Easter 2020

13 April 2020


How has your Easter been? Ours was pasta-filled and relaxing, with a couple of long walks when the rain and icy winds made way for the sun. We ate homemade hot cross buns, listened to podcasts and took turns making pasta dinners.

A highlight was a Monopoly game played with my brothers in Sydney and New York. We stumbled across the Monopoly app a couple of weekends ago, when we were considering driving to Big W to buy a board, before deciding it wasn't essential.

The app is fun because you can add remote players and don't have to do any maths! Plus, the sound effects are very cute. We were on a video call too, for chatting and sledging and I ended up winning the whole thing! My aim going into it was not to come last.


I bought a bunch of dairy products before lockdown and had been saving the creme fraiche for weeks, so I could make Julia Turshen's lasagne over Easter. I've seen so many times on Heidi's Instagram and decided it was worth four tins of tomatoes (life these days) and made it with some minced beef we'd stashed in the freezer. The ingredients alone felt extravagant. 

Lasagne is Tony's most favourite food and I've tried so many different recipes, including Smitten Kitchen's "Mount Everest" lasagne. Out of all of them, this was the easiest by far (no chopping onions, celery, carrot etc, no bechamel sauce) and we agreed, the most delicious too.


So far, we haven't ordered any takeaway because we're both enjoying cooking and love it as a way to pass the time. But for Easter we have ordered nice wine from a cafe we used to visit every Saturday.

Other lovely things - Tony's busy making tortellini from his Pasta Grannies cookbook ðŸ˜‹ And I'm typing away at the new desk we bought for the spare room. It's a sit/stand desk from IKEA that magically came back into stock last week. Going to the store and actually finding it on the shelf felt like a small triumph (it was my third attempt). 

We've been trying our best to get by with what we have but I was starting to feel a little restless at the dining table, which wasn't the right height for a whole work day. We built the desk that night and it's already improved my WFH situation. I really appreciate being able to go to a different room for work or to blog, given we now spend so much of our time in the lounge/dining room.


Finally, here are some things you might like too.... 

Good Vibes Yoga has released a bunch of new classes, including a Yin practice and a lovely mellow flow. This is my favourite online yoga so far - it's Australian, made for these very strange times, and many of the classes are under 60 minutes. The instructors are excellent. 

Musician Bill Withers was Anna Sales' very first guest on Death Sex and Money. They have re-aired the episode to commemorate his death. It's a very beautiful listen.

Tonight I'm making mini chocolate fondants (aka molten chocolate puddings) because our Easter egg delivery didn't arrive in time, and we're out of chocolate! I'm going to add some salted caramel sauce we have in the pantry :) 

The Strokes have a new album and it's super great.

The Margaret Atwood episode of Sugar Calling is cheery. I listened to the Rebecca Solnit episode of On Being immediately afterwards and needed to hear her definition of hope in uncertain times (it's not straight-up optimism). 

And I've been loving Jenny's series Project Pantry Purpose. There's a new post almost every day, with notes on what she's cooking, noticing and doing during the stay home period.

S

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