Easter Treat Roundup

I love this time of year!  We were luck to have a very mild Winter this year so the Spring flowers have been blooming for many, many weeks already, and the herons are nesting in the park across the street.  I am turning my kitchen efforts to Easter this week and sharing some fun and tasty Easter treats with you today.  An Easter Treat Roundup.

And yes, I will be coloring eggs for The Captain shortly.  This is something I have been doing since I was a child and I love to see a bowl or basket filled with colored hardboiled eggs on the table or countertop. Even when we were out cruising on the sailboat all those years, I made sure to color some eggs for The Captain. They are one of his favorite snacks.  And they are bright and cheerful too… on days when Spring storms seem to linger, especially!

If you aren’t sure how to get started doing them yourself, here are a couple of ideas:

 How to Hardboil and Color Easter Eggs

Coloring the Insides of Easter Eggs.

And if while you are here, do take a look at some of these very creative and fun ideas too. Thanks to the other bloggers who shared their ideas with me so I could pass them along to you!  Please click on the link below the picture to find the recipe on the original blog post.

Just look at these great ideas!

Easter Bird’s Nest Cookies

by Confessions of a Fitness Instructor

Triple Chunk Candy Cookies

by Healthy Helper

Healthy Chocolate Bunnies

by The Happy Health Freak

Raw Carrot Cake Bites

by Plaid & Paleo

Orange Ginger Meringues

by Healthy Helper

Deviled Egg Chicks for Easter

by Running With Perseverance

Sugar Snap Pea and Apricot Salad with Cashews

by The Plant Powered Dietician

Chocolate-Dipped Sunbutter Easter Eggs

by The Fit Cookie

And here is one more of my own:

Pretty Spring Cake Mix Cookies

Do you have a favorite Easter recipe or tradition? I would love to hear about it and if you have written a post, do leave a link in the comments for my readers to see as well.

Happy Easter

It’s almost that time of year again… Easter is one of our favorite holidays.  Easter is such a happy and hopeful time of year.  It means Spring, Renewal, Rebirth, Salvation… whether you celebrate the religious aspects of Easter or not, you have to agree that is a joyous holiday.

I have enjoyed coloring eggs for Easter since I was a small child - first with my Mother and older Sister, and then with my younger Brother.  And since The Captain and I have been together, I have been doing them for him every year. Sometimes on a stove in a kitchen in a house… sometimes on the small propane stove in the galley of our sailboat… both in the marina and out at anchor.

It is one of our mainstay traditions. I color them. He love to eat them!

This year will be no different… I am going to hardboil and then color the shells of a dozen eggs on Good Friday.  He has already reminded me about it.  What he doesn’t know is that this year I bought a little coloring kit at a local $$ store and am going to really do up his eggs purty! 

Normally I just dye them with food coloring and a bit of white vinegar.  You can read about my technique for hardboiling and then coloring the eggs here.

And last year I also colored the insides of a few, too.  Click this link to read how I did it.

But this year I am going to use the dye tablets and stickers that came in the package and make them fancy and gaudy, just for a change.  Wonder what he’ll think when he sees them.

Then I think we will head over to the Children’s Farm to see the baby goats and new piglets.  Can’t wait!  There may even be some new ducklings in the park.

Do you color eggs?  Do you ever do egg hunts with your family?

What is your favorite thing about Easter?

Tangy Orange Cranberry Sauce

For some reason, I cannot imagine a roast turkey dinner, without cranberry sauce.  When I was a kid I would only eat cranberry jelly; no lumpy berries for me!  But since I discovered fresh cranberries a few years ago, I have come to love the tart taste and meaty texture of the whole berry.

In the past, I have made cranberry sauce a couple of different ways.  And at Christmas this past year, I tried a lovely Cranberry-Apple Sauce… a bit different and really good.  I wanted to use less sugar and the apples helped sweeten the sauce considerably.

But for Easter this year, I wanted something a little more unusual.. .but again without too much sugar.

We have been really enjoying the small navel oranges that are available here lately. They are very sweet and very juicy and flavor-full so I decided to make an Orange Cranberry Sauce to go with our Easter turkey.

Now I did already know that cranberries and oranges go together. In the past I have shaved some orange zest into my cranberry sauce as it cooks… and I love the dried cranberries lightly flavored with orange that I was able to purchase from Trader Joes.

So the addition of a whole orange to my cranberry sauce was not a huge stretch… and it turned out so well and is so tasty, I wonder why I never thought of it before.
I started cooking the cranberries in some water and added my spices and a bit of sugar, then whizzed up a whole orange in the food processor.  When it was broken down into small bits, I added it to the berries, which were just starting to pop, and let it all simmer for about 10 minutes.

The Captain wandered into the kitchen, wondering what I was making cause he could smell a lovely citrus scent wafting out the doors onto on the balcony…

Next time you want to surprise your dinner guests with something a bit different, try this lovely Orange Cranberry Sauce. I think it will be really nice with some roast pork too.

Orange Cranberry Sauce
Makes 2 cups

• 1 bag fresh cranberries, 12 oz.
• 1 small whole orange, cut into chunks and seeded
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cloves
• 1/2 cup white sugar

1. Mix cranberries with water, spices and sugar in a medium sauce pan and set over Medium-High heat.
2. Put chunks of orange into a food processor and whizz till pieces are quite small.
3. Add the orange to the saucepan.
4. Allow mixture to boil lightly  for about 10 minutes.  The berries will pop as they cook.
5. Remove from heat and allow to cool.  The mixture will become quite thick as it cools.
6. Store in refrigerator till needed. Leftovers can be frozen.

