Dreaming of France -- Easter

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

Nineteen years ago, we spent Easter in France. The kids were little and I was exhausted, as all mothers of young children are, but this set the bar for us with Easter celebrations in France.
The morning began with mass in a chilly church. When we rturned to our friends' apartment, the children had an Easter hunt -- not actually an Easter egg hunt, but our friends had purchased little gifts for the kids, which was nice.



The apartment looked festive with yellow tulips blooming. The children and I enjoyed some snacks before the meal. It looks like Grace is mad, so I'm probably trying to settle her down.

This side table is full of scrumptious food. I remember that we had lobster as a starter then rabbit as the main dish, and of course, there is bread, and some cookie covered with chocolate for dessert. 

This is the children's table, although the picture is kind of dark. Notice how attractive everything looks, even for the children. 

I hope you enjoyed your weekend, whether you celebrate Easter or not. For us, gathering family together is always a reason to celebrate, and in just a few weeks, we'll be in France again. 

Thanks so much for playing along with Dreaming of France.

I appreciate you sharing your love for France, along with food, books, movies, stories and pictures. Please visit the blogs of others who play along so we can share the love.

Dreaming of France -- Easter Chocolate

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

As we move toward Easter, I thought back to our weeks in France before Easter last year.
In the United States, we see a lot of Easter eggs and bunnies, but in France, the animal choices are wider.
Fish are big for Easter. Maybe it has to do with the fish as the symbol of Christianity.

But they also branch out into other animals, like horses.

And this cartoon rooster is quite a stretch, but I'm sure anyone would be glad to find this in your Easter basket.

And here's a cute kitty too.

No matter the shape of the animal, the chocolate is surely phenomenal. 

Hope you find some delicious chocolate in your Easter basket. 

Easter Askew

I knew this was going to be a strange Easter.
Spencer is away at college and Tucker left for a school trip to France. But I still didn't anticipate how off kilter things would be until Grace started throwing up Saturday evening.
She was really sick all evening and finally fell asleep.
Earl and I felt compelled to cancel our plans with his sister and family since we didn't want to spread the stomach virus to anyone else.
So this morning, I wandered the grocery aisles, wondering what I could fix for someone who has been recently ill, and two people who might come down with the same virus.
Grace slept and slept. I asked Earl to fix her Easter basket and hide it while I went to the grocery store.
We didn't go to church, again not wanting to spread the virus.
Earl and I were at loose ends as we waited for Grace to wake up. For the first time in 21 years, we didn't have kids looking throughout the house for their Easter baskets.
Grace's basket had candy, which I knew she wouldn't want to eat after being sick all night, and a copy of the DVD Les Miserables.
"If Grace would wake up, we could watch Les Miserables," I told Earl.

Here's a photo from our first Easter with Grace.
Love those floral print dresses and big glasses.

When she emerged around 11, she wandered into a chair at the dining room table where Earl and I were both on our laptops.
"Hurry up and find your Easter basket so we can watch Les Miserables," Earl said to Grace.
I turned my head and stared at him. Grace looked confused.
"I can't believe you  just spoiled the surprised," I said.
He looked a little sheepish but shrugged it off.
Grace wandered in the living room until she found her basket hidden under a blanket. She set it on the table and we all looked at it expectantly. Was the DVD hiding behind the chocolate bunny? Nope. We hadn't even put it in the basket.
I went to the closet and grabbed the movie from its hiding place.
So after our subdued meal, we spent the afternoon watching Les Miserables. It was just as wonderful as Sim at Chapter 1 - Take 1 predicted, and as moving as Grace told me.
I hope your Easter was a little more traditional than ours.

Saturday Snapshot

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.
Some bizarre things happen at the college where I teach.
Earlier this week a man who had been stabbed took a bus to the college and collapsed in the bathroom. They had to close the building where my classes are while they cleaned up blood.
Friday, as I went through the line at the cafeteria, the cashier was dressed in a bunny suit for Easter.

Hope you all have a relaxing weekend even if you meet a bunny over 5-feet tall. 

Happy Easter if you celebrate.

Best Ever Carrot Cake Recipe

As promised in my previous post, here's a copy of the best carrot cake recipe. In general, I don't like fruity desserts, but this carrot cake wows me. I got it from a former friend. The friendship didn't last, but I still respect the carrot cake.
I thought it was appropriate for Easter dinner, but it just made me miss Grace more because she usually makes it with me.
First mix together: 2 Cups flour (the recipe calls for whole wheat, but I use white flour)
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt.

In a separate bowl, cream together:
3 beaten eggs
3/4 cup oil (I use canola oil)
2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup plain yogurt

Combine the dried and the creamed ingredients.

Then add:
1cup golden raisins
1 8-ounce can of crushed pineapple (drained)
2 cups grated carrots
3 1/2 ounces of coconut
(See what I mean? Enough fruits and vegetables to reach 5 servings in one piece of cake.):
It looks kind of gross when I pour it into the 9-inch by 13-inch pan then bake it for 50 minutes at 350 degrees.
But afterwards all of the fruits and vegetables become one delicious baked good.
Add the cream cheese icing while the cake is still warm:
Cream together:
1 stick of room temperature butter
8 ounces cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. orange juice
1 tsp grated orange peel (I used a clementine and grated it when I realized I didn't have any bottled orange peel.)
Yum. I'm going to make a cup of decaf cappucino and enjoy this cake.

