Sunday 12 April 2009

Easter



Today is Easter Sunday, and true to tradition I have done my famous Easter breakfast table, using as much yellow as possible. the tablecloth has a pretty yellow border which doesn't show in the picture. the napkins have cute hens.

When I was little and lived at Roseveth Farm, we had boiled eggs every Sunday morning, and on easter Sunday the eggs were decorated - maybe with faces drawn on, maybe dyed or with funny hats. My granny knitted little woolly hats to keep the eggs warm. We were also given chocolate eggs, quite big ones filled with chocolates. When I moved to Norway my mother soon discovered that these eggs do not travel well in the mail, so instead sent Lindt chocolate figures - bunnies, kittens or butterflies. When I got children of my own I kept the tradition going, and decorated the table with as much yellow as possible (my mother never bothered) and gave them small gifts instead of chocolate eggs, because they were just about impossible to get hold of in Norway. Their granny always sent Lindt figures and maybe a little book, so Easter breakfast was like a little Christmas. We had a large cuddly toy rabbit who sometimes posed as the Easter bunny, and once I even made a treasure hunt, so Jeremy and Tamsin had to solve a series of clues before they found their stash. We always have a Kinder egg in the egg-cup ( chocolate with a small toy inside) and the boring white supermarket eggs get brown by adding papery onions skins to the boiling water.

Easter to me is mostly about the celebration of Spring. The frozen land is waking to life again, and the yellow symbolises the sun. Chicks and lambs mean new life - and we always have a roast leg of lamb for Easter Sunday dinner. We did today, it was sprinkled with rosemary and studded with whole cloves of garlic . The potatoes were par-boiled then lay in the roasting pan, soaking up the meat juices for the last hour of cooking. Yummy!

Happy Easter everyone!

4 comments:

  1. That makes me so homesick! Thank you for posting the photo, it brings back a lot of happy memories. We had our Easter breakfast too, but no hand-painted Easter plates for us. Instead we had croissants with hard boiled eggs and orange juice. Nick bought me some lovely purple tulips and we used a springy green table cloth. Tonight we're having indre filet av svin with rødkål, potatoes and brussel sprouts. Yum!

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  2. Ooh, what a lovely table. Such sweet plates and I can't stop thinking about decorated eggs on Sunday. What a nice tradition. I just might have to decorate my kid's hard boiled eggs now and again, just for fun.
    ~Amy (Tamsin's friend)

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  3. Do that! All traditions have to start somewhere. Jermy invented one where we have waffles every Sunday, and it's a pretty sad Sunday without them.

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  4. Wow! Tamsin wasn't kidding when she said your table was gorgeous! Your family is so good at keeping traditions alive and all things homemaking. You inspire me to try harder to make things special.

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