Episode AH9605: Well, happy Easter to you and to your family from everyone here At Home. This is our Easter program that we’re going to be celebrating today. This is the time of the year that we celebrate one of the most significant events that’s happened in the life of Jesus Christ. This is when he rose from the dead. We think of all the agony that he experienced on Friday when he hung on the cross for you and for me. And this is the time when we celebrate the fact that he arose from the dead and he lives continually to this very day in heaven with God, the Father. I mean, when I think about these events, my heart is stirred. I am excited to think that God loved us so much that he gave his only begotten son, had no other children, his one and only son. He willingly gave him so that we would not have to live in hell when we die. These events, I tell you, I would ask you to do something. I would ask you that during this time, this particular time of Easter, that you get your Bible and you read to your family the real importance of what Easter’s about. It’s not bunny rabbits and Easter eggs and chicks. It’s a part of it, but it certainly is not the most important part. And I would pray that you would instill in your children, grandparents, come on, get your grandkids, aunts, and uncles, get those nieces and nephews. Instill in those children what Easter’s all about. That’s a responsibility older generations have to younger generations to do that because if you don’t tell them, they’re not gonna hear about in school. They’re not gonna hear about it probably from their friends. They’re certainly not gonna hear about it on the street corner, but they need to know the real significance of Easter. So today we’re preparing our traditional Easter dinner and right after this important hint, we’re gonna get started with Easter dinner on At Home. Stay with us now. Here’s today’s At Home hint. The secret to a smooth custard is how you beat the eggs. Beat the eggs just till the egg yolks and the whites are blended. Don’t beat until foamy or your custard will have bubbles on the surface. If you’ve got a hint that you’d like to share, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. Well, the first part of our dinner, we’re going to be making, they’re called parmy potatoes. And they’re so simple and so easy. I like easy dinners on Easter because you don’t have a lot of time to prepare because you spend the morning in church, hopefully you’re gonna be there, right, come on. And so you wanna be able to have this prepared when you get back home quickly for when the family comes. Now, we’ve just taken some butter and melted about six tablespoons and put it in the bottom of our 13 by 9 pan. And these are just some good old red potatoes that I happen to like. Now we’re gonna cut these in half. They’ve been scrubbed real well. They are totally and completely clean, scrubbed them with a brush, which is really important because you don’t want any dirt on them. And honest, this is so easy. Have your oven preheated at 400, that’s really important. And we’re cutting them just in half, one time. Just in half, not in quarters. And then what we’re gonna do is take Parmesan cheese and sprinkle it over the butter that’s in there. Again, like I said, this is an easy, easy recipe. All right. Now you’re just gonna take your potatoes and lay them in the Parmesan, the cut side down, okay? All over. You can do this in glass baking dish if you want, then you could serve from that dish, but whatever. Okay, so you just wanna make sure that they’re all covered, just like that. And we’re gonna put them in a 400 degree oven. That’s all there is to it, folks, for about 40 to 45 minutes. We’ve got our oven nice and hot. We’re gonna pop those in there for about 40 to 45 minutes. Now I wanna show you what we’re doing with our ham. The ham has been cooking, baking rather, for about two hours. And this ham is incredible because it’s something different. We normally do the vinegar ham. Well, this is a little different. This is about eight to nine pound of the, not the shank, but the other part of the butt end of the ham and we’ve scored it very deeply. And what I did was mixed a tablespoon of ground mustard and one teaspoon of ground allspice. And I just rubbed that over where it’s been scored. That’s what’s given it this brown crust, you see, now this has been roasting in a 325 degree oven for about two hours. This is about eight pound, eight to nine pound. Now what we’re going to do, we’ve got marmalade, orange marmalade. The last half hour you just want to put, take your little brush and we’re going to be putting marmalade over the top of this ham. We’re just going to let it get down in all those crevices and the cracks, because this then is going to continue to bake for about another 30 minutes and that orange smells so good. And the allspice and the ground mustard is really gonna give it a good flavor, wonderful flavor. Just pour, just, you know, baste it and paint it all over the ham. And I even like to do it on the cut side. Let me turn this around here. We’ll do it