Easter Dinner

I just realized that I haven't posted anything on this blog for quite a long time, and I have made a lot of great stuff over the past months. My creative habits had moved from crafty to culinary over the winter mostly because I couldn't safely sand and polish resin creations inside. With the weather warming up I'm excited to get back into resin casting, but let me tell you a little about my recent kitchen fun.

This Easter I decided to create a delicious feast using recipes from the magazine Saveur that I recently subscribed to. They have some great articles about ingredients and methods used in all styles of cooking and a huge online database of recipes. On their website I found a Pineapple Chipotle Glazed Ham recipe and immediately decided that's what I would make. It was absolutely fantastic and the only thing that I changed was the size of ham used. Here's the recipe.

I took some photos of my finished product but haven't uploaded them yet, so here's a picture from the Saveur website. ;-)



My side dishes consisted of wild rice with asparagus, ginger-honey glazed baby carrots and a smokey cheddar potato casserole. The potato casserole was based off of one that my friend, Tyler, suggested we have at Thanksgiving this last year. His original recipe called for a pint of sour cream and 1/2 c of butter and was DEADLY. I modified it a bit and came up with a great comfort casserole that, of all the dishes, was the only one completely finished up by the end of the meal.

Smokey Sharp Cheddar Potato Casserole

2 lb bag of frozen hash browns, thawed
8oz of plain non-fat yogurt
1 can cream of chicken soup (it probably wouldn't hurt to use the low sodium type)
1/2 c onion, chopped
6-8 oz smokey cheddar cheese, sliced or grated

mix the yogurt, soup, and onions in a bowl. grease crock pot. layer 1/2 of hash browns in crock. pour 1/2 of yogurt/soup mix. layer 1/2 of cheese. repeat layers. cook on low about 4 hours.
-or-
mix all ingredients, except half of the cheese, in large bowl. pour into greased 9x13 baking dish, and bake at 350 for about 30 mins. cover with remaining cheese and return to oven for another 30 minutes.

For dessert, I used another recipe from Saveur magazine. It was from an article about cardamom, which is one of my favorite spices.
Once again, a picture from their site...and click here for the recipe.



These little babies are an explosion of flavor! The pound of butter used mixed with the abundance of ginger and cardamom make for a rich little treat, but I'm in love with them.