Whew!

It's been a busy few days.  Saturday Ruth and I did our regular Saturday cooking and meal planning for the week.  We made three salads, one new one (Ham and Chickpea), plus Lentil Black Bean and Fake-um Potato Salad.  We also made a spinach meat loaf (it was supposed to be a meat roll, but we made it ground chicken instead of ground beef so it was too soft to roll and I ended up making it in a square cake pan.  What else?  Oh yeah, David was wanting some precooked hamburger patties, but we couldn't find any in the store so we put some in the oven and baked them while we were making other things.  Oh yeah, we also made a Mexican Chicken Lasagna.  (It was interesting, ok, but not great).

I had warned Ruth Saturday that we weren't having a crowd over Sunday.  I'm trying to keep it down to once a month, because it's expensive (and I'm currently unemployed), and we'd already had a crowd over earlier this month.  However, Saturday evening, Joyce phoned to ask if she and Robin (and Gideon) could come for Sunday dinner, and then if I could babysit Gideon while they went to Rider Pep Band practice.  Well, sure, of course - so then we invited a crowd over for lunch.  I think we probably had around 20 people, but I'm really not sure.  I have 17 plates and they were all used, plus some paper plates; but some plates were used as serving dishes. We had baked fish with lemon, left-over Mexican Chicken Lasagna, a vegetable frittata (Ruth and I had been wanting to try this and it turned out really very nice - easy too), plus Lisa brought tortillas and made quesadillas.  There was lots of food, and lots of visiting and we all had a good time.

Sunday evening I was feeling a little bored, so I decided to make Easter Bread (Paska).  I mixed up my yeast and then discovered I was really low on flour, so had to run out to the store to buy some; plus some more eggs because we had used them all up making the frittata.  Nicole was happy to help me bake (she really likes cooking).  I ended up making four of the traditional loaves (baked in cans so they're tall cylinders), and 20 buns.  They tasted really good, but I thought they'd be better with some lemon curd on them (traditionally they're iced, but I find that way too sweet), so then I made some lemon curd.  Very good.

Monday I went over to visit with Aunt Alice, and to deliver her some Easter Bread.  Then I went to visit the Steiners.  They're so busy, trying to get their house in shape before they leave, that I ended up inviting them for lunch, and to look after their girls in the afternoon. (Some things are just easier without preschoolers helping). I made a big batch of chicken vegetable soup and we had it with sandwiches and homemade dumplings. While Scarlett slept, Hadasssa and Ahzriel and I made mini muffins (a double batch of cranberry orange muffins and a single batch of gingerbread muffins).  I was wanting to have muffins for The Party last night.

Then I made Pizza Soup for supper (soup twice in the same day isn't generally what I plan to do, but that's the way it worked out last night) and then the usual dash out the door to The Party.  Bram stayed home.  He's had a really bad cold the past several days and also had a big assignment due Tuesday that he needed to work on.

We had around 40 kids for The Party, but were really short on helpers. (Bram was sick, Debbie is home recovering from surgery, Loopie's in New Guinea, etc.) (Did we notice?  YES WE DID!!!)  It was pretty wild and crazy last night.  When I finally got home, I went to bed early.  Bram was a little disappointed; he wanted me to proof read his assignment, but I was already asleep when he woke me up to ask me.  I proofed it this morning.