on the cut side, too. See how nice and moist that ham is, but we’re gonna add some additional moisture to it by just painting, this is about three-fourths of a cup. Use a little bit more, whatever, it’s not gonna hurt and this is orange marmalade, all right. Now what I like to do also, let me put this back in the oven, warm up the marmalade a little bit so it’s easier to apply and here we have it. Very good, we’re gonna put this back in the oven. I know we have the luxury of two ovens. I wish you do and some of you do have it because this is a time saver and a real big plus when you’re trying to get things together and get it ready. Two different temperatures. But what I wanna tell you is what you can do is you could do your ham ahead and then I’m gonna make a raisin, orange raisin sauce that’s gonna go over the ham. All right, so if you did the ham and it’s a little bit warm, it’s not real hot, it’s just warm. The sauce will warm it up. First of all, we’re gonna mix together in this little sauce pan, we’re gonna put some corn starch. This is about a tablespoon of corn starch. Now, you know what the corn starch does, the corn starch always thickens whatever you put it in. And we have three tablespoons of light brown sugar. That will go next. A little bit of salt, which I don’t see here. So this is a dash of salt and this is grated orange rind. Now that’s only a half of teaspoon, but that’s gonna make a difference in the taste, trust me, and what you do to get that. You have your orange and your little tool that’s really good. And you just pull it across there. See how nice that renders it? And then you chop it up fine. You don’t wanna leave in these big, long strings. Then you would take it and chop it up till you have a half a teaspoon. All right, then we’re going to add, we mix this up first. Now we’re gonna add some orange juice and we’ll take a cup of orange juice. We’ll put that in there, turn the heat on low. We’re gonna let this start to cook. And besides that, we’re gonna add about a half a cup of water. And you’re gonna have standing by a half a cup of raisins. Now this is gonna cook slowly and we’re gonna stir constantly because once you get the corn starch in there, you have to be careful because it’ll lump up. So you need to make sure it dissolves well and you just stir it until it keeps getting smooth and it will and it’ll thicken, and then as it thickens, we want it to boil one minute, just one minute. And after that, then we add the raisins and then we let it cook back to boiling again. And then we take it off. And that’s our orange raisin sauce, simple as that. Unbelievable, we’re gonna take a break here. And when we come back, we’re gonna add all the other things to our meal, which is a wonderful tort and a delicious vegetable salad that you’re gonna want to be sure to have the recipe for, stay with us now, we’re gonna take a break. We’ll be right back. Well, we’re still waiting for this to come up to a boil so you haven’t missed a thing. And when it does, then we’re gonna add the raisins like I said before, and let it cook to a boil again. And then our sauce is ready. So I’m gonna keep an eye on that while we continue on with some of the other things we want to prepare. Okay, now, now we’re going to make our salad. And this is a wonderful vegetable salad. It’s got a lot of ingredients, but it’s got a lot of good vegetables. And I think that if you can do it this way and just get all the good stuff in one bowl, like all the vegetables and stuff, I think you’ll get the kids, all right, what is this? They’ve been at it again, they’ve been melting the spatulas. This is like, it’d be right if it was like this, but it’s like, oh, I tell you, you never know here. I’m serious, you never ever know. All right, well, we’re gonna try to make this salad anyway. And we have two cups of broccoli florets, that’s these little ones about bite sized, just cut it in chunks, bite sized, just like that. Two cups of those. And we’re gonna mix all of them in this nice big pan, because then we’ll put it into a serving dish. We also have two cups of cauliflower that we’re going to add in and a half a cup of chopped celery. Half a cup of chopped green pepper and a fourth of a cup of grated carrot. It all goes in just like that. So colorful and springy. This is life, you know, we’re talking about life today because that’s what the celebration of Easter is, it’s about life and all these colors and the brightness of them. Just brings your mind back to what’s important. Then we’re gonna do, we have chunks of onion here that could be smaller, but sometimes people can take them out then if they don’t like them, or you can make them smaller, either way. All right, now, I wanna mix these up. I need my sharp knife, please. If someone could get that for me so I can do my other things here. Now let’s mix the vegetables up just like this. What I like too, is some of this stuff you can do ahead of time, make it the night before so that on Easter, you don’t have to worry about it. You don’t have to be trying to get this all together once you get home