Hosting Easter Dinner

Yesterday was the first time that Laura and I hosted Easter dinner for either her family or mine.  It was my family plus Laura's brother, Michael, that joined us for our Easter festivities this year.  I have to be honest and say it is difficult to cook for my family, we have a few picky eaters.  We are from a small town and didn't grow up eating a lot of different foods.  My mom always made good food but it similar in flavors and familiar so that is how the taste buds of my family developed.  Meals became traditional.  Just like the sun always rises in the east, we always have ham at Easter. I love tradition and there is something comforting about knowing what you will be eating and those foods will remind you have times long ago.  Part of me though loves to take the traditional and tweak it and that is what we did this year with our Easter dinner.  

So of course we had to make a ham, but instead of traditional oven baked ham I got the idea to grill/smoke our ham.  I love smokey foods.  This would also free up our kitchen oven to do other things and not have a giant ham taking up half the space.  I did a little research and found that spiral cut hams tend to dry out when cooked on a grill, so opted for non-sliced ham.  The process of smoking the ham was actually pretty easy.  Prior to putting it on the grill, I did a light rub on it.  I first added a layer of dijon mustard and then rubbed in some brown sugar to almost make a paste around the outside of the ham.  This helped create a nice layer sweet and smokey on the outside.  
We have a pretty big grill, so I just turned on the two outermost burners on medium, and placed the ham in the middle of the grill.  This provided indirect heat, similar to an oven.  As you can see in the picture I used a little smoker box that I picked up at Home Depot and kept it stocked with apple wood chips.  This setup kept the temp of my grill around 250.  I smoked the ham in a disposable aluminum foil tray for an hour and forty minutes, checking it every 20 minutes to make sure the temp was steady and occasionally add some more wood chips.  At the 1:40 mark I added a little apple juice, maybe a cup, to the bottom of the tray, and covered the top with aluminum foil, to essentially steam the ham and keep it from drying out.  After 40 minutes or once the ham got to 135, I removed the foil and begin the glazing process.  I cheated and just used the glaze that came with the ham, which was a currant glaze and pretty tasty.  I turned the heat up to medium high on the two side burners and glazed it twice, keeping it on the grill for another 25 minutes.  That was all for the cooking process.  I just let it rest for 15 minutes before slicing and serving.  

As for the sides there was one side that I had to keep pretty close to the original, my moms Scalloped Corn.  Think gooey cornbread.  We did modify a little bit and used greek yogurt instead of sour cream and almond milk instead of regular cow's milk.  Sorry this is the one thing that isn't pictured above.  

The other sides included mashed potatoes.  Obviously I had to do something to dress up just regular mashed potatoes.  I added a couple parsnips to the pot of boiling potatoes.  I also sauteed some leeks and garlic in some butter, which I added to our Vitamix and blended with some more butter and almond milk, which I added as we mashed the potatoes.  I couldn't sneak these past my older brother however, he knew something was up with his "regular" mashed potatoes.  Fail on my part.  I also did a really easy roasted carrot that I tossed with a little honey and ground ginger.  If you make the carrots make sure to toss them in the honey after they are done cooking otherwise you will have a sticky burnt mess in the oven.  

Baked beans aren't a traditional side for our Easter dinner but I thought what goes better than ham and beans...  Also I have always wanted to make some beans from scratch.  This process involved soaking dry beans and then I cooked them in the crockpot overnight.  I quasi followed a recipe by The Beeroness for her Slow Cooker Maple Bacon Beer Baked Beans.  I did tweak the some things in the recipe.  I added some beef broth instead of water.  I also ended up adding a small can of tomato paste and a little brown sugar after tasting them in the morning.  I like the tomato flavor and richness that the tomato paste added.  

The last couple of items in the picture above are what we refer to "individual" corn and a broccoli salad.  The individual corn is named for my younger brother that never liked the Scalloped Corn so my mom always had to make a little side dish of regular steamed corn for him.  That tradition has continued.  The broccoli salad was a spin on the traditional broccoli salad with a mayo dressing.  I opted to make a clementine vinaigrette, then added bacon, clementines, dried cherries, slivered almonds, and fresh mint.  Flavor-wise I really liked it but the dressing got a little thing so it didn't coat the broccoli quite as well as I hoped.  

Of course we had to finish off with some dessert.  We didn't go crazy, with anything elaborate even though my mom was mentioned she wanted us to recreate a salted caramel cheesecake that she recently had vacation.  We kept it simple with angel food cake and berry syrup, some fresh strawberries and fresh whipped cream.  

If you have some picky eaters in your family, I would encourage you not to shy away from foods that they might not like but instead try to find ways that you can "sneak" them into dishes.  Chances are their distaste for a food is probably based on either a poor preparation of it or memory from when they were 9 years old and they lived off of Fun Dip instead of broccoli.  If you are a picky eater, I encourage you step out and try some new things.  It's not going to kill you, unless it is sushi made from raw chicken, don't do that it might actually kill you.  Who knows you might actually really like something and be missing out.  Just like life you tend to regret the things you didn't do/try versus the ones you did do/try.  If you want specific recipes for anything I mentioned I would be happy to share, just comment below.  

Have a Great Monday!!!