Good Movies, Good Books, Yummy Cake and Happy Easter

My mom lent me a copy of the movie Bride and Prejudice. If you have a chance to rent it- WATCH IT. It was so fun and cute. It's a retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice set in modern day India. A bit English Romantic Era with a good dose of Bollywood thrown in. I don't normally always agree with my mom's assessment of movies but this one is actually really cute... I watched it 3 times before lending it to a friend who will hopefully get it back to me in time to return it to mom this weekend when we gather for Easter.

We are having a bake sale at work Friday and are making mostly 'big' desserts that will appeal to people who don't want to have to bake for their Easter get togethers... so I'm making an Orange Marmalade Cake (from The Mitford Books) and a dump cake (from the Pioneer Woman's website)... and... well, maybe something else - but that might be it for me! The Orange Marmalade recipe is 2 pages long and its totally from scratch! Thankfully the dump cake is blissfully easy. (Oddly - pioneer woman has a totally different orange marmalade cake too!)

If you've never read the Mitford books by Jan Karon you need to read them. It's a great series of fictional books about Father Tim - Rector of the Episcopal Church in Mitford NC. His escapades and experiences are just so fun! I don't even like Orange Marmalade but when I read the stories about this 'famous' cake that - because he just couldn't resist - caused a diabetic coma and almost sent Father Tim to his Maker, I crave it...
More about that and the recipe here -

Next week we are having food day and the theme is "Mom's best recipe" so I emailed mom and asked her what her best recipe was and she gave me like 10 so I still have to whittle through them and decide. I was thinking "Lucky and Dumplins" but she didn't think that was her "best" although it may be her most original!

This weekend we have our family Easter shindig. Mom's one of seven kids - six of whom felt called to breed - and their kids have popped out an amazing number of great-grandchildren for my Grandma... My sis has 5, My cousin K has 3, my cousin C has 2, other cousin K has 3, I have 1 and my Uncle J - not born until mom was 18 so he's in my generation has 3 also! I also have 4 or 5 other cousins with off spring that live out of state and I've honestly lost count on them! So the grand total of people of all ages at this thing will be between 20 and 30 people!

For the first year ever my mom talked her mom into having Easter at mom's big 2 story house instead of my grandma's 1100 sq. ft. shoe box of a house... There's something to be said for being able to get far enough away from my Uncle J not to hear him yelling! Even when he's happy he sounds mad... and he's just LOUD!

Mom's back yard is pretty barren (just grass- no clutter or trees or anything!) so she said she was planning to plant some flower beds in the back yard so there are actually some places to hide eggs! Interesting motivation to take up gardening... but whatever...

Didn't mean for this post to reference my mom seven billion times... it just did... and that's okay... because despite being "Martha Stewart without the criminal background" she is a pretty neat lady.