Can I just tell you how stinking beautiful my baby was on Easter? In his pale blue sweater suit with the argyle design at the top, and the traditional baby white leather high tops on his feet? Well, I will have to tell you, because I cannot show you, since I did not manage to take A SINGLE PICTURE of him on his first Easter. His very first Easter, and his mom can’t be bothered to take a picture of him amongst the baskets and fake grass and hard boiled eggs and stuffed lambs, because me? I was busy. Eating. And eating and eating and eating. My mother fed us well.

Let’s start with Saturday. Every girl cousin and aunt in a 40-mile radius came over at my mom’s behest to COME SEE THIS BABY. Come, they did, bearing stuffed bears and lambs and candy the baby can’t eat, so GUESS WHO DID.

My mother made a pound cake from a recipe I believe my sister pilfered from her mother-in-law some time ago, and she topped it with Ina Garten’s blueberry sauce, but it would be delicious with a dollop of fresh fruit preserves or a scoop of homemade ice cream.

This pound cake is The Best Pound Cake ever, and as soon as you recover from the passing out after reading the ingredient list, you’ll understand why.

Best-Ever Pound Cake

8 ounces cream cheese
3 sticks of butter (that’s right. 3 STICKS)
3 cups sugar
6 eggs
3 cups flour
2 tsp. vanilla
1 C powdered sugar
1/4 C orange juice

Step 1) Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Have the cream cheese and butter at room temperature. Cream together until light.

Step 2) Beat in the vanilla and sugar, then add the eggs one at a time and beat well.

Step 3) Blend in the flour–do not over-beat.

Step 4) Bake for 1 1/2 hours. Watch closely after 1 hour and make sure it doesn’t get overdone. It should be a bit dough-y in the middle but a little crusty on top. If you overbake, it gets dry. We don’t want dry.

Step 5) Frost with a glaze of powdered sugar mixed with orange juice.

So there was pound cake on Saturday, followed by a dinner of steak, green beans, and The Pioneer Woman’s crash hot potatoes.

Dessert was a simple ice cream pie and I’m sharing the recipe with you now because I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight if I didn’t – and also because Mr. Meat and Potatoes has never once before suggested I put a recipe in this article, but as he ate this ice cream pie (he whose heart belongs almost solely to brownies) he looked up at me and said, “You know, this would be good for The Flying Fork.” And if there ever was a ringing endorsement, that was it. Trust me.

Mr. Meat and Potatoes’ Favorite Ice Cream Pie

Make a graham cracker crust with 1 1/4 cup crushed graham crackers (I always buy a box of already crumbed) and 1/4 cup sugar and 1/2 stick butter–melted. Press into pie plate and bake for 10 minutes at 350. Cool

Add approx. 8 cups softened vanilla ice cream. Put into freezer until hardened.

Spread chocolate or caramel ice cream topping over the ice cream and freeze again.

Top with 8 ounce carton of Cool Whip.

You could put a layer of chopped pecans on the ice cream topping before freezing, but Mr. Meat and Potatoes would counsel you against that, and nuts in general, as they apply to dessert.

Also, you can be fancy and put chocolate shavings (from a Hershey Bar) on top of the Cool Whip.

Sunday morning we awoke to an egg and hashbrown casserole and the ooey gooeyest bestest cinnamon rolls on the planet.

After church, I put on jeans which was a mistake, and sat down to dinner – ham AND meatballs, oven-baked cheesy mashed potatoes, fruit, buttered rosemary rolls, brown sugar sauteed baby carrots, a green salad, and cupcakes for dessert, served next to strawberry homemade ice cream.

Yeah, the jeans were a mistake, considering I had a three hour car ride ahead of me that afternoon.

Jealous much? I thought so. I can pony up with the other recipes from the weekend later, if you ask my (and my mama) nicely. Or, you can ply me with liquor. That always works too.