What's for Dinner #128 - the Pastel Easter Egg Hunt Edition - April 2026

[LindaWhit]

Coloring hard-boiled eggs is a long-standing tradition for many families for Easter. The only problem is when the adults hide several dozen eggs, but the kids don’t find them all. Yup - stinky eggs will eventually help you find them AFTER Easter, I suppose!

Parents now use plastic eggs, and fill them with all sorts of treats. There’s always chocolate and jelly beans, but now you can get stickers, quarters, Legos, mini-plushies, and sidewalk chalk.

The kids’ Easter basket itself can now hold things like the cloyingly sweet Cadbury cream eggs, coloring books and crayons, mini-cans of Play-Doh, card games, Pokemon cards, bubbles, and clothes! You still need the big chocolate bunny (although they’re rarely solid chocolate now). But the big question is, do you go for the bunny ears or bunny butt first?

Or perhaps an adult Easter basket would work - cured meats, cheeses, jams, gourmet crackers, a couple of bottles of wine…

So - what’s going in your Easter basket and/or on your Easter table, if you celebrate? And even if you don’t, tell us what’s for dinner!

[Sunshine842]

For our dinner its ham with veggies. Im bringing a veg ans carb salad (pasta, quinoa, oe similar) so any recipe recommendations are welcome!

Ill take a carrot cake for dessert.

[honkman]

Spring Pea Salad based on a CI recipe - it has sugar snap peas, snow peas, English peas, arugula, radishes and mint. The vinaigrette is made with olive oil, yogurt, garlic, lemon juice and dijon mustard

[Sunshine842]

Ooh that looks lovely. Might have to tinker with it for the dairy but we all like all those things.

[honkman]

You could use perhaps some silken tofu and increase the lemon juice a little bit to replace the yogurt

[LindaWhit]

@Sunshine842

Im bringing a veg ans carb salad (pasta, quinoa, oe similar) so any recipe recommendations are welcome!

What about an orzo salad with roasted vegetables?

[Zoeliculious (Zoe)]

Could use thinned out tahini to replace the yogurt / bind that dressing, as well.

[linguafood (Natascha)]

Hmmm. Our funnest Easter was several years ago, when a bunch of us did shrooms while my PIC hid the (chocolate) eggs all over our house, and we competed in finding them. But then shrooms make almost anything fun — save for, perhaps, a colonoscopy

Bc of my involvement in the badly planned benefit on Easter eve (with many students & townies gone), we decided to postpone our own secular ‘celebration’ of it to next weekend’s Orthodox / Greek Easter. Two lamb shoulders are on the menu, likely prepared two different ways: the smaller one as a youvetsi, the big one is an even bigger ? ATM, but I’ve gotten great recs on this thread:

Your favorite ways with lamb shoulder!

Our friends who sold their house to live in the city permanently gifted us two lamb shoulders from their share. I’d assume it is best prepared low & slow, either as a roast or braise, but was curious what my fellow HOs like to do. Please only share recipes that you personally have made before. Merzi vielmals!

Sides TBD. While this twist on spanakorizo really spoke to me,

One-Pan Orzo With Spinach and Feta Recipe (with Video) • 5★ • 30 min

if we’re making youvetsi that would be two orzo dishes, and I’l have to tell the recipe to shuddup & come up with something else

A simple maroulosalata might make an appearance, à la the NYT or à la casa lingua,

Maroulosalata (Green Salad With Feta and Dill) Recipe • 5★ • 35 min

but thankfully we have some time to plan. First, the guest list…

[ChristinaM]

(post deleted by author)

[ChristinaM]

Or a dab of mayo.

[Desert-Dan (Dan)]

@ChristinaM

She had vowed to reduce the number of sweets, but we know where good intentions lead.

Yes, when Sunshine came home from Physical Therapy (thumb/hand) yesterday, she was in a lot of pain, so I gave her the large Chocolate Bunny (early) to try to make things a little better.

Needless to say, his ears are gone (LOL)!!

[mariacarmen (maria ascarrunz)]

Googled firm tofu and cabbage, and came up with this - a pseudo-Chinese prep that turned out swell. Spicy, tiny bit sweet, and one of the very few dishes I’ve found where the tofu actually feels like meat, though I wasn’t looking for that.

https://plantbasedrdblog.com/2022/08/tofu-cabbage-stir-fry/

I used chicken powder so it wasn’t vegan. I thought it was odd that it asked for smoked paprika and coriander. I didn’t have ground coriander on hand so I just minced up some cilantro at the end. And the paprika really added something. Really tasty and I’ll make it again.

BF made us my dumplings from the freezer on the side. For some reason the tops didn’t cook up all the way, but yet they stuck to the pan and fell apart at the bottoms! Still tasted great.

[LindaWhit]

@linguafood

Sides TBD. While this twist on spanakorizo really spoke to me,

The one-pan orzo dish sounds VERY good - thanks for the link!

[honkman]

You could but tahini would have a pretty dominating flavor which might overpower those of the different vegetables

[Zoeliculious (Zoe)]

It’s quite popular to use a lemon tahini dressing on that of type of salad up here. I agree it does add a tahini flavour, which some ppl may find too strong.

[ChristinaM]

@mariacarmen

Googled firm tofu and cabbage, and came up with this - a pseudo-Chinese prep that turned out swell. Spicy, tiny bit sweet, and one of the very few dishes I’ve found where the tofu actually feels like meat, though I wasn’t looking for that.

Kind of similar to this from New York Times. Do you think it would be comparable to add cabbage to this recipe, if I prefer the flavor profile?

[linguafood (Natascha)]

I might just make pesce d’Aprile for dinner tonight

#IYKYK

[mariacarmen (maria ascarrunz)]

right, i made that one before, and didn’t love it as much. I personally liked the flavor better of the one i linked to above, and the texture too. But yes, similar idea!

[ChristinaM]

Okay, I’ll try it your way