A Quiet Easter Sunday

Saturday morning three guys from the gas department were going door to door along our street telling everyone they needed an inspection certificate for their gas furnaces and chimneys every two years or they would be cut off. New regulation, I guess, but Easter weekend???

Tanya called our gas man who couldn't come on Saturday but was Sunday morning at 9:00 OK?  Sure, why not?  He was here for three hours.  Our furnace had not had regular maintenance for a year or so.  It didn't work well most of last winter and we had no hot water, no matter how hard we DEMANDED it for several days.  We need a new connection pipe to the chimney and we may need a new furnace or a very expensive repair to get the hot water heating to work right.  But we don't have to heat water on the stove for dishes, at least.

I had two naps, which is a good Sunday in my books.  Tanya had one long nap.  No gardening yesterday and no business plan writing. We took the dogs and the next door kids for a long walk up to the lake and then had Easter dinner of poached salmon and Salad Olivier.

Today Tanya was up at 6:30 setting out bedding plants.  Over 100 Astors, I think she said.  It is warm and looks like rain so she is anxious to get things in the ground. Two days until we leave does not give us much time. She came in at 9:00 to hot biscuits, fresh coffee and a clean kitchen.  I can do some things.

Kuchma is all happy.  Our neighbour Victor has a new cow so we have farm milk again.  With lots of cream.  There was a litre of store-bought milk in the fridge.  I gave it to the dogs.  They are too dumb to know the difference anyhow.

Here is the picture of the Easter baskets Tanya and Masha made.  I didn't think the picture turned out very good but Tanya said post it anyhow.

христос воскрес

Masha was here today, colouring Easter eggs with her Babushka.  Maybe somewhere in Ukraine they are making the beautiful traditional eggs but here it is dye them one colour and stick on fancy decals from the store. Tanya bought a number of the traditional Easter breads yesterday so she and Masha made up three baskets of eggs and bread.  One for each of the families.  Lena is going to church tomorrow at 5:00 am.  At that hour she can go on behalf of all of us.

This past week was spring cleaning for the city.  For several days early in the week hundreds of people turned out to rake the parks and boulevards, clean up the flower beds and whitewash the curbs on the main streets.  University students, highschool students, even the little kids got in the act. It is all volunteer, a carry over from previous times and every one seemed to be having a good time.

People have been busy in the cemetery, too.  Cleaning around family grave sites, planting flowers  and getting ready for next Sunday when people traditionally visit the graves of relatives in remembrance.

And the Priest shouted to the congregation "Христос воскрес! Christ is risen!"

And the congregation relied with one voice "Воистину, воскрес! Truly, he is risen"

Easter

Easter is one of the two holiest days of all Christian Churches, the other of course being Christmas.  The birth, life and death of Christ brought salvation to the world through redemption from sin.  According to Hebraic Law, blood sacrifice was necessary for forgiveness from sin.  Although the most perfect lamb was chosen, being biological of course, it could not be PERFECT.  Consequently the sacrifice was good for one year only.

Jesus was the "Perfect Lamb of God" without spot or blemish in his life from beginning to end, so was the perfect sacrifice for complete forgiveness for all time.  John 3:16 sums up the whole issue.

My Iowa cousin, Alice, made reference to Maundy Thursday in a recent email.  I had to confess to not being familiar with the days of Holy Week which lead up to Easter Sunday.  I am familiar with the Tuesday before Lent, celebrated by the British with wild pancake parties and by the more sensible folk as Mardi Gras.  Alice sent me the following explanation which I thought was excellent.

On Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a colt-ass.   His 12 disciples followed him, and the people who tended to believe in his teaching, preaching, and miracles that they had been seeing & hearing, waved palm branches, laid their cloaks down on the ground before him, and hollered "Hosanna!"  Which means roughly, "Lord, save us!"  They didn't understand the kind of kingdom he came to establish.  (Hey, I don't understand all of it yet either!)   

 

While this was happening there were people watching who didn't like him & his message. (They didn't understand it either.)  The Roman soldiers were standing around, making sure there was no trouble, no religious rebellion or insurrections, anything like that.  And the Pharisees, the head honchos of the Jewish people /temple in the city, were afraid that this self-proclaimed King was gonna take away their power.

 

By Thursday, the general mood of the people in Jerusalem was going downhill.  The place was crowded because of the Passover, the celebration of when the Angel of Death passed over the homes of the Hebrews when they were enslaved in Egypt  several hundred years before, when God chose Moses to lead them out.  The last plague was that the first born of every household would die that night, when the Angel of Death moved thru the city, but the Hebrews were instructed to sacrifice a perfect lamb and to use a brush of hyssop (fragrant plants) to paint blood from the sacriced lamb onto their door frames.   The Angel of Death would pass over those houses with blood on the doors.   This event became a feast, celebrated annually by the Jews, and they came to Jerusalem from all Israel to  celebrate, if at all possible.

 

On Thursday, Jesus did some teaching.   He gave the final form of the commandments of God.  (First, there were something like 603...not sure of the exact figure right now...but there were LOTS of commandments in the early days to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the patriarchs of the faith.  Second, they were pared down to 10 commandments when Moses received them on Sinai, during the Exodus.  Jesus further pared them down to one-maybe-two:  Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love one another.)   The term MAUNDY comes from the same root word as COMMANDMENT........either Latin or Greek....can't remember right now for sure. But it is MANDATORY (another word from that root) that we love God and one another.

 

 Jesus held a Passover feast in the Upper Room of a home.  He invited his 12 disciples, and he did something quite unusual:  instead of having a servant wash the feet of his guests, he did it himself, which taught us servanthood.  Peter that night taught us humility & submission.........I'd really rather wash my own feet & he felt that way, too. 

