Food Friday is on the road this weekend, so you Gentle Readers will have to put up with a re-run of my favorite Easter lemon cheesecake. Mr. Sanders and I are heading to a family Easter gathering in Florida, and Luke the wonder dog is off for a much deserved vacay of his own with his dog pals at the spa. Please indulge me and enjoy our making our favorite Easter dessert. Play nicely at your Easter egg hunts, and let the little ones find the eggs. You can sip on a Bloody Mary or two.

At Easter I like to haul out my dear friend’s lemon cheesecake recipe, and reminisce, ruefully, about the year I decorated one using nasturtiums plucked fresh from the nascent garden, which unfortunately sheltered a couple of frisky spiders. Easter was late that year and tensions were already high at the table, because a guest had taken it upon herself to bring her version of dessert – a 1950s (or perhaps it was a British World War II lesson in ersatz ingredients recipe) involving saltines, sugar-free lime Jell-O, and a tub of Lite Cool Whip. The children were divided on which was more terrifying: ingesting spiders, or many petro chemicals?

I am also loath to remember the year we hosted an Easter egg hunt, and it was so hot that the chocolate bunnies melted, the many children squabbled, and the adults couldn’t drink enough Bloody Marys. The celery and asparagus were limp, the ham was hot, and the sugar in all those Peeps brought out the criminal potential in even the most decorous of little girls. There was no Miss Manners solution to that pickle.

Since our children did not like hard-boiled eggs, I am happy to say that we were never a family that hid real eggs for them to discover. Because then we would have been the family whose dog discovered real nuclear waste hidden behind a bookcase or deep down in the sofa a few weeks later. We mostly stuck to jelly beans and the odd Sacajawea gold dollar in our plastic Easter eggs. It was a truly a treat when I stepped on a pink plastic egg shell in the front garden one year when I was hanging Christmas lights on the bushes. There weren’t any jelly beans left, thank goodness, but there was a nice sugar-crusty gold dollar nestled inside it. Good things come to those who wait.

We won’t be hiding any eggs (real or man-made) this year. Instead we will have a nice decorous finger food brunch, with ham biscuits, asparagus, celery, carrots, tiny pea pods, Prosecco (of course) and a couple of slices of lemon cheesecake, sans the spiders, sans the lime Jell-O and Cool Whip. And we will feel sadly bereft because there will be no jelly beans, no melting chocolate and no childish fisticuffs.

Chris’s Cheesecake Deluxe
Serves 12

Crust:
1 cup sifted flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 egg yolk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Filling:
2 1/2 pounds cream cheese
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 400°F
Crust: combine flour, sugar and lemon rind. Cut in butter until crumbly. Add yolk and vanilla. Mix. Pat 1/3 of the dough over the bottom of a 9″ spring form pan, with the sides removed. Bake for 6 minutes or until golden. Cool. Butter the sides of the pan and attach to the bottom.

Pat remaining dough around the sides to 2″ high.
 Increase the oven temp to 475°F. Beat the cream cheese until it is fluffy. Add vanilla and lemon rind. Combine the sugar, flour and salt. Gradually blend into the cream cheese. Beat in eggs and yolks, one at a time, and then the cream. Beat well. Pour into the pan. Bake 8-10 minutes.

Reduce oven heat to 200° F. Bake for 1 1/2 hours or until set. Turn off the heat. Allow the cake to remain in the oven with the door ajar for 30 minutes. Cool the cake on a rack, and then pop into the fridge to chill. This is the best Easter dessert ever. This recipe makes a HUGE cheesecake! You will be eating it for a week. At least.

Perfect Bloody Marys

“Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

It is quite definitely spring. Our trees are leafing out, the dogwood is starting to flower, and tulips are bouncing in the cool April breeze. Everything is looking green and tender – although I was worried about frost overnight because I have planted four stout young tomato plants in the raised garden bed.Our summer tomato sandwiches depend on spring weather. Luke the wonder dog has a spring in his creaky step these mornings – the bushes along our walking route smell extra delicious this spring. Everything is fresh and new, ripe for discovery. We rescued a tiny green turtle the other day, doing a good deed as we got in our daily steps.

