Easter time
This must be
Easter must be Heaven. When imagining where all my favorite souls have gone. They must be here. On the heels of winter, the stink of mud under new grass, trumpeting vines uncurling, sun stretching longer over each canvas day. Birds calling to wake. Balls chiming off bats in the distance, church beds burping tulips, shadows that want to cover you all up, like kissing a baby. Crowds leaving church in a rush of pastels, white socks, white shoes, smelly lilies, pale daffodils. Clouds of white. Everyone’s funeral. Everyone’s baptism. Heaven.
I don’t know what makes it Heaven, littles, or how a month can feel like this, restoring, beginning, alive. I do know this. This bite, that color, taste littles taste. I send an aggressive text to nearby family, as if the menu sheds light on all of us below, like glory escapes clouds. This is what we will eat, this is how it must be.
Easter menu:
Bunny Rabbit cake with coconut frosting ( a la Fanny at Chez Panisse 1234 cake)
Asparagus in phyllo with goat cheese
Pizza rustica – Italian quiche
Fruit salad – citrus, berries, whatever
Hummus/Tzatziki with veggies and Pita
Mamma Lou’s peanut butter chocolate eggs
5 of the 6 items are kid prep fun. To start, the Hummus and Tzatziki dip. The cucumber crunch, and clean lemon, bright dill, and sharp garlic, break up what has felt stagnant. Winter’s turning and stewing and waiting is now the opening, brightening motions of spring. The dips are healthy and beloved, and hard to mess up. Make fresh! Wash off the blanket and snot, bring night crickets, bless these days, shining and new.
After naps, but on the heels of my independent prep time, the wild ones chopped and mixed. Both dips asked for garlic, always entertaining, pulling off cloves, cleaning them with a knife smack on the cutting board.
“Hi ya!” I shout
“Hi ya!” they retort.
Having all the ingredients on the counter with a few knives is enough, good yogurt, halved lemons, a squeezer. Bigger little gets to work. (He even looks chefy with his arm tattoo.) The college kid is there, he has to make eggs at the same time. So… fried eggs, tzatziki, hummus getting blended, littlest little cooking donuts in her own kitchen. The beauty here, so few parts in no particular order means all can happen, unbalanced, unmeasured, unordered. It just is.
Then pining over plums, how abstract and grand, imprinted in my 7 year old hands by Fanny at Chez Panisse. Coveting the plums and garlic flowers and grape leaves, the images they made into meals. This book, sunk down deep in my understanding of everything, could be how I spent 12 years in the Bay Area. I was Fanny, just trapped on a farm in Virginia, if only I had a restaurant in California. This cake is a go to for baking with kids – counting out the pieces 1, 2, 3, 4 – stirring without too much care. For littlest’s birthday last week we sliced strawberries into a bit of sugar and beat it with a spoon. Letting it sit and macerate, a strawberry juice emerged that dribbled onto the warm cake and topped with the berry bodies and fresh whipped cream can’t be beat. It can work for any special occasion including Easter Bunny Cake. The only addition is a basic icing that becomes the bunny’s coat (confectioners sugar, butter, a couple drops of milk, and lots of coconut shred.) We test this too, recalling Fanny, remembering the plums, honoring the season.
Last, a recipe for Pita bread. Maybe suffering is inevitable to the kids in the kitchen with flour experience. But a deep longing to create fresh bread, keeps tugging me into the abyss of grams and reckless hands and steps that really can’t be fudged. Despite all of the failure the search continues for a recipe that will conclude, baking isn’t so bad. Instead of including littles, I work during one littlest nap, and one bigger little peanut butter sandwich break. Having organized the measuring cups and scale and everything, I tell big little I cannot talk. It is fact that this dough rhythm is not inclusive, it takes all focus, all hands, all thought. Maybe this is what is, that flour, dough, baking cannot fit into another’s timing, it is the timing. No littles. No other things on the stove. No time limit. It worked. The dough was spongy, flexible, with a wheaty sweetness. I prepped solo but when it came to baking, the dinner bell was ringing, bigger little was on the sous chair, and the kitchen was hot. So hot even with the doors open I almost gave up and sat down.
“What do you think B?”
“Its pwetty good. It has hills on it, look mamma, hills.”
“Yes those hills are a good.”
Hills are the air pockets with a dim crust on each side from the hot skillet. With tongs in hand and small rounds staying damp under a kitchen towel, I was lost to it. Dough then is a retreat from the kitchen, not a child of it. Separate, secluded, this other place.
Nona has arrived with more recipes for Easter to come. More shedding and waking and blooming. More plastic glazed donuts and dreaming of plum ice cream at Chez Panisse. More rebirth and remembering and retreating.
