Easter preparations

We've been well into our Easter preparations for the last while.  As usual, this includes our traditional Easter basket.  We'll be making a few additions to it this year.

For the usual items, we'll have butter, sausage, a small ham, salt and cheese.  We've also got a chunk of fresh horseradish root, rather than the prepared paste.  Tomorrow (er... later today, I should say) we'll be baking bread and colouring eggs.  We'll be making a egg and milk bread that will be baked into some fancy shape.  For the eggs, we'll be colouring some by cooking them in onion skins, while others will be made into "dragon's eggs" for the pre-shelled eggs.  We're not going to bother doing colouful dyed eggs this year.  For that, colour will be from the tiny candy coated chocolate eggs we'll be adding, plus some foil covered chocolate eggs - the only sweets we'll include this year.

One of the traditional Polish items we never really used was bacon.  This year we've decided to include prosciutto as a sort of substitute, even though it's really a ham.  We also decided to add a small bottle of olive oil and two types of olives.  It seemed appropriate, considering how important olives and olive products were in Biblical times.

For my crafting this year, I ended up doing stuffed, crocheted eggs.  I'm still doing them, actually.  They're quick enough that I can do a simple one in a smooth yarn in about half an hour. I'm making some using textured yarn, some with colour changes, and others are being given a texture through stitch variations. They're all a variation of the free Lion Brand egg cozie pattern (you will need to sign in to see it).  I skipped any of the embellishments to the basic cozie shape.  Instead of ending it with an open bottom, I stuff it, then add a couple more decreasing rounds, then close up the bottom while sewing in the the yarn end.  I'm rather happy with how they're turning out. 

We're going to try something different for our Easter dinner.  We'll be doing a leg of lamb, which is a first for me.  Will have to look up different recipes and decide how I want to roast it.  For the dinner, we'll also have some barscz - I'm cheating, having bought it packaged.  To go with the lamb, Eldest suggested doing broccoli the Julia Child way, which is always a hit.  I'll be doing polenta, as well.  Though it's considered an Italian dish, I remember my mother making it when I was a child.  We called it by a Polish word that translates as porridge, and it was years before I found out what I knew as a child and polenta were the same thing! *L*  I am planning to make the polenta on Saturday, then pan fry slices of it for dinner on Sunday.

We'll likely pick up a wine to go with dinner as well.  Hmm... we should probably pick something up for a dessert, too.  I'd forgotten about dessert!