495-Think, Plan, Cook-Easter Dinner Yet To Be Decided

I spend a lot of time thinking about food, I’ve been criticized or “ribbed” about this personality flaw by my wife, and several past girlfriends. I am constantly talking about the next meal, or food trends I’m infatuated with, or food products I want to develop.

I contemporaneously imagine how food and culture bring people of all nations together and also tear them apart. I picture how to plate up food in my mind by separating the plate into zones and imagining which food will go best in what zone, to overlap foods or not, to sauce on top or underneath, to use whole herbs or chopped, to drizzle with oil or sprinkle with cheese. The possibilities are endless.

Even with all that thought, sometimes coming up with original recipes, ideas or meal plans can be a challenge for me, and likely you too. We only have a certain number of dishes or techniques in our “culinary inventory” to choose from in order to make meals or holiday dinners.

I find myself planning new ways to cook old foods like slow-cooking tomatoes for 3 days to make intense sauces or fermenting peppers for 8 weeks to make mayonaise or how I might stretch meals made in one pot so I can make dinner, and lunch the next day, and maybe a picnic the day after. I like to think about cold fried chicken and tangy coleslaw and lemony iced tea on a hot day under a shade tree at a local park or lake.

Near constant thought about food, man what would I do without food….too hard to imagine so let’s move on.

As I write this Easter Sunday dinner is only 4 nights away. It’s a big day for many and certainly for our family as we will celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, a very important tradition and reminder for us that just happens to coincide with a nice gathering and hopefully great food and meaningful conviviality.

When I think of Easter dinner leg of lamb, beef brisket and ham all come flashing to me with bright lights. But there are many other food traditions related to Easter as well but our kids don’t collect eggs anymore and we don’t buy hollow chocolate bunnies anymore either. We will buy them some nice dark chocolate bars and maybe some candy too but I will be spending more time today imagining dinner not treats.

Recently I had a few BLTs that were amazing….did you see the pictures on my Instagram feed? If not, please go follow me there! Those tangy and crispy sandwiches had me thinking about summer, and all the freshly-harvested food that I hope I will find locally to cook with, sadly I then remember how lame southern Utah’s food scene is and my mind turns yet again to Easter supper.

I have been presenting my family with 3-4 choices to see if anything has a consensus that would make my life easy. Man, it would be nice to have a smoked brisket with BBQ sauce, coleslaw, mac-n-cheese, green beans, or collards with a flourless chocolate cake for dessert! But a nice grilled ham steak with apple sauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas, and carrots sounds good too!

Then there’s always the classic Jewish-style slow-cooked beef brisket with onion tomato gravy and related side dishes or leg of lamb. I mentioned earlier, but that nasty New Zealand lamb will only please my wife and father-in-law. The rest of us will be having pizza or grilled cheese.

As you can tell, I have more thinking to do, with that said, please check out the show notes, and God Bless, I love you all!