Our Easter Weekend

Saturday was spent lounging around and (attentively) watching conference. What bliss. What truth.
Saturday evening I spent some time in the kitchen prepping some stuff for our Passover lunch that we planned to have with another couple and their new baby on Sunday. Oh, and while E was at priesthood, I visited an old mission buddy grilling her on the details of her upcoming wedding. SO EXCITING!
Sunday morning E helped me get things ready to go in the oven, offering his hand at washing and chopping potatoes, rolling out bread dough, and mixing up the sauce for the roast. He said he was surprised by how much work it was getting a little meal ready. ;-)
Well, the meal turned out very yummy and uplifting. After dessert some of us shared our testimony of Christ. I shared about my favorite Easter memory. On my mission I was asked to put the Easter program together for the branch sacrament meeting. I was terrified. Seeing my musical incompetence, the Lord truly blessed me with so many wonderful experiences at that time and we were able to pull it off. I also mentioned how much I love the idea of the Passover. With the blood of the Lamb on our doorways, death cannot enter in, evil cannot enter it. Yes, death will visit us all for a little season. But it will not stay, again, because of the blood of the Lamb. Do we need a symbol of some kind to place over our doorways so that the world will know of our faith? Of course not. We do not need a symbol because we have the true power of the Priesthood that makes out covenants and the Atonement real and efficacious in our lives.

Our Passover Meal: (Keep in mind that this was not a kosher meal, just a traditional one.)
London Broil Roast (from bakedbree.com/our modifications follow)
1 – 3.5 pound brisket (we used London Broil as it was cheaper)
3 onions sliced thin (2 onions)
3/4 cup chili sauce (should've halved this, it was SPICY)
1/4 cup ketchup
1 cup red wine (1 cup beef broth)
4 Tablespoons brown sugar
3 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
3 cloves chopped garlic
1 teaspoon fresh thyme (omitted)
salt and pepper
Mix all of the sauce ingredients together. Season well. Pat the meat dry .Season with salt and pepper right before you sear it.  Crank up the heat in your pan and add a little oil.  It needs to be screaming hot before the beef goes in.  We are after a nice crispy crust on the outside of our brisket.

When both sides are seared put it in your roasting pan.
Pour the sauce all over the brisket.
Cover the brisket with the sliced onions.
Add a few sprigs of thyme and season with salt and pepper.
Cover with tin foil. Put the brisket in a 300 degree oven.  The time depends on how large your brisket is.  Mine was 3.5 pounds and it cooked for almost 3 hours.  Brisket should be fork tender.  If it is not fork tender, put it back in the oven until it is.(we cooked it for 2 hours and let it rest for 30 min-it was not very tender) Get on with the other parts of your meal.

Let it rest a bit before you cut it.  Slice on the bias against the grain.  This is very important.  If you cut with the grain, you will lost the texture of the brisket and it will be tough.(true dat)

Orange Jello
duh. And anyone who knows me well will attest that I am awful at making Jello. One recipe I found actually called for juice and gelatin, not a box of Jello. But we used a box.

Unleavened Bread (from tammysrecipes.com)

Yield: 

6 cookie sheets full

Ingredients: 

1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup honey
2 teaspoons salt
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups water
6 to 6 1/2 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour

Instructions: 

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine the oil, honey, salt, eggs, and water. Stir until well-mixed. Stir in about 4 cups of the flour, then add more flour as needed and knead into a fairly stiff dough.
2. Divide dough into 3 pieces. On a lightly floured surface, roll each piece into a large rectangle. You can make your matza as thin or as thick as you wish; we like ours rolled fairly thin.

3. Cut rolled dough into squares. Place squares onto lightly greased baking sheets. Prick with a fork. Sprinkle with salt if desired.
4. Bake in a preheated 375-degree oven. For thin matza, bake 10-11 minutes. For medium matza, 13-14 minutes. For thick matza, bake 15-20 minutes or until done. Matza should be very lightly browned on top. Over-baked matzah will be hard and not very good, so be careful to not bake too long!


Green Salad
My friend made it. It was good.

Roasted Veggies with Rosemary
We used about 3 pounds of red potatoes and 2 carrots. 1/2 cup of olive oil and 2 T of fresh rosemary. Seasoned well. Lined a cookie sheet with foil and they roasted with the meat at 300 degrees for 1 hour. Perfectly tender.

Macaroons (there are a million recipes for these. And it doesn't help that 2 distinctly different cookies have that name. I settled on a simple one and now I can't find it. Internet Cops: Please forgive me.) P.S. These we awesome. Next time I'll make a double batch.
7 oz sweetened coconut (1 small bag or 1/2 a large one)
1/2 cup sugar
3 egg whites
pinch of salt
Mix together and mound into tablespoon-sized balls and bake at 350 for 15 minutes.
I think next time I'll try unsweetened coconut and increase the sugar just a little. In my opinion, these cookies don't need to be really sweet to be good.

It was the general consensus around our table that the Jews used unleavened bread in remembrance of their flight out of Egypt. Oh, to have the kind of faith to flee from sin and follow the prophet in such haste that we wouldn't even allow our bread to rise! Reminds me of "Gazelle Intensity".
Thanks Jessie for the inspiration.