Easter with Teenagers

I remember when they were little and the excitement built as we moved toward Easter. We'd color eggs and I'd plan the jump ropes and slinkies that I'd hide in their Easter baskets so they wouldn't get overloaded on chocolate. Sigh...
I mailed Grace an Easter box last week and I was left home with 15 and 17-year-old boys. Would they even want Easter baskets? They would never turn down candy.
"Are you still going to hide Easter baskets?" Tucker asked in the week before Easter. His eyes looked hopeful.
"Well...not me, but the Easter bunny will," I told him.
We talked about it the night before and decided the boys needed to get up around 8:30 so they could find their Easter baskets then get ready for church.
Tucker got up and took a shower. A shower? Before Easter baskets? See, what kind of excitement is that?
Spencer finally got up about 10 til 9 and stumbled around until he found his basket then collapsed on the couch.

Tucker "didn't feel well" which curiously is how he feels most Sundays when we insist he accompany us to church. Easter was no different. He was angling to stay home even before he began looking for his basket.
This is one of those "if looks could kill" given by a teenager and caught on camera. It practically makes me a wildlife photographer -- catching the native species in its natural, aggravated state.
After mass, we went to my sister-in-law's house to play with baby Caroline who was dressed in a floaty Easter dress but who had not tasted chocolate that day. Ah. The innocence.
The only problem was that I took the picture with my phone and she kept tilting her head around to see the picture before I had finished taking it.
After a good meal, the boys interacted with their aunts, uncles and older married cousins. They carried on farily decent teenage conversations with adults and were in much better spirits when we returned home.
Hope your Easter was joyous, or at least you didn't have surly teens.

Spring

Time to lighten up with this luscious photo of a French bowl filled with quintessentially American robin eggs.


You remember these from your childhood -- the hard candy shell with chocolate and malted milk ball in the center. Nothing says spring like robin eggs.

Prayer Interrupted

This morning after gorging on chocolate, our family schlepped off to church. We're Catholic and we made some dressing compromises to what we might normally wear, adding collared shirts for the boys and skirts for Grace and me.
By the time the service started, the church was crowded with people standing around every wall. I noticed a man with jaw-length, frizzy gray hair and a navy jacket come in a side door after the service had already started. I thought no more about him.
After the homily, which is the sermon, the priest sits down and we reflect on his words. Today he talked about expectations. He joked that expectations are just premeditated disappointments. Then he used an example of George on Seinfeld and how he decided to keep making the opposite decision of what he would normally do. It all tied back to the Apostles expectations after Jesus died.
Anyway, in the silence of meditation after the homily, the man with the frizzy gray hair yelled out, "Allah is great!"
Now, when I first heard his voice, I expected that this might be a new dynamic to the service. Our church has been known to put on plays, to have liturgical dancers, who was to say that this wasn't part of the Easter mass.
But when the man bolted from the church, we realized he wasn't a planned part of the service.
I thought it was strange, but we go to the Newman Center. Most people in attendance would probably have agreed with him. "Allah is great!" Then they might have taken it a step farther. "Yahweh is great!"
Our liberal church accepts other beliefs. We study our history which began Jewish and we've had Muslim leaders in to talk about their beliefs. The man wouldn't get a rise out of us for shouting "Allah is great."
But within a minute, I felt Grace's body trembling beside me. We no longer live in the kind of world where we can hear a man shout his belief in Islam without fearing that violence will follow.
I hugged Grace and told her that everything was fine. She asked me to come with her to get a drink of water and I did. Then I went back into church and she stayed in the outer rooms. I had just whispered to Earl that he should go looking for her before the Lord's Prayer. "I will after the Our Father," he said.
In our church we hold hands and then raise them on "the kingdom, the power and the glory." Before we reached that part, Grace came back in and slipped her hands to me and Earl.

Making a Mess

Ever notice how easy things look on television? My boys saw a commercial for Rice Krispie treats shaped into eggs and dipped in chocolate and sprinkles. They decided they would like to do that.
I have never made Rice Crispie treats. So I bought a box at the grocery and saw that I needed marshmallows and butter. I got out a heavy pan and the boys went to work.
Spencer melted the 3 tbsp. of butter then poured in a bag of miniature marshmallows. Tucker put some chocolate chips in the microwave to melt. Then they measured six cups of Rice Krispies and poured them into the pan.
This pan is cast iron and the whole thing gets hot, so one boy held the hot handle with a pot holder while the other stirred. The next step was to shape them into eggs shapes.
The commercial shows a mom with little children laughing and smiling as they pat the sticky treat into egg shapes. My boys quickly found out that more stuck to their hands than to the egg shape. And when they tried to dip it in chocolate, it came apart. They ate a lot off their hands and ended up running to the sink to wash them.
"Imagine if your hands were sticky like this all the time," Spencer said.
I suggested the gecko may have this problem.
"If you played Xbox with sticky hands like this, you'd ruin the controller," Spencer continued, mulling over the tribulations of sticky hands.
Spencer burned his wrist reaching into the hot pan and I think I didn't plan it very well.
"The commercial makes it look so easy," Spencer said.
"Yeah, but their mom was helping them," Tucker said accusing me. I laughed.
They ate a few and created eight Rice Krispie eggs that still remain.