Happy Easter!

Tulips and daffodils,


green, green grass, sunshine (we got lucky), colored eggs; all are part and parcel of Easter at our house.



Without kids at home, we skip the Easter basket and candy, although I do have a brightly colored Easter basket on the table filled with colored egg shells from a few years ago. The ends were pierced and the egg blown out of them, then they were rinsed out and decorated. I keep them in an egg carton with the season decorations. They may last forever!

Today was the first morning that it was warm enough to eat breakfast outside (and we ate a few hours later than usual, too, which helps). We had a festive breakfast that included Sweetie's famous fruit bowls

plus the Bread Egg Nests with colored eggs that I tried this year.

Read all about the nests at the Bread Baker's Dog. They are yummy and you get a sweet roll and a soft boiled egg in one pretty packet.

Hope that your Easter, Passover, or other rite of Spring is delightful!

Out On the Porch in the Morning

When Sweetie said that dry rot had done it's thing to our front porch and that he would have to take the porch apart and build it again, I had no idea that it would be a good thing.

The old porch had three steps up to a landing and then three more steps up to the right to the front door, or a single step up to a platform where you stepped up into the sunspace at the side of the house. In the planning process for making the replacement, I asked if we could change things a bit. Sweetie was willing, so we now have the same three steps from the sidewalk to a landing, but now you step up one step to an expanded deck, then into the sunspace, or up the three step to the right and to the front door. The expanded deck goes beyond the side of the house a couple of feet and now has a railing around it, too.

Why am I blogging about this? Well, the unexpected thing is that we now have a front of the house eating area on the new expanded deck and we are eating there almost daily now that the weather has warmed up. This is especially nice for breakfast because the deck faces east. It has become routine to fix up our coffee, bowls of mixed melon and other fruits, yogurt for Sweetie and oatmeal with golden raisins and milk for me. We sit in the sun (I wear a sunhat) and eat, sip, and read the morning paper. Bliss.

Sweetie's Fruit Bowl

Sweetie keeps this seasonal but he likes melon, so there is usually some.

1/2 watermelon, cubed in bite sized pieces

1/2 ripe cantaloupe, cubed in bite sized pieces

1/2 honeydew melon, cubed in bite sized pieces

1 basket strawberries, in season, washed, hulled and sliced

Mix these fruits in a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap and chill.

To serve, fill a cereal bowl 2/3 full of the fruit mixture for each person. Add more fruit...whatever is in season.

At this time of year it is often blackberries, blueberries, or peaches or nectarines. We often add a bannana, sliced, on top, divided between two bowls.

This is good topped with plain or vanilla yogurt and some nuts or a handful of granola.

The fruit mixture should be enough to serve 4-6 people depending on the size of the cereal bowl.