Jerusalem Dinner

Our annual Jerusalem Dinner has become my favorite Easter tradition.  This year I'm especially excited that we get to serve it off of some wooden plates I got from my grandparents (I've been slowly collecting wooden serving wear for this exact purpose and was so excited to find these as we cleaned out my grandpa's house!  It makes them double special to know my grandma used them too.)  I love it because it's so meaningful.  I also love it because it's so easy that we actually do it every year.

Now, I know around this time of year a lot of people prepare the real deal when it comes to traditional Jerusalem food.  And that's fantastic. But we go the easy route.

The day we decide to do the dinner (we just do it sometime the week before Easter) I go to the grocery store- whatever grocery store is closest- and pick out our meal.  The rule is everything has to be ready to eat, it has to remind me of biblical times, and I have to find it in the store before I get too tired.  Our meal this year included 

-canned lentil soup

-yummy bread (we usually do flat bread because it seems more bible-y but I missed the flat bread isle and was getting tired, so flat bread didn't pass the cut this year)

-Pecorino Romano cheese (a couple years back Harmon's was the closest store on Jerusalem Dinner day so we went there for stuff.  I asked the cheesemonger which cheese was most authentic and he told me Pecorino Romano has been around since BC times and originated in Rome so it's likely that Christ ate it.  Cool, huh? I wish I could always shop in stores nice enough to provide me with a cheesemonger. Lucky for us, you can buy it in just about any grocery store, so it usually makes the cut)

-Pepperoni (not authentic at all, but I was tired by the time I got to the meat section.  And doesn't it seem like they'd be eating some sort of cured meat? )

-dried figs

- Olives

It's always so fun to see it come together, which literally takes about 5 mins to do. Woot!  

Hope you guys are having a fantastic Holy Week.  In my opinion, it really is the best week of the year.