Saturday, April 26, 2008

Cooking for Easter


Tomorrow is Easter Sunday so today we have been busy cooking and baking. We will have a plate full of traditional Paskha bread and coloured eggs for tomorrow morning and a great deal more food for visitors. Tanya was chief cook and I was delegated chief bottle washer.

We had shipped home from Canada at Christmas a number of items not available in stores here. Jell-O, maple syrup, pancake mix, cake mixes, brown sugar, canned icing, bran muffin mix, chocolate chips. Tanya has been dying to try things so I dug out Ella’s Oatmeal Cookie recipe and we started with two dozen chocolate chip cookies then made two dozen raisin cookies. Hit of the day with Masha and Maxim. Tanya can already make the recipe by heart after two times. Then we started making layered Jell-O’s in tall glass cups. Opened a box of Certo by mistake. Caught it in time. Next were 18 bran muffins, followed by a white cake mix and the last of one can of icing to finish it.

Oh, yes, we made Ukrainian food too. Salad Olivier - I was chief chopper-upper for that. While I was chopping things up, Tanya had me cut up a chicken and put it to marinate for tomorrow. Tanya had started dough rising first thing and punched it down twice. At the end of the day she made perogie. A word of explanation here about names. What Canadians call perogies are actually verenikie. Verenikie is NOT a staple food here but store-bought frozen for “emergencies”. Perog (one) perogie (many) is best translated as pie. Raised dough “buns” stuffed with fruit or meat or whatever and fried. These perogie were stuffed with boiled egg and green onion marinated in melted butter with added salt for three or four hours. To die for.

Tanya is now colouring Easter Eggs (Pysanka) so I bowed out.

Masha has been here all day, playing with Maxim and the puppies and Lucia’s rabbits and… She comes in the house once in a while but other than that we haven’t seen her. She is skipping her nap today. Tanya wants a nap but she is afraid to lie down for fear Andrei and Tanya come for her and find Babushka sleeping and Masha playing outside unsupervised.

Salad Olivier – a traditional Ukrainian salad
Two cups each of the following: peas (canned or frozen), hard boiled eggs, ham, potatoes.
One cup of each: dill pickles, carrots, green onion, mayonnaise.
Potatoes and carrots should be cooked but still relatively firm.
Chop everything the size of peas. Mix all ingredients. Keep chilled until served.

5 comments:

  1. Wow those Easter eggs are amazing. And it sounds like you are being fed way too well. Pass on my compliments to the chef (and artist).

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  2. I miss salad Olivier like CRAZY. Thank you for the recipe. Not saying I'll ever make it, but at least I can think about it now and pretend.

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  3. Ah, yes. The Easter eggs. One buys little plastic sleeves to slip over the eggs and then dips them in hot water or something. Presto instant Pysanka. Notice the ends of the eggs have no patterns.

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  4. Hi Daddy-o. That sounds like a gooooood salad. Next church potluck, I will give it a try.

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  5. For Salad Olivier, measure ingredients AFTER they are chopped. And accuracy in any ingredient amount is optional. I don't write recipes well.

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