Damon Lee Fowler

 

For years, every single Easter I sang in choir for as many as three services and still managed to host a formal lunch for as many as eight people. The menu rarely varied: it began with chilled carrot puree, followed by both a roast leg of lamb and ham, potato gratin, and asparagus—either with Hollandaise or finished "alla parmigiana" (layered with butter and Parmesan cheese and baked).

 

But then a pandemic, our move to Virginia, and the ugly reality of getting older descended on me, and that Easter lunch has gradually shrunk. This year it was to just the two of us.

 

But dwindling numbers and stamina weren't the only things that changed. Read More 

I always have lamb at Easter, following the older tradition even though most Southerners have ham of some kind, and now my household is divided between the ham and lamb camps, so I usually have both. This year, someone else is bringing the ham, so I’m doing a simple butterflied leg of lamb Irish-style, in honor of our Irish priest associate who’ll be joining us for dinner. Read More 

For many Americans, Southerners in particular, the centerpiece of the Easter feast must be a fat, pink ham. Why and how ham came into this role is lost in time. The older, and more easily understood tradition, is lamb.

The ancient sacrificial lamb of the Passover came to be associated directly with the Christ’s sacrifice at the Crucifixion (“Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast.”), and in the early church, roast lamb was at the heart of the Easter feast. Read More