We went to Long Island to visit Andreas’s family over Easter weekend. My family makes quite a deal out of Easter. We get dressed in our Easter finest and go to church. We even still get baskets from the “Easter Bunny”. It’s not as big as Christmas, but it’s right up there with Thanksgiving. We all get together at my mom’s house and have the traditional dinner – ham and the usual accompaniments. I am in charge of making deviled eggs, and we eat our weight in chocolate.
It’s a bit different for Andreas’s family. His mom is a career waitress and works on Easter Sunday. I’m not sure what they did as kids, but these days, Easter kind of goes quietly by. This weekend just happened to work best for a visit to see his aunt visiting from Wales and to see the rest of the family. Since we do every holiday with my family, I was good with going to visit.
We had a great visit with the whole family on Saturday. Gerty (Andreas’s mom) took the night off, so we able to all go out to dinner together. The Eric Matern’s were all dressed in their Easter finest for a bit of a peek into their Sunday. They were going to have an Easter egg hunt, but it would be really hard for us to fit it in and get to the ferry on time.
Easter Sunday, we got up, had bagels and put on our Easter Finest. We took Aunt Erika and Aunt Helga to church with us, and dropped them off at the train. Then there was just the three of us. I really wanted to find someplace to have brunch. I know that a lot of places were offering a special Easter brunch – we just had to find them.
We decided to head up to the North Fork to be closer to the ferry. If you are not familiar with the North Fork of Long Island, it is a winery mecca. It’s a beautiful part of the state and it’s always a pleasure to drive up there. There are several small idyllic towns that have cute town centers and quaint restaurants. However, most of them were closed. Even a lot of the wineries were closed. And then we hit pay dirt – Laurel Lake Winery was hosting an Easter Brunch. I ran in to make sure they could accommodate us and to make sure it would be OK to bring a baby. The tasting room had about 10 tables set with three occupied. Two of the occupied tables had kids! Babies even! There was a musical duo playing and singing nice music. It was perfect. Even better, they could sit us right away!

The dining room and buffet
The brunch was catered by a company called La Bonne Quiche. It was a set menu for $32 a person which included a glass of wine or a mimosa. I am happy to say the food was delicious!
The food came out in courses and I thought it was going to be too much food, but it was portioned out perfectly.
First course: Fluffy scrambled egg with sausage, ham, fresh fruit, and hot cross buns.
The eggs were very nice, but the true hero of this course was the sausage. It was so good! It had a slight curry flavor to it. There were three of them, and we made sure the third was cut in two identically sized pieces! I even ate some fruit. The hot cross buns were good, but there were raisins, so I had to do some picking.
We chose to have the wine for our drink. I had the Sauvignon blanc and Andreas had the Cabernet Sauvignon. The North Fork really excels at white wines, so mine was the better choice.

Course 1
There was a nice break between the first and second course. Thank goodness because this was the heaviest course. There was an individual quiche with swiss cheese and spinach and a heavenly vanilla maple French toast souffle with fresh berries. The quiche was very good, but the French toast was superb. I’m not normally a big fan of sweet breakfast foods, but this was awesome. Actually, the two dishes complemented each other very well.
The last course was good, but it paled in comparison to the first two. Gorgonzola chicken salad with red grapes and asparagus and string bean vinaigrette. The chicken was served in a cup with a bread stick and was definitely good. I think if I had that without having the two previous courses, I would have really liked it. The asparagus and string bean salad was really just OK. My least favorite.
At some point we got another glass of wine. We were really enjoying ourselves! We decided this was actually a wonderful way to celebrate our first Easter as a family. The other little kids were up and dancing to the music, and it was just a nice relaxing time. It was special, too. How often do you get to sit in a winery on a beautiful 70 degree Easter Sunday and have a wonderful meal and lovely wine.
To finish the dinner, dessert was a carrot cake cupcake and old fashioned lemon pound cake. By this time I was pretty full so I had to focus on just one dessert and the pound cake won hands down for me. It was so yummy! I want to try to make it some day. It was dense and moist with just enough of a lemon flavor. The carrot cupcake was good, but it had the raisins and it just wasn’t worth my picking time.
After we ate, we took a walk around the grounds and watched the older kids participate in a egg hunt. We also watched folks come in for tastings and had a great time people watching. By then it was time for us to head to Orient Point and pick up the ferry.
It was a wonderful special day. I think we will have to do something like that more often for holidays.

Happy Easter!
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