Olga's Easter bread (Paska)

It's the most wonderful dough... of the year... (sing it with me...)

When my elderly Ukrainian neighbour, Olga, who has since moved to seniors' housing, typed up her Paska and Babka recipes for me after Easter some years ago, I didn't realize what a treasure she had shared. Since then I've been delighted with the Paska process and results. I've shared it before, but here's this year's efforts from yesterday to illustrate in case any of my readers would like to try to make their own beautiful Easter bread:

Olga's Paska 

2 c (500 mL) lukewarm water

2 tbsp (30 mL) sugar

3 tbsp (45 mL) active dry yeast

Mix them together and let stand about ten minutes. (I usually do this about halfway through making the "sponge" for the bread as it's a longer process than ten minutes).

2 c (500 mL) scalded milk (warmed to 180 degrees, then allowed to cool -- scalded milk helps the flour gluten's smoothness and gives any flavouring you might like to add extra oomph) 

6 whole eggs 

6 egg yolks (Easter macarons from the whites, anyone? I made a delicious omelette for supper)

1 c (250 mL) sugar -- or a bit less

1/2 c (125 mL) butter or margarine, melted

1/2 c (125 mL) vegetable oil

1 tbsp (15 mL) salt

1 tsp lemon flavouring (almond or vanilla are nice, too, and darn, I forgot to add any flavouring this year!)

12-13 c flour... more if the dough is too sticky.

Add the sugar, salt and melted butter to the scalded milk. Mix in oil and flavouring. Beat eggs until light and add them, along with 4 cups of flour. 

Add the yeast mixture and mix well to make the "sponge," then add it to the remaining 8-9 cups of flour, or more, depending on the stickiness of the dough (different flours have different moisture content). Knead it until smooth and satiny.

Put the dough into a large bowl, cover and let rise until doubled. Punch down and let rise again til doubled.

Divide the dough into as many loaves as you like. If you have round cake pans, they are ideal for nice rounded, flat bottomed loaves (filling about 1/3 of the pan's center). Use half (or less) of a loaf's dough for decorations -- braids, twists, ropes, rosettes, etc. I put my loaves on cookie sheets, and they expanded into each other so they're not quite as pretty as they could be where they baked together...

Flatten the bottom of the loaf and moisten where you want to set the decorations. Cover with a damp towel and let rise until double in size. (Don't let the tops of the loaves get too dry or they crack and spoil the decorative designs -- I'm speaking from experience, here.)

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, but keep an eye on them -- if they are getting too brown, cover them with moistened brown paper. Then turn the oven down to 300 degrees and bake another ten minutes while you mix up the glaze:

1 beaten egg

3 tbsp (45 mL) water

1 tsp (5 mL) sugar

Brush the bread with well-beaten glaze and bake for another 10 minutes at 300 degrees.

See the butterfly and snails on the bottom loaf? Roses elsewhere...

This year, I divided my dough into eight loaves, and Suzanna and I had fun decorating. We are quite delighted with the results, and we'll be sharing the loaves among family members for Easter. Unfortunately, my nephew is far from his parents and stuck in a covid hotel not far from here for this Easter -- so this morning, I dropped one off for him. The beauty of the recipe is that it makes plenty for sharing. Maybe next year I'll try the babka recipe instead...

Happy Easter baking! 

Santa Lucia Day

A friend just reminded me of a wonderful experience from my year in Up With People. We were having our morning meeting in Oshawa, Ontario, when the theatre darkened, and the girls in our cast from Northern Europe processed in, singing for the feast of Santa Lucia. It was a moment that I will never forget.

St. Lucy is rumoured to have worn a crown of candles on her head so she could use both hands to carry food to persecuted Christians hiding in the catacombs. She's mentioned in the Litany of the Saints, and is associated with light and goodness. So it seems fitting that she is honoured this way.

Some years ago, my friend Charleen's choir began a concert with a Lucia procession. It moved me to tears, it was so beautiful. And this video is particularly gorgeous. Happy St. Lucy's Day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=120&v=i2-Q_ObdE-4

Eating together on Family Day

Today fast-food services and TV dinners have made common meals less and less central. But what will there be to remember when we no longer come together around the table to share a meal? Maybe we will have fewer painful memories, but will we have any joyful ones? Can we make the table a hospitable place, inviting us to kindness, gentleness, joy, and peace and creating beautiful memories? 

--Henri Nouwen

Yesterday we celebrated "Family Day," our annual February winter long weekend in Alberta. We're still pretty good about doing things as a family most weekends... but it was nice to see other families out and about together. Lee and I got quite a charge out of the folks gathered at the petting zoo at Bonnie Doon Mall. One poor little tot put her fingers through the wire fence, and a Shetland pony must have thought they were little carrots... nibble nibble, followed by toddler scream. Skin wasn't broken, thank heavens! But the child will think twice about approaching large furry creatures fingers-first in the future.

Our usual Family Day activity up until now has been skating at the Victoria Oval. Unfortunately, with my dizzy head, skating is not doable as a complete family unit. After all the excitement of the Canadian Improv Games on Sunday, my girls needed the day to get homework done anyway. So my hubby decided that this Family Day, we would have a reverse supper instead... you know, dessert before the main course, etc.

So at five o'clock, we headed to Whyte Avenue's Marble Slab Creamery, and spent an outrageous amount of money on some delicious icecream. Then we went home and had supper at seven o'clock... roast beef, mashed potatoes, and tossed garden salad. Our table was a hospitable place, in two places. And it's a Family Day memory that I don't think we'll soon forget. I suspect our youngest will want reverse Family Day dinner every year from here on! 

Simple pleasures... and making music

One of my favourite things in this world is making music, doesn't matter what kind of music it is. Singing a round, playing guitar, beating a drum, it's all good. What's better is when there's a whole group of people playing and singing together. I'm not one to sing solo, but I love duets and harmonies. Did you ever notice that participation is way more fun than just listening? My favourite musicians are those who come up with easily singable choruses, or leave spaces in their harmony lines for people like me to sing, or who invite their audiences to sing along.

Music is good for the soul in more ways than I can count. It carries emotion, memory and joy like nothing else. My parents both came from musical families, and they've never stopped making music. Some of my early memories include "sing songs" with rooms full of people and my mom's brothers playing piano and guitar. I remember asking them and my dad to sing "Blue Spanish Eyes" for my decidedly un-Spanish dollie! And they did!

When Mom and Dad gave my sister and me 12-string guitars for Christmas 30 years ago, we didn't know that we would enter into the sing-a-long tradition. My youngest sister plays piano, and the three of us have played for a few dozen sing songs over the last fifteen years. Recently, my daughter requested a sing song for her birthday, and a half dozen of her school chums were initiated into the tradition. Will it continue with the next generation? I hope so.

It doesn't take much to make music. I'm not a very talented guitarist as I never took lessons, can't play a bar chord to save my life, and rarely practice, but in a pinch I can lead a group of kids or adults in singing "I am a Pizza," or "Let It Be," and thoroughly enjoy the process. A lot of us sing in the shower with only the sound of water as accompaniment and enjoy that, too. Unfortunately, somewhere along our lives, too many of us lose the small child's ability to sing completely un-self-consciously -- and the joy that goes with it.

Making music is magic, an endorphin-producing pleasure that should happen more frequently than it does. A European cell phone company capitalized on this idea, and invited a crowd of people to raise their voices in Trafalgar Square -- a mega sing song. I love how everyone enters into the spirit! Why not sing along and up your endorphins on this winter day?