Happy Easter!

Happy Easter Everyone! Jesus is Risen! Today, the culmination of our Christian faith has been fulfilled. Jesus conquered death and the tomb is empty! All for His intensely powerful love for us!

yum!

So today, after Mass, we had our Easter Brunch! It was filled with a delectable spread — both vegan, and meat friendly!

The Hubba-Hubba non-vegan stratta complete with bacon and LOTS of cheese!

For the non-vegans, there was an amazingly delicious stratta, which was my sis-in-law’s famous recipe. Some of the ingredients are: a stick of butter, cream of mushroom soup, a bag of cheddar cheese, and bacon! Yum! So decadent! There was also a Honey Baked Ham, and bacon.

look at that GF, Dairy-Free deliciousness

For the G-Free-ers, there was another stratta, which was healthy — made with GF bread, eggs, a little vegan cheese, and LOTS of fresh veggies! YUM!

melty cheeze, chewy mushrooms, and crunchy peppers!

Here’s what you need:

5 pieces of GF bread
4 whole eggs + 4 egg whites
splash of plain, unsweetened almond milk
1/2 onion, diced
1/2 can on green chilis
red pepper, diced
mushrooms, sliced
vegan Monterey Jack cheese

Saute your onion and green chilis in 1 tsp EVOO with salt and pepper. Spray a casserole dish with EVOO and tear your bread into pieces into the dish. Press them down a bit. Then, combine your eggs and milk in a bowl and whisk together. Stir in your cheese and all veggies. Pour over your bread. Cover with tin foil and refrigerate overnight.  Then, in the morning, sprinkle the top with a little more vegan cheese and a drizzle of almond milk, and bake for an hour at 350 degrees. YUM!

a plate full of goodness!

This stratta was so amazing because the bread had soaked up all the delicious egginess overnight, and the flavors all married together. The green chillies gave it a little flare, and the jack cheese definitely kicked it up a knotch. It was like a decadent, savory bread pudding! So decadently delicious, yet surprisingly healthy — made with half egg whites and veggies!

yum yum GF muffins! So incredibly moist and tender!

There were also delicious GF muffins. These were from a box mix ::sigh:: but so outstanding. GF baked goods are notoriously cakey, dense, crumbly, and chalky. But these! Wow! They were moist and delicious! Light and fluffy!

so moist and light! No one could believe they were Gluten Free!

My entire family was blown away by these muffins! The mix I used wasMeredith’s Marvelous Muffins! It’s basically a blank canvas that you can turn into banana nut muffins, blueberry, carrot cake, zucchini muffins, anything really! So I made cinnamon raisin. I added about 3/4 cup raisins and 3/4 tsp cinnamon! And instead of using butter, I used canola oil (dairy-free). They were so good!

the fruit salad to end all fruit salads!

We also had a GORGEOUS fruit salad, with fresh berries, pears, green apples and honey crisp apples, mango, cantaloupe and bananas. Succulent! The apples were sweet and tart and incredibly crunchy! The mango was a little tart but sweet, the banana was creamy and rich, the blue berries and strawberries were so fresh and the pears were spicy and sweet while the canteloupe was sweet and refreshing. MMM!

look at that AMAZING fruit salad!

I made way too much, because my eyes are bigger than my stomach when it comes to fruit — but that’s ok, because we’ll have fresh snack access for the next few days :)

fresh pressed organic orange juice!

And we washed it all down with fresh-pressed, organic orange juice from our juicer! We juiced organic oranges with 1 lime and 1 green apple. It was mouth-watering fantastic! This was a spread fit for a king!

gorgeous stratta with fresh veggies and an OUTSTANDING gluten-free muffin!

This weekend has been so wonderful. It has been so great having the family all together. I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time! Everyone let loose and had a great time. We will cherish these memories forever. The delicious food was just icing on the cake of a fantastic weekend:)

This juice...let me tell you...was outstanding. It was literally like drinking an orange! The bottled kind can't hold a candle to fresh pressed juice. Since juicers are a bit of an investment, I did a lot of research and found that Breville makes the best juicer. There are so many health benefits of fresh pressed juice. I  drink a green juice every morning! Here's the one I use and highly recommend.