Preparing for Pascha

Marrying into the Byzantine Orthodox Church - and then later joining an Eastern Orthodox Church with Ukranian roots - changed the way I celebrate Easter forever, especially in regards to the food we prepare and eat.

Many of these foods are rich in milk, butter, cheese, eggs, and smoked meat, all foods given up in a traditional Lenten fast.

I learned these traditions and ways to prepare these foods forty years ago, so they would become the fabric of my six children's lives - and then they prepared them with me as they were growing up.

Now that half of them are workign or have worked in food service, they are more skilled in the kitchen than I am. So now I'm the one who assists them.

And someday, God willing, they will assist their children.

Rebekah squeezes out a ball of Easter cheese before she allows it to drip dry the rest of the way.

A quart of milk and a dozen eggs heats over a makeshift double boiler for another batch of Easter cheese.

A ball of Easter cheese drips dry.

Rebekah kneads a batch of Pascha or Easter bread. She made eleven loaves in all.

Rebekah cuts up butter for the Easter bread.

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Rebekah braids bread dough for the Pascha.

Rebekah adds braids to the Pascha.

A batch of Pascha that we didn't braid cools on racks.

In thet meantime, Timothy made homemade ricotta and pierogies.

This is the potato filling Timothy made for his pierogies,

Timothy shows me how his pictures of pierogies are better than mine.

Rebekah's ham comes out of the oven.

Timothy cooked the sausages.

The sausages are now cooling.

And, of course, Bertrand joined in.

Did you find Bertrand in this pictcure?

Rebekah also made three kinds of candy. We posted the recipe for chocolate truffles on the BryonySeries Sue's Diner page yesterday.

She also bought Easter candy on sale and made individual bags for all of us, including the grandchildren.

Because everyone's work and homework schedules didn't line up, we didn't have the backyard gathering at Joshua's house we had originally planned.

But a spoiling of plans cannot dampen the joy of the resurrection or cut the common thread of tradition that runs through all of us.

We all partook of the same food and rejoiced, even if that partaking and rejoicing didn't happen in the same physical space.