Happy Easter

Being married to a pastor means that this week was, to say the least... busy. But even with an exhausted husband, I love Easter! This year is especially meaningful for me, because it is such a wonderful reminder of what my father-in-law told us before he passed away last June... that those we love are not really gone, but waiting for us in heaven with Christ. And of course Easter is a great time to spend with the family that is still with us. We are going to VT to visit Mary-Ellen, Tom and Mom L. (and soon-to-be, TJ!).

Being with family also means cooking for family! This year John made beautiful braided easter breads and I made tasty easter desserts. I am also making a butter lamb (butter formed in a lamb shaped mold - not lamb meat covered in butter!)

Have a blessed Easter!

Ice, Cookies and Dead Phone Lines.

Wow alot has happened in the past week. First of all, I haven't been able to post because we've been out of phone & internet service for the past week. We've been having problems for about 3 weeks with our phone service and had similar outages last year around this time. I think we'll be switching to Cable for our phone & internet services.

Also on Friday we had a horrible ice storm. There was over 4 inches of rain that came through our area, and the air was cold enough to cause the water to freeze at the tops of the trees, while the roads remained relatively ice free. The result was top heavy trees that came crashing down everywhere. Power has been out in parts of Worcester and surrounding towns. Many don't expect to have it back until Thursday. We were pretty lucky. While we had some major branches come off of the trees in our yard, there was no damage to the house or our cars.

However, because of the widespread power outages, the church bakesale was cancelled. So, my husband and I are left with the difficult task of eating the cookies that I had already baked. Its tough, but someone has to do it. I made my famous cherry chocolate chunk cookies, traditional gingerbread, and chocolate drizzled orange shortbread. I was also going to make chocolate hazelnut biscotti and church mice macaroons, but luckily I got the phone call before I started!

Over the weekend I also made loaded baked potato soup. I dont have a picture of it, but it is delicious! The broth is a mix of chicken broth, milk, sour cream, cheddar cheese and a mashed potato blended together. I also added a little bit of celery and onion, bits of bacon and chopped broccoli and chunks of potato. Its one of my new favorites! To go with it, I also baked some sage and onion rolls. They came out more sagey than oniony this time, but were still very good! I use a mix of 1/3 all purpose flour, 1/3 french bread flour, and 1/3 whole wheat flour and it turned out to have a wonderful texture. Later this week I think I'll make another pot of chicken noodle soup like this one I made a few weeks ago: