Easter

The cake pictured above is a traditional Russian Easter Cake which most of the Orthodox families make for Easter and give to friends.

We really had a great Easter this year, complete with easter egg hunts, colored eggs and great food. Plus, the Easter Menu was quite a success!

The first of the Easter festivities was my Easter Lesson where my students hunted for easter eggs in the Library to find facts about easter in the eggs and in some of them candy 

After the hunt we went into the classroom to color easter eggs which they also enjoyed.

The Russian families who celebrate Easter usually color eggs, but a large percentage of the people here do not celebrate Easter, so this was the first time coloring Easter eggs for many of them.

On Saturday all of the expats in the city had a big gathering to celebrate Easter. During which we had an easter egg hunt for the kids and some of the adults too 

A lot of great food

And we made coffee for the expats.

Sunday was the big day! I prepared for the Easter Feast by making my table look beautiful with these babies:

Then the cooking began. First I made these wonderful rolls. I did not have wheat flour, so I just used all regular instead, they weren’t as healthy, but still delicious! My finished product doesn’t look quite like the one on the recipe. But here it is:

Next I was surprised at how delicious these potatoes were. I didn’t add baby artichokes because you can’t get them here, but it was still a great dish. Let me know how it tastes with the baby artichokes if you decide to try it 

The next dish was my own creation. Carrots! I added this one after I created my original menu because I decided that I needed one more thing. What is better than carrots on Easter? The recipe is simple:

1. Peel, Cut and Boil about 5 Carrots.
2. Drain water when carrots become tender
3. Add 1 tbs butter, 1 tbs brown sugar, 3 cloves of garlic and salt & pepper to taste.

The lamb was a serious hit, probably because people here love meat! They did not have a leg of lamb here. The best meat that Curtis found was lamb chops. So I seasoned them according to the recipe and cooked them for about an hour and a half.

I also made a salad which is something I make with almost every meal here. We found out this winter that the lettuce is pretty much always in season. So we buy it a lot and make salads to stay healthy. My favorite salad dressing is this simple mix that I learned a long time ago from my sister in law (but modified a bit):

1. 1 tbs Olive Oil
2. 1 tbs lemon juice
3. 1 tbs parmesan cheese
4. 3 cloves of garlic ( I told you, I love Garlic!)
5. 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Lastly was the dessert which is usually my favorite part of the meal. I did not really like this particular dessert though. The directions were difficult to follow and the end result was not worth it. Although it might not have been exactly what it was supposed to be, it just did not taste very good. Luckily I made some chocolate chip cookies also, just in case the dessert wasn’t good and much to my dismay, it wasn’t. Glad the cookies were there to save the day 

Despite all of the modifications and complications. I think everyone enjoyed the meal 

After the meal we had the last Easter egg hunt. Complete with M&M’s brought all the way from America by Grandma 

The last thing we did was color easter eggs. It seems kind of backwards, but my friend had never done it and we had one last packet of colors. So we boiled five eggs, got all the colors ready…

And came out with some pretty good looking easter eggs 

Happy Easter Everyone! Hope you enjoyed yours just as much as we enjoyed ours!