Mr. Sanders has been doing yeoman’s work out back – weeding the pachysandra bed, trimming the hedges, fertilizing the lawn – any excuse to be outside in the fresh air. I wander through and pluck violets before he reaches them. I have been replanting the window boxes with hot pink geraniums, vivid clusters of cobalt lobelia and white clouds of sweet alyssum. I’ve stuffed draperies of hot pink petunias in the planters on the front porch. And sadly, I have picked the last of this season’s daffodils.

We sat down around seven last night for dinner, just as the moon was rising and the sun was setting. The last of the daffodils were stuffed in a jam jar on the table. We didn’t need candles, but still we lighted them, because it is spring, and we could gaze out at the newly weeded pachysandra bed, which was bathed in golden light. I hope someone was enjoying a beauteous sunset, even though we could only see streaks of pink over the neighbor’s roof. The robins strutted across the back lawn, grubbing happily.

And what about the food? Who wants to stand over a stove when the garden beckons? It’s time to bring some springtime to our dinners (also very handy for leftovers for breakfast and lunch). Bring on the quiches.

This is seasonal, and oh, so lovely: Sweet Pea and Ham Quiche

You can trust Martha: Martha’s Quiche

Quiche Lorraine, or however you choose to fill yours…

Preheat oven to 375°F
Ingredients for 1 quiche – serves 4
1 baked pie shell (store-bought is fine and dandy)
1 cup half and half
3 eggs
6 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled
One onion, chopped
1 cup grated Gruyère or Swiss cheese, more if you like your quiche stretchy and cheesy
Salt and pepper
1 pinch fresh, ground nutmeg

Brown the chopped onion in a little of the bacon fat that you have reserved. Or butter or olive oil, remember to be loose and enjoy the baking event! Add the onion and the bacon to the pie shell. Scatter the grated cheese with abandon and artistry. Beat the eggs, cream, salt and pepper and the nutmeg until your arm is tired. Pour the mixture into the pie shell. Bake for 40 minutes, or until the top looks pleasingly golden brown. (I like to bake quiches on a baking sheet, because I have a tendency to spill.)
When you re-heat the quiches, bake at 350°F for about 20 minutes.

Other ingredients to consider adding to the mix: fresh thyme, ham, broccoli, spinach, mushrooms, goat cheese, leeks, sausage, salmon, shrimp or good Maryland crab! Also consider this dish as a breakfast possibility.

Quiche has been much maligned for the wimp factor and for impugning American manhood. Pshaw. Quiche is quick, easy, delicious and is a four seasons kind of food. Quiche is as welcome as the New Year’s Day hangover breakfast pick-me-up, as it is at a warm summer evening’s supper, with a salad, and a little cheap white wine. It will go in someone’s lunchbox, and is a reassuring friend to find sitting in the fridge at 3:00 in the morning, when you are driven from bed with tariff anxieties. Quiche.

Quiche Lorraine has long been a WASPy luncheon speciality, mostly because those WASPs are looking for something delicious and easy to prepare. Who doesn’t love bacon, cheese, and cream? I do apologize, vegans, but that heady combo is a religion unto itself. There are vegan alternatives…
Vegan Quiche

The quiche recipe I followed called for a mere 4 pieces of bacon. I am sorry, but that is not enough bacon. I used 8, crunchy, aromatic slices, which I had baked on a cookie sheet at 425° F for 10 minutes. I also used half and half, and not full-on heavy cream, just because I’d like to make it to 2026 without a major cardiac incident befalling any of us. I also used cubes of cheese from a block of grocery store brand Swiss. The way prices are soaring, Gruyére and Jarlsberg have become a just too expensive. Tariffs. And, because no one will ever notice, I used a store-bought pie shell. I know my limitations, and I just can’t bake an attractive pie crust. They always look like the bad pots I threw during my pitiful college year in ceramics; sad, lopsided, mangled pieces. Here is a gift recipe from the New York Times:

Here is a good compendium of quiches, which will encourage you to explore the inner recesses of your fridge, and use up the trace amounts of spinach, broccoli, taco meat, asparagus, feta cheese and bits of potato lurking there: Leftovers for Quiche And key to the quiche’s attraction is its ability to be reheated. Please, do not use the microwave! Reheating Quiche

Go outside and roll on the grass, like Luke the wonder dog. Spring has sprung, the grass is riz.

“The first day of spring is one thing and the first spring day is another.
The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.”
― Henry Van Dyke

Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.