 

 During the feast, Jesus instigated the practice that would become The Last Supper, Holy Eucharist, Communion, referring to himself as the Perfect Lamb who would lay down his life in sacrifice for all the sins of all mankind for all time..........The Father's perfect plan to overcome the imperfections experienced by humanity ---and even our most grievous & terrible sins---since the Fall from Grace in the Garden.

 

Христос Воскрес

Христос Воскрес! Christ has risen.

Somehow the traditional Orthodox greeting on Paskha Sunday goes much more to the heart of the matter than "Happy Easter" or even "Have a blessed Easter". Christ has risen! Rejoice in the hope of renewed life that His resurrection brings us.

And the answer? Воистину воскрес! Truly, He has risen. Confirmation that we believe, that we share that joy and hope.

Светлое Христово Воскресение-добрый праздник жизни возрождения. Сколько в жизни таинств и чудес! И во всех сердцах Христос Воскрес!

Do you want chopped nuts?

Today was baking and gardening day at 28 Naberezhni Lane. Tanya gardened and I baked.

Her flowerbeds are filling in rapidly as every day she plants more and more different kinds. I'm not sure what all she put in today. We went to the big central "Sunday" market today. it was held a day early as tomorrow being Paskha (Easter) everything will be closed. We filled two bags with vegetables and I went to the car while Tanya went to look for Paskha bread. I waited and I waited until she finally showed up with two bags, one of special loaves for Easter and one of flower bedding plants. Of course.

What did you buy? Some shit. (No kidding?) Ok, I ignored it then, after a smart ass answer like that. Turns out that was exactly what she had bought. самшит (Samsheet) a Boxwood tree. I have been teasing her about that all day.

I started the afternoon with banana bread. The recipe I have (from the internet) wants to dirty every bowl in the house. Mix little bits of things separately and then blend, fold (spindle and mutualate) all together at the end. I never know if the people who post the recipes are just showing off or if it is to get back at all the bureaucrats who give us VIP (Very Important Paper) and tell us do NOT blend, fold spindle or mutualate.

I try to follow recipes so far as ingredients are concerned but rarely follow the mixing directions. It is like keeping your peas and potatoes separate on your plate - they are all going to be mixed in the end anyhow. This batter turned out very stiff and not as big a batch as usual. The bananas were too small or too green or something. Like my Mom's brown bread, I could have fired the two loaves through the side of a wooden ship with a small cannon. But they tasted fine.

The last item on the ingredient list was chopped walnuts. Having progressed to that point in every batch I made, it always comes as a shock since I have to go to the passage way and get the walnuts (gathered from our tree last fall) and shell the damn things. I am moving that item to first on the ingredient list. Well, after smushing the bananas. It is called BANANA Bread after all.

Then I found a chocolate chip cookie recipe somewhere and decided to try it, since we had chips we brought from Canada. Did you know that 50% of all cookie recipes made in America are chocolate chip? This time I was smart and shelled and chopped the walnuts first.

The recipe said I was supposed to drop the cookie dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Drop? I couldn't pry it off the spoon. I added another egg so it would be a little malleable. Ungreased? The baked cookies stuck to the cookie sheet like poop to a blanket. Next batch, I jimmied them loose before they got cold.

Lastly I made my favourite cookie - oatmeal raisin. These I had made before but this time the dough was wetter than I remembered so I added some more flour. I also greased the cookie sheets - to no avail. Stuck tighter than a ... Pried loose, they resemble dry porridge with raisins.

If I can find wax paper, I am using it on my cookie sheets next time.

The pot of chicken soup I cooked for supper to surprise Tanya made up for less than eye-pleasing baking.

Easter Sunday

Yesterday, our friends Natalie, Andrei and daughter Yulia drove out from Dnipropetrovs'k for Easter Sunday dinner. It was the first time any of them had been to our place ever so we took great delight in showing them around. (I had just finished putting up the curtains in the kitchen and cleaning up before they got there. Only one small oops in drilling in the mounting screws, which I am an expert in covering up by now.) They were quite impressed with all we had done.

First thing in the morning, Tanya had started cooking again. Some left over perogie dough became a fish pie (and tasted wonderful). Two more salads, crab salad (1 cup niblets corn, 1 cup slivered crab, two cups slivered (grated?) carrots and the ubiquitous mayonnaise) and a green salad. The chicken went in the oven just when they called to say they were outside town.

We opened our dining table out full for the first time. To hold all the food, not to accommodate 5 people. We should have had 10 people for dinner. And Tanya sent me to the store for more groceries because “she didn’t think we’d have enough food”. Actually we’d run out of fruit juice.

Tanya has known Natalie for about 10 years and considers her one of her two best friends. Natalie started her career as a professional translator and lately was the head of the City of Dnipropetrovs'k International Relations Department. She was all over the world at any given time, working on business deals, leading trade delegations or piloting the Mayor and other high officials on various missions related to trade with the City of Dnipropetrovs'k.

She has just started on the biggest challenge of her life, heading up the company which will put together the bid on the 2020 Summer Olympics for the City of Dniporpetrovs'k. She is terrified and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the job but got no sympathy from either her husband or Tanya as all believe there is no one in Ukraine as capable as she is, to make it happen.

Andrei is a businessman in Dnipropetrovs,k. Construction and trucking. Great guy. I had not met him before and had been looking forward to meeting the man who married Natalie, figuring he had to be something grand. He is! Yulia is 15 and a sweetheart. No one seems to have told her that teenagers are not supposed to be that well mannered and agreeable to have around.

A big storm blew in about 5:00 so they headed for home. It rained hard all night and I have not had to do yard work today at all. Love it. Now I have to go look after my pooches.

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.