If there’s one thing almost everybody who knows my mother knows about my mother, it’s that if she weren’t a mother, she’d be a nun.
She has the patience of a saint, prays the Rosary every day (in fact, I don’t think she ever stops praying it), reads the Bible before bed, watches Mother Angelica while she exercises, prays in the morning, prays in the afternoon, prays in the evening, prays at night, and never misses church. Yes, my mother loves her religion.
And she also loves Easter. It’s her version of Superbowl Sunday, a weekend that starts with a candlelight vigil, the Kissing of the Cross, and Stations, and ends with a jam-packed church and the break-fast of Lent.
My family, especially my parents but most especially mother, has taken the fasting of meat on Fridays seriously for ages, which is probably why for one day of the year, my family abandons its Italian roots and on Easter Sunday turns into a table of feeding carnivores. This is perfect for my second oldest brother, who’s a successful general contractor and not quite a caveman, but primarily speaks in curt, one-syllable words and is impervious to injury (or is just unphased by it) and who, when the waitress asks how he’d like his steak, responds, “Just smack the bull on the behind, and I’ll grab it by the horns on the way by.”
In short, Easter is practically feeding time in my family. And I say this because here’s our longstanding (and pastor-blessed) menu:
— Smoked Sausage
— Fresh Sausage
— Sausage Sticks (for an appetizer)
— Hardboiled Eggs
— Seeded Rye Bread
— Unseeded Rye Bread
— Lamb Butter
— Spicy Mustard
— Regular Mustard
— Horseradish
— Orange Juice with Pulp
— Pulp-free Orange Juice
— Coffee
— A Candle (we don’t eat the candle)
Take off the breads, and it’s the fare of what dreams are made of for an Atkins dieter.
It’s also very close to a traditional Polish breakfast on Easter morning. Just forget I mentioned we have Italian roots.
After 32 years of eating this breakfast, I only recently learned (I’m a typical guy—when there’s free food on the table, eat and don’t ask questions) that about every aspect of this meal symbolically represents Easter, God, Jesus, or one’s faith in general (even the yellow mustard, which represents my sister-in-law’s love … for yellow mustard).
Despite this, though, a lump of sausage looks pretty lonely on your fine China. But it tastes so good it must be Godly.
