I've been working just about every day this week leading up to the Easter holiday. I planned a menu that could be done with minimal prep or can be done ahead of time. It's also helpful to have family willing to pitch in a bring a dish to dinner.

A special thank you to my friend, Colleen, for her beautiful flowers for my Easter table. 

​So what am I serving? My daughter and her husband are bringing tomatoes with fresh mozzarella. My son ordered two loaves of bread, three Parmesan rolls and three chocolate rolls from Medusa Stone Fired Kitchen in Asbury. Our salad will be Mandarin Salad, which has a sweet and sour dressing, topped with mandarin oranges and sugar glazed almonds. Since we're Italian, you have to have pasta. This year, I decided to serve Penne alla Vodka. I found the recipe on epicurious.com; it's a recipe from Lidia Bastianich's Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen. 
The recipe also calls for vodka, heavy cream, fresh parsley, garlic and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and, of course, penne pasta. Lidia recommends using tomatoes from San Marzano, which I found in my local Shop-Rite. They are just under $4 for a 35 oz. can. They also had Lidia's pasta on sale for $0.99 per box, which is a great price. The heavy cream at Wegmans is just under $3 for an 8 ounce container.It was such an easy recipe to prepare. I looked into purchasing a container at the Pastosa store in Cranford and it was about $9 or $10 for a  container that should cover one to two pounds of pasta. Doubling Lidia's recipe would cover two to three pounds.

For a main course, instead of ham, I'm serving Roast Pork with Beer Sauce. This is another Gourmet Magazine recipe that I haven't made in years. For sides, I'm preparing both white potatoes and  yams, asparagus and, by special request from my husband, beets. 

Dessert is a fresh fruit platter from my sister-in-law and I'm making a Williams-Sonoma box mix of Molten Center Red Lava cakes....yum!

So whether you need  to bring a main course or a salad to your gathering, give one of these recipes a try. Have a blessed Easter or Happy Passover.