Our Easter

Easter day was so sunny and pretty! We had two days prior that were overcast and glum, but Easter was sparkly and gorgeous. We had a lazy one this year, including me being lazy and not really decorating the house until the last minute. I think I pulled it off though haha.
Since Caitlin couldn't eat rare lamb, I made a shoulder of lamb and cooked it kind of like you would cook carnitas. The recipe was from a cookbook called "A Kitchen in France." By Mimi Thorisson. There was some tinkering I had to do with the cut of the meat, because here in the US they butcher meat differently than they do in France. I ordered a shoulder, thinking that it would look like a pork shoulder roast, but it didn't. When I arrived to my favorite butcher shop and asked for my order, the guy came over and said I'm really curious what you are making, and why you requested 3 pounds of lamb shoulder. After discussing the recipe and having a fun conversation on how butchering varies, even from the East Coast, we decided to add a couple more blade shoulder chops to the three pound piece and tie butcher string around it to make it a bigger roast. So having done that, it brought up the weight more from the recipe. I upped the temp a bit and adjusted the cooking time. I think I could have taken it out sooner, but it was pretty tasty. The sauce was a garlic cream, made with pan drippings, cream, and ten cloves of garlic. As you can see from the first picture, there are already several heads of garlic with the lamb up there! That garlic caramelized quite nicely and perfumed the meat. We started dinner with a carrot ginger soup, with a spoon of creme fraiche and chives. I found some morel mushrooms at Berkeley bowl and added them to the asparagus, along with lemon zest. I lately have been loving Yukon gold potatoes more than red, so we had some with thyme.  No time this year to plan out a dessert, and having just finished consuming Caitlin's cheesecake the week before, I was a bit maxed out of baking. We bought this cute little coconut cake at Whole Foods, and I decorated the top with some cup cake picks that I already, and that was our Easter!

On good Friday I shot Caitlin's maternity pictures. I'm doing a separate post on that possibly on Wednesday. I'm still editing the pictures and hope to have them completed by then. They turned out so pretty!  You will have to come back and check it out.
Speaking of Caitlin, we have less than five more weeks to go before little miss Ruby is born! We are all so excited :)   Last Saturday we went over to their house to check out Ruby's little nursery area, and it was super cute. Caitlin painted the cutest little water color to hang above her little bassinet and everything is so nicely  color coordinated. All the little clothes are washed and now we wait.

Ok, I'm off to edit the pictures!