Two Jensens: Easter

With photos!

So this Easter was unlike any other for a few reasons:
1. Now that I've fortunately/unfortunately graduated college and work for a non-corporate company, I had to work on Good Friday for the first time in my entire life. Tragic? Very.
2. I also had to work Easter Monday for the first time in my long 23 years of living.
3. That meant it was a normal weekend and, therefore, short for a holiday weekend, so Brian's family graced us with their presence to share the holiday with us down here!

As this was my first time hosting a holiday at our place, I was a bit out of my element. I'm not particularly fond of holiday meals...you know: turkey, stuffing, gravy, the whole shabang...and it is for this very reason that I have learned to hate where my birthday lies, smack dab over Thanksgiving! But that's for another post when the time comes.

Anyway, Brian's work gave him a Turkey as his Christmas "bonus" and seeing how I was more than super duper excited about that, it's been sitting in the bottom of our deep freeze ever since. Deep down I was hoping we'd forget about it and it'd get incredibly freezer burned and we'd have to throw it away, but since we were hosting Easter, it came in handy to help keep costs down. So the search began for a yummy in our tummies turkey-on-the-grill recipe. I found one through my beloved site www.allrecipes.com that I gave the a-ok for since it had 5 stars, lots of reviews and over 52,000 people saved the recipe! So we made the turkey and I everyone loved it (even our friend Jeremy who enjoyed some leftovers!) and I thought it was just ok.

Here was the Easter "Dinner" (we ate at about 3pm on Saturday afternoon) meal:

Turkey - stuffed with all its goodies and drenched in a white wine
Garlic Mashed Potatoes with skin on and real garlic
Gravy - Brian was persistent about having gravy & Janet (Brian's mom) miraculously pulled it off by making it with the leftover turkey juices (we didn't think they'd be good since there was a lot of white wine)
Green Bean Casserole - that has no cream of mushroom soup (I hate mushrooms!!)
Spinach and Strawberry Salad - which was soooooo yummy!!! except when I make this again, I will use about half the liquids.
Grape and Cream Cheese Salad - we made up a recipe and also added strawberries to it and sprinkled it with turbinado sugar and it was sooooo yummy! I had something very similar to it at a wild game feed through church that I was in love with!
Pink Salad? - not sure what Alan (Brian's brother calls it) but it's just basically whipped cream with jello or strawberries or other fruit? I'm not sure since I didn't get a chance to eat any of it.
A Blush wine
Cheesecake Easter Baskets - Janet made these for dessert. In a cupcake liner: wafer, cheesecake recipe and bake. Then top with coconut died green as grass (1 drop of green food coloring in a bag and shake around) with jelly beans on top and licorice as the basket's handle!
Carmel and Cinnamon Rolls (Easter Sunday morning)- my grandma's famous caramel rolls that we ALWAYS have at her house and I finally got her to give me the recipe! She made up the caramel recipe for them and it AMAZING! Thanks again grandma! I also use her rolls recipes to make cinnamon rolls that I then use a dear friend's mom's Christmas cookie's buttercream frosting recipe as the frosting for the cinnamon rolls....sooooo yummy!