Per 1/4 cup serving.
Weight Watchers P+ = 1.
Calories 51; Protein 0g; Carbohydrate 13g; Fat 0g; Fibre 2g.

Bubbling away on the stove, steam rising and spices smelling lovely!

The Captain's dinner plate. 

Printable Recipe

Are you a cranberry sauce fan or do you prefer cranberry jelly?

Store bought or home made?

Coloring Eggs for Easter... This Year Something New!

It's that time of year again!  Easter or Passover, whatever you celebrate.... it is SPRING and that means rebirth, renewal, rejuvenation.

There are baby goats at the local petting zoo, ducklings on the lake across the street, and I know we will be spotting baby peachicks as soon as their mama peahens bring them out of hiding!  The herons are nesting and the geese are already sitting on their eggs.

I love to make colored eggs for The Captain at Easter.    I normally hard boil them and then use the dyes in my food coloring kit to make lovely pink, blue, yellow, and green eggs... and you can find my method in this post.

 



 

 This year, I decided to try something a little different... yes, the pastel colored eggs are lovely, but once you crack them open, and discard the pretty shell, they are basically just a plain hard boiled egg.

 

So, here is the surprise!

 

 

I have colored the insides of the eggs!

 

 

Instead of coloring the shells on some of my hard boiled eggs, I cracked them and discarded the shells and dyed the actual egg instead!

 

I used a spoon to remove the shell, then rinsed the egg in cold water to get rid of any shell remnants.

 

 

 





 

I used the same method  that I normally do to hard boil the eggs and mix the dyes... but I took the shell off the eggs before I dyed them.... just have a look at these beauties!

 

 



 

 

And when you slice them, they make a pretty presentation... the outside edges are colored but the inside slices are still white.

 

 

 

And here is another idea for dying them.
 

If you are going to make devilled eggs, you can cut the eggs in half and scoop out the yolks before dying them... and then they add a really different look to your buffet or lunch table!  What fun and your guests will be so surprised!

 



 

 
 

The Captain was really pleased when I presented these pretty devilled eggs to him for lunch!

 

To make the filling, I just mixed the egg yolk with a bit of homemade mayonnaise, and some salt and pepper and used a piece of caper for garnish... very simple.
 

 

Do you dye eggs for Easter?

 

Do you have a favorite devilled egg recipe to share?

 

 

 

 

 



Happy Easter to You!

Every Easter, no matter where we are, I hardboil and then color, a dozen eggs for The Captain.  I have done them every year since were first together.  One year we were in Edmonton over Easter weekend, staying and shopping at West Edmonton Mall.  On Easter Sunday morning he was so surprised that I had done the eggs at home, in secret, and brought them along on our trip.

Yesterday I hardboiled the eggs and after they cooled, I put them in the fridge...

 tomorrow I will be coloring them, using the same method I use every year.

Eggs are such a high protein food and at only 2P+ each, a real bargain in Weight Watchers 'speak'.

Do you color eggs?  Do you have other Easter Traditions at your house?

My older sister is a very creative artist.  She used to make these beautiful sugar eggs and I had one on display in our home for years.  When we left our house and moved onto the boat, I gave it to a friend of mine... wonder if she still has it.

from www.sugareggs.com

However you celebrate Easter, I hope it is happy and sunny!

How to Color Easter Eggs

Wherever we are at Easter, I hard-boil and color eggs for The Captain.  It is a tradition that can travel with us, wherever we happen to be.  One year I did them, while were on board the sloop, swinging from a mooring ball in Montague Harbor... but most times we are in a house, somewhere, with a real kitchen.

The first step is to hard boil the eggs.

I like to put the eggs into a saucepan, cover them with water, add a splash of white vinegar, then set the pan on high heat and bring the water to a gentle, rolling boil. 

Then I put a lid on the saucepan, turn the burner off and leave the eggs for about 15 minutes.

I drain the hot water off the eggs and run cold water over them, until they feel cool to the touch.  The cold water stops the cooking process.

When I am ready to color them, I get out my food coloring kit, and 4 glass containers, that will hold enough hot water to cover one egg.

I like to do the 4 colors that come in the kit... red, blue, green and yellow.  So I use 4 glass cups.  Into each one, I put 1 Tbsp of white vinegar, and 8 drops of the food coloring. 

Then I fill each cup about 3/4 of the way, with boiling water.

I like to put one egg into each cup, and leave them till they take on the color I like... approximately 3 or 4 minutes each.

When I take them out of dye bath, I set them on a paper towel until they are dry.

The vinegar helps set the dye, but I do take care not to handle the wet eggs with my bare hands, so that my fingers don't get dyed too!

And eggs are so good for us, too.  Lots of choline (memory), lutein (eyes), protein (muscles), and Vitamin B12 (brain/nervous system), along with lots of other health-supporting nutrients.

Per large egg.

Weight Watchers P+ = 2.

Calories 70; Protein 6g; Carbohydrate 0g; Fat 5g; Fibre 0g