from church, make it the day before, which is good. All right, now, in a small bowl, we’re gonna make a dressing for our salad, which is our vegetable salad. We’re gonna combine, this is about a cup of mayonnaise. Let me see here, get one of these other ones here. One cup of mayonnaise. So we’ll have a mayonnaise dressing, which I think sometimes you get kids to eat their vegetables better if you put this kind of a dressing on it. All right, and some sugar, there’s about fourth of a cup of sugar and some Parmesan cheese. There it is, and you just mix this together. That’s about three tablespoons of Parmesan cheese. You just mix that together, just like that till it’s completely combined, which is wonderful, smells good. And this we’re gonna put over top of the vegetables. It doesn’t take too much to do that. Just those couple of ingredients like that. And then we’ll toss it with our big spoon and we’re gonna add one more ingredient. This will go on top of it. And that’s just some crisp fried bacon that you’ve crumbled. And just think about the mayonnaise, the bacon almost, like a bacon sandwich, that type with a crispy. I just love those flavors together, the mayonnaise, the bacon and the greens, as it were, a little bit of onion, that looks good. We’re gonna put that in our serving dish. And we’ll keep that refrigerated. You can make this, like I said, the night before, it would be great. And then last minute, we’re gonna just toss with a little bit of bacon. All right, that’s our vegetable salad. Now for dessert, you have to have something special for dessert. And we do, we have something real special. We bake two layers of yellow cake mix, any kind that you want, but don’t use a pudding cake mix. Because again, when you split the layers, like we’re going to, they’ll crumble apart because it’s too soft, it’s too fragile batter. So what I have here is eight ounces of cream cheese, I’m gonna start and we just want that to get creamy. And while we do that, I’m gonna go ahead and split the layers of the cake. We’re gonna put this on our serving dish. This is a serving dish we’re using, and you can do it however you wanna do it, but I tend to still stick with this knife because it works well for me, always has. We’ll keep our fingers crossed here and we’re just gonna cut it in half. Try to make them even if you can and cut them clear through. When they move, you know that you’ve got it. We’ll take the first layer and put it there. All right. Take a look at our sauce over here, how it’s doing. Okay, it’s still going to town. It’s not to a full boil yet, we’ll be back with that. Now, the cream cheese, we started that. And what we’re gonna add to this cream cheese now is some vanilla and some brown sugar. And we’ll put that in there like that and put the vanilla in there. And we’re gonna let that cream again, because what we’re doing is making the filling that’s gonna go between the layers of our coconut tort. It’s the Easter coconut tort is what this is called. And you want this, we’re gonna lighten this up. This will be too thick. This would put a hole right in your cake if you did it like this. So we’re gonna lighten it up with some whipped cream. Okay, I think we’re there. See if we can get this off of here. Okay. Our sauce is boiling, all right. Now we’re gonna turn it down, whoops, we turned it up. And we’re gonna add the raisins at this point. Just like that, let it come back to a slow boil. And then it’s done, just like that. All right, where was I? Here we go. In holidays, there’s always something going on in the kitchen because you’re making this and making desserts and doing Easter baskets. And all the festive things and that’s all fun, but please don’t lose the real meaning of why we’re celebrating, we’re celebrating life. When I look at some of the beautiful flowers that we have here today in the kitchen, and I think my goodness, just a couple of months ago, these were all bulbs laying dead in the earth and they were not thinking even about growing. And here we are today, appreciating the beautiful flowers, only God can do that. Only God can do that. He is the spirit of life, believe me. All right, you can see here. This is our brown sugar mixture. And what I’m gonna do is just start adding. This is about two cups of whipped cream that we’ve whipped earlier, and we’re gonna fold it in. You know how we whip, we go down and up. And what this will do is lighten this brown sugar mixture. We’ll just go down and up, down and up. We’ll put a little bit in there first just to get it soft so that it will receive the rest of it. If you put all that in there at one time, and you have a heavy batter that you’re trying to fold it into, it will flatten because this batter is too heavy. So you put a little bit in there to lighten up the batter so that when you put the rest in, it’s really nice and light and it will take the fluffiness of it. Okay, so we’re just going to continue to fold. And what we’re gonna do then is add, we’ll fold some coconut into this and this you can make the day before. In fact, I would advise that you did, I