Neither my mother or I are, as the French say, "croyante" and it seemed a little silly for us to host an Easter-specific lunch. However, we both love the spring and the gorgeous flowers, the sunshine, and the fresh produce that it brings so we jumped at the opportunity to host a vegetable-forward, spring lunch for our family. This year, Easter fell on the first of April and so we decided we were hosting an April Fool's Day lunch!

The Tablescape

I find myself incredibly inspired by the spring. You're surrounded by colors whether it's looking down at the first buds peeking through the ground or walking through the produce aisles of your local grocer. The first step was deciding which color to choose. My mom and I collect jadeite and we're always dying for an opportunity to use it, but we didn't want an exclusively green table. We both love pink and it’s such a spring color so to go along with our pale green we found Mosser glass plates which are basically the pink version of the jadeite we owned.

With the basics chosen, the next step was the design of the table. I love bringing the outdoors inside when designing a table (you’ll know this if you saw my Christmas table where I literally foraged for fresh pine to use as the runner) and I have been dying to use moss. I associate it so strongly with this time of year and I knew the different shades of green and the various textures would lend themselves so well to a runner, especially because we were featuring the jadeite. I needed something to display the fresh flowers we wanted to use on the table and the moss, the pinks & the greens, all felt very whimsical to me. Like an outdoor tea party and I decided to just lean into that. My mom has the most beautiful tea cup collection with every floral design you could imagine and after culling through it and

choosing cups with pink flowers on them we had everything we needed for our table scape.

The Menu

Like I mentioned above, we wanted our menu to be very vegetable-forward and reflect the produce that is in season. Our guests were arriving around 2 o'clock and we started with a mini (albeit early-but who cares!) cocktail hour consisting of a mimosa made with fresh carrot and tangerine juice, butter dipped radishes, and the ever popular deviled eggs.

My mom and I were really into the simplicity of smørrebrød, basically Danish toasts, as an appetizer because they're easy to make, easy to eat and because you can really get creative with what you use as a topping and a spread. The prep work for these really happened the day before. My mom citrus cured a fresh piece of salmon overnight (so delicious!) and we made a fresh pea hummus + artichoke spread to use for the base of the toasts. Then we put the family to work assembling the toasts when cocktail hour was over. It was a lot of fun to be in the kitchen with everyone in a low stress way and to feel like we were all working towards something.

Following the toasts, we had lemon herbed chicken, garlic roasted rainbow carrots, asparagus with sabayon, and roasted baby potatoes served with a mustard vinaigrette. I am SO bad at getting photos of the mains and we served it family style, but I'm trying to get better! Promise!

Spring Veggies: Didn't snag a pic of the mains, but how gorgeous are the veggies we used?

All of the food was delicious and season appropriate, but let's be real. The best part of any meal is the dessert and I have to confess that I spent so much time thinking about what to make. I wanted to feature rhubarb in a Victoria sandwich cake and my heart was so set on it, but when we went to the grocery store they had NONE. It worked out though and I decided to use exclusively strawberry which was delicious and I am definitely not complaining. My mom made these scrumptious lemon, lavender cookies and traditional Italian walnut and wine cookies. The dessert I was the most proud of and the most excited to make were my Robin's Egg chocolate cake pops. They took me around 18 hours total to create from start to finish and I encountered quite a few problems along the way, but the final product was so worth it. Scroll through to check out the dessert spread!