use in their own cooking adventures. But with what we have, it appears we'll have a great WillowBridge Easter lunch and some leftover options, too!