Happy Easter to you too, ksrogers. Easter sounds delicious at your house. I'm a "Gut Ch-erman Frau" and love kielbasa & kraut, but what is a big bubka my Polish friend?

We're having turkey and the fixings with some home canned beets and beet eggs (not home canned, but farm raised). They will make a pretty plate!

Jackie

Bubka is a sweet yeast bread made with flour, some milk, butter, and eggs and seasoned with mace. I like adding some raisins to it too. The same recipe can also be used to make danish pastry or hot cross buns. Locally, there is a Honey Baked ham store nearby, but they are VERY expensive!

I'll add my wishes to all on the Forum who are celebrating Passover or Easter this week. I hope it is a warm and happy event with good food, friends and family.

Carol

Ken,
Hope you have a Happy Easter. Enjoy your polish sausage and babka. We have a Broadway Market here in Buffalo which specializes in Polish foods. I stay away [because of the crowds] but my daughter and her friends go every Holy week to stock up with all the traditional items. They bought babka, polish sausage, butter lamb, horseradish [ground on the spot] and even pussy willows.
I will enjoy my ham with raisin sauce, home made dinner rolls, green bean casserole and cake and ice cream for dessert. Have a Happy Easter everyone.

Happy Easter to you all too! That Kielbasa really sounds good. I think that I will have a burrito and maybe a pickled egg.

JohnT

Happy Easter -

I just bought some fresh corn taco shells - think I will "do" a casserole of layered tortilla shells, my home ground sausage, home made salsa, cottage cheese, then top with jalapeno cheese - bake 30 minutes at 350 till heated through --- then eat.

We would usually have ham and all the fixings, but my freezer is so full - we really need to eat some of the saved food - to make way for the summer harvesting FUN, FUN, FUN.

Bejay

Happy Easter to everyone !
We are just having a beef and asparagus stir fry and rice. Our daughter and her family cannot come today. My husband has to go to work soon. I did bake some special bunny shaped cookies for today.
I think we will have a late Easter get together on Tuesday.
*Ken, now you be good and don't let your sugar levels get too high ! Take care.

Best wishes to all.

I had my brother and his wife and three kids come in and help us eat the great big ham I had ordered. Our local butcher smokes them himself; last year I asked him for the biggest one he could give me and it was twelve pounds, no bone! This year's was a mere 8 pounds, but it still was a nice big hunk of meat.

I made a sweet potato-carrot puree to go with it --- a recipe from my aunt that has creme fraiche and a lot of butter; it calls also for a little bit of sugar, and instead I used some good local maple syrup .... MMM it was good. Even the kids, suspicous of orange potatoes, loved it.

Way to go, Shirley, making homemade dinner rolls! I copped out with Pillsbury crescent rolls, though it was nice that it meant my 11-year-old niece could prepare them; she it at a stage where she loves helping in the kitchen so it was fun to have her working with me.

I steamed some sugar snap peas and made a nice green salad with feta chunks and a maple vinaigrette (bottled by some local boutique, a gift from a recent visitor). We washed it all down with local hard cider, which goes SO well with pork.

For dessert, I got some local vanilla ice cream and made a dead-plain cheesecake (just the recipe on the Philly Light package); offered people a choice of either one with a choice of rasperry sauce (from berries I got at a U-pick in July and froze) or a homemade bittersweet chocolate sauce. The best combo was cheesecake with a bit of BOTH sauces.

This was one of my more successful holiday menus, I have to say. The ham just needed to be heated through, no prep at all (unlike a turkey); the sweet-potato puree, dessert sauces, and the cheesecake I made last night, so all I had to do at the last minute was steam the peas and put the salad together and supervise my niece with the rolls.

And we have enough ham left to feed an army.

John, got any great ham burrito suggestions?

Zabby

> John, got any great ham burrito suggestions?

Zabby,

What a feast!! And Linda Lou's stir fry with asparagus sounded great too. (I have a nice bunch of spears now that am undecided how to use)

Burritos.... don't get me started! LOL Pretty sure I burned everyone out on burrito posts a long time ago. Especially on Janice's forum.

What I love about burritos is that they are almost as simple as the one pan meals that I made day after day for my kids and me. It's not that I'm lazy, but I hate clean-up and love keeping it uncomplicated. Your fav ham & beans recipe topped with cheese and chopped sweet onions would work nicely. A mild datil pepper sauce is what I would use to finish.

Where ham really shines burrito-wise is in breakfast burritos. Brown ham cubes first. I brown in bacon fat or lard. Then add frozen Ore-Ida potatoes and a gob of butter. Their Crispy Fries, Potatoes O'Brien and various Hash Brown products are all great. Lightly whisk eggs with cream and pour over top. Salt & pepper. Cook until eggs are done and top with shredded cheese of choice. When cheese is melted stir the mess. When rolling into burritos add chopped sweet onions and a few chopped celery bits doesn't hurt. Hot sauce or chopped hot peppers optional. I like smearing a line of Rosarita brand refried beans across the tortilla wrap before rolling. And right along side is where I dribble some hot sauce if using.

jt

Mmm, thanks, John!

That takes care of breakfast tomorrow....

And since we are well supplied with tortillas (there was some talk of my other family of nieces and nephews coming from Toronto, so we really stocked up at the grocery store and now have a LOT of food for just the two of us) I may try making extra & freezing per the instructions you posted last week.

My worry is that the result will be soggy when I reheat it, but if I smother is in cheese sauce, who cares? ;-)

Zabby, who had a pleasurable dilemma this morning deciding WHICh of the many, many yummy leftovers to have for breakfast

> My worry is that the result will be soggy when I reheat it, but if I smother is in cheese sauce, who cares? ;-)

Zabby,

I nuke mine in the microwave and they don't come out soggy. Don't think that I have ever heated in an oven. My mom heats hers in a coutertop convection oven and they turn out OK too.

jt

Been waiting for my asparagus to start sprouting. Nothing yet, but after a couple of years of setting down corn gluten for weed control, it is very weed free now. I'll be adding a few more new plants that I just started from my collected asparagus seeds.

Linda Lou,
Last week I had a craving for chocolate layer cake. I bought a couple of boxes of the chocolate cake mixes and also frostings made with Nutrasweet and maltinol. For a cream filling (with some nice fresh strawberries), I made a batch of sugarless cream filling. Recipe: 3 tablespoons Wondra flour (dissolves best with milk, and leaves no lumps). A half cup milk. Cook this until its a thick paste. Then, in a small bowl, mix together a half (scant) cup of shortening, with a little butter or margerine added, and a half cup of Splenda. Whip these together and add a teaspoon of vanilla. Once the flour milk paste is cooled to lukewarm, add it to the shortening mixture and beat well for about 2 minutes. I spread half on the two cake layers, and placed sliced strawberies on one layer on top of the filling, and placed the other layer (cream filling facing down), so that the berries are 'sandwiched' in between. Then the cake got frosted. It did need refrigeration due to the fresh berries. After a big slice, my blood sugar only went up 15 points, not bad.. The same cream filling recipe can be made with granulated sugar, as the slight warmth of the cooked flour and milk paste helps to melt the sugar granules, and gives a nice fluffy texture with no gritty sugar grains. This is the same recipe used by most of the commercial bakeries.