Easter Dinner--whole roast chicken, stuffing, double eggs, and cake!

We had a pretty low key Easter here.  The Bunny (oh how I wish I'd never started that at all!) brought the Kid a new scooter and some Color Bubbles from Crayola*  (*We'll talk about those in a bit!).  She got gooood candy, no crappy hollow chocolate bunnies here, no sir!  Ghiradelli, that's how we roll.  She got caramel filled, The Hubs and I (yes, we had a basket, the Kid insisted on it) got milk chocolate with hazelnuts. 

And I could have sworn I'd bought a bag of Reese's eggs, but blast if I can find them now.  Maybe I put them back?  Maybe I'll find them around Halloween. 

Speaking of other holidays, I threw out a bunch of Christmas candy today.  There are two spots in our house where you can find candy, one is in the kitchen/dining room, the other is here in my office/scrap room (hey, I gotta have something in here to keep me going). 

The thing is, we rarely even eat candy.  There's usually some baked good to nosh on instead.  So I threw away some gold chocolate coins from Christmas, some Reese's and Hershey's bells, some little Reese's cups that had gone "off" and some Reese's Pieces.

Can you tell we like us some Reese's around here? 

I really cut back on how much candy I bought this year, and stuck with the good kind and no I won't be throwing that away!

We went to the park early so the Kid could get a ride in on that new scooter before it got too hot, and too crowded.  Apparently the park is the place to be for Easter, and we had no idea.  People were already showing up, loaded down for the long haul by the time we were leaving.  Plus we had some cooking and cake decorating to do.

Like I said, Easter for us was low key.  I didn't even make a ham, but instead cooked a whole chicken that's been hanging out in the freezer waiting for a purpose in life since about January.  I cooked it in the same style that I do a roast...

Sautee onions and carrots in OO in the big old heavy cast iron Dutch oven, then remove and add the chicken.  Pour the veg back in, add lots of salt and pepper, add in chicken broth, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for about 2 hours.  I actually did use a thermometer this time to check, never can be too safe when it comes to the poultry.

And it was alright.  It definitely needed more seasoning than I gave it.  When it was done I had the Hubs remove the chicken, I removed the veg and then cranked up the heat.  I stirred in some water mixed with lots of corn starch to make the gravy. 

The gravy was definitely necessary, it really made the stuffing! 

For the stuffing I used a package of bread cubes I had in the freezer, probably since Thanksgiving when I made a whole bunch of bread...you know, actually I think it was from Christmas.  I did things a little bit different this time, I started with OO instead of butter.  Healthier, yes, but I'm not sure if I'll do it again.  While the stuffing was good, it lacked that buttery richness that makes all the difference.  Maybe next time a combo of OO and butter will do the trick. 

I sauteed diced onions and celery in OO, then added some sliced canned mushrooms.  Salt and pepper of course, and thyme and sage, just a bit.  It's come to my attention that the Hubs is not much of a fan of sage.  When the veg were nice and happy, I poured the whole mess on top of the bread crumbs and added quite a bit of chicken broth.  I spread that in an 8x8 pan and baked at 350 until the chicken was done, about 40 minutes.

While that was cooking I started on the eggs.  I'm not really sure why we color eggs, we don't use those for hiding, we use plastic.  But they usually do make for some lively double eggs (what the Kid has always called "deviled eggs", it just stuck).  Very simply done--egg yolks, mayo, pickle relish, salt, pepper, and celery seed mixed together and spooned back into the whites.  I sprinkled them with paprika this time, I don't usually do that and I don't know why.  They were perfect!  I loves me a good classic double egg. 

That was it for the dinner, with just the 3 of us, and we don't eat very large meals there wasn't much point in making a whole feast. 

But we did have some delicious bunny cake after dinner!  I kinda felt bad for making him out of red velvet cake, as it looked like he was pretty much bleeding to death. 

Oops.

But he sure did taste good!

* oh yeah, about those colored bubbles from Crayola.  The supposedly "washable" color bubbles.  Yeah uh huh, until you read the fine print, or simply open the bottle and see just how dyed they are!  I'm really not sure what we're going to do with those, save them for the park I think since it's not good on concrete (it can stain). 

Ugh. 

And here I thought Crayola was on the ball with all their "Washables", the crayons were the bomb with the Kid was little and had trouble staying inside the paper, let alone inside the lines!