Bento Challenge Week 12: Easter

So my dad is nominally Catholic and my mom is nominally Lutheran, but I wasn’t raised with any actual religion. (I was baptized Catholic, but only so my dad’s best friend, a professional gambler in Las Vegas, could be my godfather. That was my last time in a church except for the occasional concert.)

We did celebrate Easter in a secular sort of way. My parents would hide an Easter basket in the house and we’d have the family together for a meal. But that’s as far as it went. The most memorable Easter I ever had, my parents drove up to a ranch in the country and bought an entire lamb, which they named Iphigenia. We dug a fire pit in the back yard, set up a spit, and roasted it with garlic and rosemary for an entire afternoon. It came out indescribably delicious, but for whatever reason we never wound up doing it again.

So to me, Easter is essentially three things: Eggs, lamb, and candy. I found a Scandinavian grocery store on my way home yesterday and picked up a tube of dill-flavored cod roe, which is hands down the thing my Norwegian mother and I most enjoy putting on hard-boiled eggs. Got some assorted Scandinavian candy while I was there as well, which I mixed with the chocolate-covered licorice pastilles my mom gave me (along with like 20 other assorted candy bars; my mom is amazing) for my birthday. And right before heading home, I stopped by Karavas Place for a couple of lamb shishkabobs, which we ate most of for dinner (along with the roasted broccoli and carrot soup you see here).



Finished off with some sea beans, peas, olives, lady apples, blackberries, kumquats, and garlic herb butter, I’ve got myself the makings of a proper Easter feast! I admit it kinda makes me miss my family back in Montana, especially since my brother’s first grandkid was just born. We didn’t get a chance to go to my wife’s family’s Seder this year either, which is also hard. Here’s hoping the spring and summer bring us many more chances to see each other than the winter did.