Less Than Perfect Easter Dinner

Easter Dinner.  It doesn't initially sound like a big deal especially since we wouldn't be cooking for extended family, they live too far away.  But for me this was a big deal this year.  I felt like cooking a big meal, and that is a big deal when you review the past year.  A year ago we were settling back into live in Florida and trying to regroup from our sudden U-turn in life.  Last May we I tried a gluten free diet to solve the depression and low energy that I was plagued with.  Soon after we discovered we were going to have a third baby.  All that leads to this Easter when I am celebrating my own new life with a gluten free diet and a family that has a place to be rooted.

I wanted to cook Easter dinner to celebrate.  I had the perfect plan.  Steaks on the grill, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, and for good measure some festive cupcakes.  Then we made it hard on our selves, we added guests, doubling the crowd, less than 24 hours before the meal.  And to add to it we didn't finalize the menu until 3 hours before when 1/2 the party was going to the store.  We added hot dogs for the kids to save the steaks for the adults and made big pans of the sides.  We didn't have praline topping for the sweet potatoes and we blackened the first round of hot dogs for the kids, and one child refused to eat her dinner, leading to a melt down.  So much for a perfect dinner, at least the gluten free cupcakes turned out yummy and of course celebrating with friends was way better than doing it by ourselves.

Check out some more posts about Less than Perfect Meals and Jill Savage's new book No More Perfect Moms at Jill's blog.