Happy Easter: Loving My Mother Today

I am not religious, but my parents are; and thus, we celebrate Easter with a huge family dinner every year. Our normal dinner menu includes items such as glazed ham, mashed potatoes (loaded with butter and sour cream), pies, etc.

As we approached this holiday, I was so nervous--how was I going to handle my first big holiday as a vegan? I wasn't worried about me. I have a lot of will power, and I am totally committed to my cause (although I did have a major break down yesterday which will be the topic of tomorrow's post). However, I normally do a lot of the cooking in concert with my mother, and I was really worried about how I was going to handle cooking for my family. Since Easter is what I consider one of the minor holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving being the major holidays), I saw it as a dry run.

Thankfully, my mother came up with a great idea: let's do a lemon/Greek theme. Yes! We mostly call it Greek, but it was really a lemon theme since everything had lemon in it. Then my mother searched out Vegan margarine and vegan bread so I could have garlic bread (one of my favorites.) I freaking love you mom! So that was a great Easter treat.

So, we had a wonderful Easter dinner. We were all full and satisfied, and I think everyone was super happy with our Vegan supper.

Easter Menu:

Greek Lemon Rice Soup

Hummus with Pita Chips

Salad

Olive Bar

Quinoa Salad

Fresh Fruit Salad

Homemade Lemonade

Greek Lemon Soup (My Mom's Recipe)

2 Carrots

2 Celery Stalk

1/2 Onion

3 Vegetable Bouillon Cubes

2 Garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup lemon juice

1 1/2 cups Basmati Rice

1 tbsp Smart Balance Margarine (optional)

8 cups Water

Saute carrots, celery, onion, garlic in olive oil until tender. Add bouillon, rice, lemon juice, and water. Bring to boil and reduce to simmer. Simmer until rice is tender. Once rice is tender, add margarine.

I also wanted to give the recipe for my special Quinoa salad.

2 cups Quinoa

4 cups water

2 tomatoes

1 avocado

1 cucumber

1 red bell pepper

1 small onion

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/8 cup olive oil

salt and pepper

Bring the quinoa and water to a boil, cover, reduce to simmer, and simmer for 25 minutes or until tender. (When quinoa is cooked it has a ring around the edge). Dice all the veggies.

In a mason jar, mix the lemon juice and olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix the quinoa, veggie, and the dressing.

So Yummy!

I have put up my hummus recipe up before but I will put it up again because it is so awesome.

2 cans of chickpeas

2 tbsp tahini

3 cloves of garlic

1 tsp of olive oil

salt

water

Put the ingredients in the cuisinart (except the water). Turn it on. Add a small amount of water in a thin stream until the hummus reaches the desired consistency.

Here are the pictures rounding out our meal (except the fruit because I didn't take a photo of that).

The point being . . . this was one of the best Easter dinners we have ever had. It was VEGAN. It went wonderfully. I am so happy. I couldn't have done it without the support of my family. Everyone is still nervous about the major holidays, but we have a lot of time to adjust before then.