Easter weekend this year looked like a lot like Christmas: Sunday we awoke to a coating of snow. It was pretty (and gone by Monday), but not really what you expect in April.

So it seems appropriate that I served up an Easter dinner of very hardy foods: Maple-Dijon roasted root vegetables, potatoes in duck fat, and herbed lamb chops. Served with a Cabernet Sauvignon from Peller Estates.

Everything turned out well. Not the prettiest-looking meal I’ve ever made, but still more photo-worthy than citrus cake I made for dessert. Poor thing looked so sad, starting with the fact that my two cake pans aren’t quite the same diameter, so it had an odd shape, with ominously dripping cream cheese icing. (It’s occurring to me I could have cut the larger circle to fit the smaller, but that does sound like a waste of cake.) Tasted great, though.

I had vampires on the mind somehow 🙂 so we also took in a movie at the Princess called What We Do in the Shadows. It’s set in New Zealand, and purports to be a documentary about the lives (or unlives?) of vampires. Specifically, that four vampires of varying ages who share a flat agree to be interviewed and filmed as they go about their usual activities.

My feminist self will point out that this yet another movie that over-casts men. All the leads are men; the women in it are side characters, servants or girlfriends.

With that complaint out of the way, though—this is a really funny movie! Very enjoyable. These are your classic vampires who can’t eat food, wear silver, or go out during the day. but who can fly and transform into creatures. The centuries-long age differences cause some tensions among the roommates, which are only exacerbated when they are joined by a newly sired vampire who can’t resist telling everyone that he’s “like Twilight.”

(“Keep a low profile?” he complains, when called on it. “You have a whole documentary crew following you around!”)

What We Do in the Shadows official trailer

Jean enjoyed it as well, declaring it “weird but good”.

And that was Easter this year: Snow, vampires, and lopsided cake.