Happy Middle Eastern Easter

This is a picture of my boys last week. We actually only made it to one hour of Church today since Dean has been a little under the weather. Matt passed a cold to me and I passed it on to Dean. Poor little guy. I've felt bad for him. Aren't they so cute? I've been waiting and waiting for him to be big enough to fit into this onesie with the appliqué tie. Thanks Grandma!

Warning: You may be totally jealous of what you are about to see.


Or you may not. I guess it just depends on your palate.

When Matt told me he was hammed out, I decided to go a different route this year for Easter. I'd been going through some of my first blog posts earlier this week, and I came across my first Easter post. It's kind of long, but at the end I talk about helping prepare a Seder Passover dinner for the girls at New Haven. My brother commented that they generally have lamb (makes so much more sense than ham if you're going with Christian symbolism) and Middle Eastern accompanying dishes.

Matt grew up having lamb, but he hated/hates it. I never really had it growing up since my mom dislikes it, and I was a vegetarian pretty much my whole childhood. But the smell really isn't all that enticing. Despite our lamb-less-ness, I decided to go along with the whole Middle Eastern theme.

I went all out. I cooked pretty much from 2 until 7:30. It turned out picture perfect!

Here was our menu (I'll link the recipes):

• Homemade pitas. Yes I said homemade. Matt said (and I quote) "Restaurant quality pitas. I've never had pitas this good in my life." They really were divine and EASY! I will never buy those dry, crumbly pitas again from the store!
  
• Hummus. Always delectable so long as it is made fresh. While I'm not a huge fan of store bought hummus, I do love this recipe. (I pretty much follow the recipe, but I make minor changes. For instance, I rinse off the beans and don't use the bean liquid, add lemon juice to taste, add a little more oil, and use water if it's too grainy/thick. Also, I don't measure out my cumin.)
• Baba ghannouj. Despite the fact that it is an Alton Brown recipe, I do not recommend this one. I reduced the measurements on the seasonings pretty drastically, and it still was too lemony and herbaceous. Mine turned out fine, but I know there have to be better recipes.
• Haroset. Now, haroset is traditional on the Passover Seder plate. It represents the brick mortar from the Jewish Egyptian captivity days. I kind of just took inspiration from these recipes and did my own rendition. I used 1 granny smith apple, 1 gala apple, a handful of golden raisins, 5 figs, grape juice (in place of red wine), a hand full of chopped pecans, and a little sugar. I cooked it down and ran it through the blender until I got it to a nice spreadable consistency. We ate it on the Matzo crackers. Yummy and sweet.
  
• Israeli Couscous with grilled vegetables. This was also just inspiration for my dish. I used Israeli Couscous (big pearls rather than the super small instant kind), cooked it in the recommended amount of liquid (I used chicken broth), 1/4 tsp turmeric, 1/4 tsp cumin, 1 clove garlic, a handful of fresh parsley. Cooked that on the stove top. Then on the grill Matt cooked 1 zucchini, 5 mini bell peppers (3 red, 1 yellow, 1 orange), and 1/4 of a red onion. He did a superb job. This dish was a hit!! We both really loved it. The grilled vegetables added such a nice touch.
  
• Indonesian Chicken Satays. I used a marinade packet I picked up at Kroger's (Smith's). I saw it on my way out of the store last night and thought, "PERFECT!" And it was.
• And for dessert, carrot cake.
  

It all turned out as good as I could have possibly hoped! I haven't been this excited or creative with my foods since I've had a little baby and a lot less time. I even used my china I brought home from China for my serving dishes! There was a lot of clean up, I'm oh-so-tired, and too full to want to go to bed yet, but it was so worth it!