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!

Happy Easter!

Wishing everyone joy and blessings this Easter morning.




We start off our morning sharing the bounty of our basket. This year, I chose a brie for the cheese and baked it this morning. There's also the special bread we baked, eggs, prepared horseradish (WOW did that pack a wallop!), ham, kielbasa, butter and salt.

A wonderful way to celebrate Easter morning.

We did have a couple of chocolate bunnies, too. We'll get to them eventually. ;-)

Preparing for Easter

Easter preparations have been going full bore these days. Today was our day for doing the eggs and the bread for our basket.

I started off doing plain eggs for the girls to colour later, then did kraszanki. I completely forgot to take pictures of them, though. We did them the same as usual, except that I took half a dozen out earlier, so they're slightly lighter coloured than the rest.

Next up were the dragon's eggs, with a difference. Since we've cut soy out of our diets, the eggs were done in just black tea, spices and sugar. I did add a pinch of saffron for a bit of extra colour, but I don't know that it made any difference. As you can see here, there's quite a difference in appearance!










A few of them didn't look as nice, so I peeled them for snacking. The effect is a lot more subtle. They taste just as good, though. :-D












The next project was the bread. It was our basic bread recipe using eggs and milk for the liquid, local honey for the sweetener, and butter for the fat.


While the dough was rising, the girls took over the kitchen and coloured the plain eggs I'd readied for them earlier. Eldest didn't do very many, but the ones she did do, she got experimental with, as you can see here.















Youngest got creative with some of hers, too.





















She was having fun with these bi-coloured eggs.


















I like how it turned out.

With others, they did things like crack the shells a bit before dying them, so that they'll have a nice effect after peeling.

We didn't do any wax resist eggs this year. I know I unpacked my kistka and wax, but I'm not sure where I put them. I figured we had enough to fuss with to skip them for this year. ;-)





When the bread was ready for shaping, I used 3/4's of the 2 loaf recipe to make the wreath. After making a braid and shaping it into a wreath, I cut a bit more from the remaining 1/4 of the dough for the bow. I wanted the wreath to stay large and open, so I put an overturned bowl in the middle, forcing the dough to rise more outwards than inwards. If I'd had an oven proof bowl in the size I wanted, I would've left it there for baking, but no such luck. Instead, with the help of Youngest, we carefully removed the bowl when it was done rising, then she applied an egg wash to the surface for me.


It's not the smoothest or prettiest of wreaths, but it's the size and shape I was after.


















The remaining dough was cut and shaped into 8 small balls and put into a little cast iron frying pan I've got. I'd used it earlier to melt the butter for the dough, and I didn't want to waste the dregs left behind. ;-) That and I really like baking in cast iron.

I think they look adorable. :-D


It's now well past midnight. The eggs are in the fridge, and the bread is cool enough to wrap up so they don't try out.

Then it's time for bed!!

Happy Easter

Wishing everyone a peaceful and joyous Easter.

Pretty much ready...

Dh and I are finally feeling better again - and thankfully, the girls didn't catch whatever it is that laid us low! So we've been busily getting things ready for the basket.

First, we got a few pizanki done. Eldest did the 3 black ones, plus the green and yellow one. I think she did much better than I did. Youngest wasn't interested in doing any this year.

After these were done, I needed to figure out how to store them. I got out the carton with last year's eggs to see how much room I had and made a discovery. I think something heavy had thumped onto the carton, as one of the raw eggs was cracked and leaking. Actually, my biggest surprise was how little smell there was. It was quite gross. Thankfully, only one other egg was close enough that it was damaged and needed to be thrown out as well. Sadly, the two that had to be thrown out where the only two that Youngest had made, so now we have none from her. Ah, well. There's always next year.


I got the Dragon's Eggs done today as well. I find them so beautiful, right from when they're finished cooking...








... to the insides of the shells after they've been removed...









... to the finished eggs.









I also got the bread for the basket baked. I decided to go with an egg bread instead of our usual rye. It's just our basic white bread recipe using 2 eggs for some of the liquid, and honey instead of sugar. This one is for the basket, but I had enough for a second, smaller loaf that I made into a twist and baked in a small cast iron frying pan. That one promptly got eaten. :-D

So all the baking and dying and stuff is done. All we have to do now is assemble the basket tomorrow morning for blessing. :-)

Preparing for Easter

Easter is another of those celebrations where I like to continue traditions I grew up with. As a Polish Roman Catholic Family, Christmas and Easter were the two biggest celebrations. Here's a link describing some of the Easter traditions we celebrated.

In the next little while, we'll be starting on the eggs for our basket. I'll be blowing some eggs for wax resist colouring, though I might keep some raw. Raw are easier to dye, since they don't bob and float or fill with dye that needs to be drained. We shall see. We'll also be doing kraszanki and kit dyed eggs like last year, too. Those and some Dragon Eggs will be done as late as possible. Our basket always has peeled eggs in it, as even peeling eggs counts as work, and no work is to be done on Easter Sunday, if at all possible.

Here are a few links about Easter eggs and the traditions around them for you to enjoy.

Pisanki (pdf)

Polish Easter

Polish Easter recipes

The Decorated Easter Egg

Easter Eggs at Poland by Mail

Lithuanian Easter eggs - these patterns are much closer to the ones I'm familiar with.

Swieconka (pdf) - listing contents and symbolism of the traditional Polish Easter basket.

Easter Saturday in Poland - bringing our baskets in for blessing was a favourite event for me. I loved seeing all the different things people included in their baskets and wondered about them. Some were giant baskets, overflowing with breads, sausages, fruits and a bottle of wine. Others were nothing more than a loaf of hearty rye bread, already sliced. Soon the entire front of the church would be filled with 40 or more baskets, and the smells would be just heavenly!

At some point, my mother started to bring an extra empty basket. She would put in near the alter, slightly apart from the others, and add a few items from our own baskets. Others would add to it as well, soon filling it - a gift for the priest. As one of the only people who had horseradish of our own, my mother would also dig up extra roots to share with others.