Easter! (Pictures Pending)

I woke up Easter morning in the mood to get things done and excited for the Easter dinner we had planned. I started the morning off right with a bowl of banana oatmeal made even more delicious by the addition of some Trader Joe's Nuts about Raspberries and Chocolate Trek Mix and little spoonful of the honey roasted peanut butter!

Next we went grocery shopping for all of our dinner ingredients. I was surprised by how little we needed to buy to make our fresh and fabulous dishes!

Then we set to cleaning the whole house from top to bottom. As college students this often goes neglected and the feng shui of the house just went through the roof once we were done.

In the afternoon Joel came over to help us start preparing the meal. I suppose I should reveal the menu now :) :

-The Barefoot Contessa's Perfect Roast Chicken
-Cooking Light's Marsala Mashed Sweet Potatoes
-Garlicky String Beans
-Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

I am still in awe of how well the meal turned out. When you're new to cooking like we are its to be expected that one the dishes won't quite meet expectations but this honestly was one of the best meals I ever cooked. The chicken was stuffed with lemon garlic and thyme and came out of the oven perfectly browned. It was wonderfully moist and flavorful. The string beans were fresh and garlicky. The sweet potatoes were the perfect blend of sweet and savory. I would have never thought to use marsala with potatoes. We enjoyed a glass of prosecco before dinner and had a bottle of cheap red wine during dinner, definitely not a master pairing but festive none the less. Our friend Abby joined us for dinner and brought an excellent Israeli salad which reminded me so much of Spring!

We all decided it would be cute to wear our Easter best and my roommate took lots of photos which I'll be posting as soon as I can steal them from her.

For dessert we had our much sought after pie and several of our other friends joined us who couldn't make it to the dinner. Everyone agreed the pie was delicious, though not quite as good as homemade :) all in all an awesome way to spend Easter!