would advise that you make this the day before and let it refrigerate overnight, just to be sure that you keep it covered well. So it doesn’t pick up any flavors that may be in the refrigerator. Now we’re going to fold the rest of our cream in just like this, and we’re gonna add some coconut to it. We’re also going to be decorating with coconut. So I think you’re gonna, coconut to me, you have to have coconut at Easter time. To me, that’s what it says. Well, you know, it’s coconut time. And I like that because that’s one of those things like tulips, or when you say tulips, I say, “Oh, Easter, you know, daffodils.” Those are the things I associate and of course hard boiled eggs and all of the other things that we enjoy. Now, you’re gonna put a fourth of this mixture between the layers. And if it doesn’t, maybe your whipped cream could be a little stiffer. Sometimes the lights will flatten things out here for us. But if you beat your whipped cream till it’s real, real stiff, you may even wanna use Cool Whip, you could do that, but just use a fourth of this mixture and put it on your first layer and keep building layers higher and higher and higher until you’ve used all four layers. In the top, you wanna put this layer on the top and then you wanna put additional coconut all over the top. And then we’re gonna decorate the top of it with jelly beans. Okay, I would not put the jelly beans on if I were gonna do it the day before and put it in the refrigerator, put those on fresh the day that you’re going to be using it. Okay, we’re gonna spread this around, just like that. It’s okay if it comes out the sides. But when I do a tort, I usually try not to put the filling clear to the edge because when the pressure of the next layer comes on, what happens is it weights it down and then it pressures it down. Okay, and I’m gonna do it like this. Now you’re gonna see this is gonna be a high tort. Here we go. Let me admonish you that this Easter, make it a very special day with your family, with your friends. Mostly with your family, just gather them around you and make it a very, very special day. And you can do that, you have the ability to do that. You say, “Yeah, but you don’t know what’s going on in my family.” It doesn’t matter. Easter is a time of new beginnings and starting new and fresh. And what better time if there’s problems in your family than to do it around the Easter table or invite that one you’ve had difficulties with. Just say, “Well, come on over. And how about eating with us for Easter?” And, you know, just as life has come into those daffodils and all those spring flowers, maybe new life can come into a relationship that you’ve been having a difficult time with. This is a time of new beginnings. New starts, new fresh starts. Let’s make the most of it. Well, I’m gonna continue making the tort and we’ll be right back in just a minute.
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Well, here we are at our Easter dinner table. And as you can see, I think this would be a menu that a lot of people would enjoy. Let’s start first, this is the ham. Isn’t it beautiful? We just added some sliced oranges with some kale underneath it, beautiful presentation. And this is our raisin, orange raisin sauce that you would keep it nice and hot, so keep the ham warm. And then here’s the parmy potatoes. Don’t they look wonderful? And we’ve just added a little bit of sour cream. It’s an optional thing to go with it and our vegetable salad, you can see how beautiful that is. We sprinkled our bacon on top, we’ve colored some Easter eggs down front. What would Easter be without colored Easter eggs? And I wanna thank Minervas because she provided us with this beautiful Paska, Minerva bakery in McKeesport, down by the hospital. If you’re there, I’ll tell you this lady bakes a Easter Paska like nobody else, she provided that for us today. And then here is our Easter coconut tort. Isn’t it beautiful>? Sometimes I’m surprised myself it turns out so good, but I’m really glad that you were here with us today. And let me tell you, please, if you don’t do another thing this Easter, if you don’t make the Easter eggs, if you don’t have a lot of people to celebrate this wonderful holiday with. Go to church and celebrate with the Lord. After all, that’s what it’s all about, is the Lord. And I would encourage you to go to church this Easter Sunday morning and take everybody you can with you. There’s something about sitting there and singing those wonderful songs, celebrating the risen Christ. So may I say happy Easter to all of you and be sure to join us the next time, because it just wouldn’t be the same without you here At Home, see you then and happy Easter.
[Presenter] Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana, wholesalers of fresh fruit and vegetables in Dravosburg, Pennsylvania. Appliances provided by Dacor Distinctive Appliances. A reflection of your good taste. Groceries provided by Foodland, where the answer is always yes. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.
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