Easter

Easter Menu Board

I am sure that many of you, like me, are busy with family functions over Easter.  Dinner with my family and dinner with the husband’s family always requires strategic coordination.  This year my family went rogue.  No ham, turkey or lamb for us, no one wanted to cook a big meal.  We went to Mandarin.  Slightly sacrilege I suppose, but makes everyone in my picky eating family happy.  Plus we don’t celebrate the traditional Easter, we celebrate the chocolate Easter.

On Sunday however we cooked dinner for my husband’s side of the family and you can see the board here.  The carrot cake was probably my favourite part of the meal.  The carrot cake was vegan, and no one knew until I told them.

Menu Board Week of April 6th

We also ended up with lots of leftovers, which made for a shorter menu board this week.  Plus this week is a bit hectic and so I went for some quick and lazy dinners.  Nothing is terribly inspired, but everything tastes good.  Like last night’s dinner for example.  Pierogi’s! I mean yum.  I do know how to make them from scratch (I was fortunate to have a lesson directly from a friend’s Polish mother-in-law), and I often do when I have a whole weekend without other commitments. However they recently had a deal on at Costco so we bought some pre-made frozen.  You always need to have those things in your freezer you can just whip up on a busy night.

In an effort not to fully phone it in I did make a warm spinach salad to go with the boiled dumplings.  Nothing a little bacon and fried onions can’t fix and make feel like homemade goodness.

Pierogi’s with warm spinach salad and sour cream

Warm Spinach Salad

Ingredients

• 8 ounces baby spinach
• 8 pieces thick-sliced bacon, chopped
• 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Onion (1 small), very thinly sliced
• 20-24 boiled pierogi’s (we used Pelmen Foods)
• Sour cream (we used lactose free)

Directions

• Fry the bacon on medium high heat.  Remove from the pan and reserve on a paper towel lined plate.  Remove all but 3 tbsp of bacon fat, leave in pan to cook onions.
• Add onions to the pan and sauté until starting to brown.
• Whisk in vinegar, sugar and mustard to make a vinaigrette.
• Add spinach and coast well in vinaigrette.  Allow to wilt to your preference.
• Add bacon and combine.  Spoon over top of pierogi’s.  Top with sour cream. Enjoy 🙂