Our first party!

My work table was a perfect spot for all the food, a problem we often had in our smaller space in Los Angeles.

For years now, I have cooked my family’s Easter dinner for my friends in Los Angeles.  Each time I had it, the party grew and grew until last year we had 60 or so RSVPs.   I love sharing this tradition with people in my life, but I’ve been so swamped with cooking and chatting that I haven’t actually enjoyed the meal myself in several years.   Moving to New York had a way of bringing the event down to a more manageable size, as we don’t know many people here yet!   It was lovely to meet friends of friends and finally eat my favorite meal of the year.

The food.

Everything we make is traditional, though I’ve added a honey ham to help me with filling people up, and I always make a fun dessert that changes each time.   In the past, we have made mini blueberry pies with honey brown sugar ice cream,  a hilarious kaleidoscope Peep cake, and Cadbury egg ice cream just to name a few.   Here was the menu for our first party in the new place:

Potato Pierogies and Sauerkraut Pierogies w/buttery onions and the Mondrick sauce

Kielbasa

HoneyBaked Ham

Aunt Anna’s Easter Bread

Hard cooked eggs w/ horseradish

Orange Coconut cake w/ toasted almond ice cream

“Juice of a Few Flowers” cocktail

YUM. 

When you have a pretty girl and a hairstylist at your party, you MUST get your fashion shoot in before they leave!!

The ice cream was awesome, but I was not a huge fan of this cake recipe. I will most definitely go back to my old Magnolia stand-by recipe when I make this again.

I was so happy to have family over for Easter for the first time in 7 years.

Jeff seems to be enjoying the party, even though I begged him to wear this shirt instead of the dirty old t-shirt he had on before!