Weekend Foodie Warriors – Take 40!

Hello hello, again, Foodie Friends 🙂 Hope you had a great Easter weekend! For this holiday edition of Foodie Adventures, join us for our Good Friday Fun, Easter Dinner, and Birthday Cake making!

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We have a lot of friends and neighbors who have been working tirelessly on the front lines of this virus for the last few months, including doctors, nurses, and grocery store workers.

My mom and I have always been good at sewing (must be in the genes), and spent a lot of my childhood home-making clothing, quilts, baby bibs, and embroidering blankets for our family, friends, and those around us. Every time one of our family members gets married or has a baby, they get a one-of-a-kind quilt made just for them to help commemorate the special occasion.

We knew that putting our sewing skills to work now more than ever would be helpful, as face masks were in short supply and the ones online were so astronomically priced. So we began making and giving them away to whoever needed them! See the slideshow below for some of our fabrics we used and in-action shots.

And these are pictures of the finished products! 100% cotton on the back and Batik fabric on the front, which is one of the tightest, thickly woven fabrics that the CDC reccomends when making homemade masks. The kid sized masks had elastic straps for ease and convenience for both the kiddos and parents and the adult ones had adjustable cloth tie straps.

So far we’ve made about 110 masks since the week before Easter!

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For Easter this year it was pretty quiet, with only my immediate family, Jamie, and I, making sure to keep our distance and not going near my grandma as much as we could just in case (she’ll be 95 next month!).

Of course we started the day with a special drink, cranberry pineapple mimosas! We took no pictures of those though, but let me tell you, they were delish. 😋🍹

For dinner, or supper rather, since we ate around 1-2 pm, we had both turkey and ham (Grandma’s favorite), along with tons of yummy sides! We made Roasted french onion potatoes, Brussel sprouts with bacon and onions, Balsamic brown sugar glazed carrots, and of course, both Mashed and Sweet potatoes.

We always try to eat at the dining room table during holidays, and this year was no exception! We have these gorgeous hand painted glasses we got from a yard sale a couple years ago and they remind us of spring, so we ended up using those and our pretty blue flowered plates to match.

For dessert, we each got a dark chocolate bunny and ate the last of our three pies from Buttermilk Sky Pie Shop, this one was their seasonal Lemon Icebox flavor, super delish!! I think this one and the Chocolate creme flavors were our two favorites.

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So if you follow us on Instagram (c’mon, y’all are professionals, I know you have 😏, if not, click the link above 🔼), you would’ve seen us mid-icing these birthday cakes on our story, but here’s a brief overview of what went on!

Jamie’s coworkers are awesome and he’s started a trend of making them each a small cake (the flavors are always surprises) for their special day. The first cake we ever made is below for a March birthday, a Hershey’s chocolate cake with extra chocolate chips, a fresh strawberry compote filling made with local strawberry jam, and a bitter-sweet chocolate buttercream. Needless to say – this cake was a massive hit! 🎂

There were two April birthdays back-to-back this month, so we made two seperate flavors. One was the same Hershey’s chocolate cake from above (which hapened to sink in the middle this go around, I think we opened the oven accidentally too many times 🤦‍♀️) with the mocha frosting recipe from the right hand picture below as the frosting and filling.

The other was a lemon cake recipe from Alex Guarnaschelli (one of my favorite Food Network Chefs ever), using the lemon frosting from the recipe above, and then the filling from the same Good Housekeeping cookbook below (which made almost a lemon curd-like filling). I’ve had this cookbook since I graduated college, and it’s the same book my mom had to teach her how to cook when she was growing up, and she got me a similar copy as a present. This is the best book to not only find basic recipes in but also teach yourself how to make sauces, work with different cuts of meat, and identify herbs and spices.

With the extra cake filling for both of these, we also made filled cupcakes, which was super fun too! 🧁 This lemon one was absolutely a winner, and while neither of these recipes are non-dairy, I’m working on creating the non-dairy substitutions this week that will be added to the blog! Stay tuned for those!! 🙌😁

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So how was your weekend Foodie Friends? What’s been your favorite place to get take-out or carry out over the last week? Was the Easter Bunny good to you this year? Sound out in the comments below to let us know your suggestions of what dishes to make or places we should visit next. As always, feel free to like, comment, & share 🤗