Easter holidays, family and country traditions. Photo-report

Happy Easter! This is a phrase that we may repeat every day this week and next 40 days.
WE already discussed the traditions for Easter, what and how to prepare and to cook,

Now let's see some results!



Painted eggs and kulich

by talented designer and photographer Oksana Podgorodetskaya aka vinsa and her family (Moscow)

Easter baskets and kulich

by Russians from Hong Kong (photo by Kira Pozdnyaeva)

The eggs from the festival 'Living Art' ("Живое искусство") in Moscow in Lavrushincky pereulok, near  the Tretyakov Art Gallery

  

more photos from the festival

Happy Easter! Christos Voskrese!

Today the Orthodox world celebrates Easter. In Russia the priest says 'Christos  Voskrese', all people answer 'Voistinu Voskrese', which means 'Christ is risen' - 'Truly is risen'

And here is an Easter basket of Easter 2012 from Kira Pozdnyaeva (Hong Kong)

Христос Воскресе! 

基督复活了 

Kristus nousi kuolleista! 

Le Christ est ressuscité! 

Christ is Risen!

Preparing for Easter. Decorating eggs, creative ideas

We continue speaking about the ways to decorate the eggs for Easter. Now let's see some hand-made variants

1. LACE and ELASTIC band (by Anna Golub).

  First cook hard-boiled eggs.

  Then mix 4 tablespoons of vinegar with 12 drops of blue food dye, and 2 cups of hot boiled water.
  Wrap the egg with lace cloth and fix it with elastic lace on the egg.
  Using a spoon, dip the egg into the vinegar first, then into the dye.
  Allow the eggs to dry.

 

2. Using punch and coloured paper (by Anna Golub)

3. Leaf pattern (by the member of the community)

For this method of dyeing eggs we need various leaves (parsley, coriander, basil), the old nylon stockings, thread, and onion peel (for the main colour). 

Fix leaves with a piece of nylon, carefully remove after coloring.

4. Decorate Easter eggs with beads and strass (from the member of the community).

Glue strips of double-sided tape to the egg. Sprinkle with colored sand for needlework. Shake off extra sand. 

Glue the tape for the stripes of another color. Sprinkle with sand, shake off extra sand.
Put a layer of the acrylic lacquer spray to the egg.
 

Instead of colored sand you can take beads or strass. Glue them with silicate glue randomly or make a particular pattern. The easiest way to draw stripes, crosses and flowers. 

Preparing for Easter. Decorating eggs, natural colours

You all may already know that in Russia we also are fond of decorated or painted eggs for Easter. We cook and decorate them in advance, then bless in the church and after that eat, give as present or 'play' with it. You may read about this traditions and about the history of the 'Easter egg' in one of our older posts.

In Russia Easter eggs were put over fresh green oats, wheat, and sometimes pale green tiny leaves of watercress, which are specially pre-germinated for a holiday.

As was the custom to keep the eggs during the whole year until next Easter, later eggs were made of wood and painted with ornaments and designs. Also there appeared  eggs made of porcelain, silver and precious stones.

Today I will show you the ways you may decorate the eggs. The ideas are taken from very nice community 'Leisure of orthodox children' and from the web-site www.kuking.net

1. The most traditional way is to paint them with onion peel

Collect the peel in advance. Depending on the color of peel the color of eggs may vary from light red to dark brown. If you want the color was more saturated, you must take more peel, and boil it for half an hour before you put the egg into the 'broth'. Almost purple colour for eggs is obtained from the peel of red onion.

In order that the eggs do not burst during cooking,  hold it for an hour in  a warm place; when boiling in the water add a tablespoon of salt.

2. Some other natural colours for the eggs

 gilding
 Add to hot water 2.3 tbsp turmeric, boil, so that the color was more intense.

  pink
  Soak cooked eggs in beet juice, or cranberry.

  purple
  Add flowers of violets to the hot water and soak overnight. If you add the water a drop of lemon juice, you get the color of lavender.

  green
 boil the eggs with spinach.

  lavender
  Soak eggs in grape juice.

  Umber
  Boil the eggs in 250 ml of coffee.

Easter is coming soon, time to prepare! Cooking 'Paskha'

Happy Easter to all friends who celebrate it today! Easter (or as we call it Paskha - Пасха) for Russians, who are mostly Orthodox Christina, comes next week, on Sunday, the 15th of April.

As for the Easter traditions, you might remember the post about traditions in Russia. You may also refer to the post about the Easter postcards and congratulate your orthodox friends with a beautiful vintage Easter postcard.

Let's see what and how do we cook for this kind spring holiday.

1. Paskha, cottage cheese (tvorog, творог) cake or curd
2. Kulich, or Easter cake
3. Painted eggs

Usually all cooking starts on Thursday. Then on Saturday the food it taken to the church to be blessed. And on Sunday it's time to eat all that!

Let's see how to cook no.1, Paskha

Пасха - Paskha is a kind of curd made of cottage cheese, eggs, sugar etc which is cooked once in a year - only for the fest of Resurrection. It's original shape is cut pyramid, that's representing the Tomb of Christ. Together with other traditional dishes, Paskha is taken to the church on Great Saturday and is blessed. You may eat it when the Great Lent is over, on Sunday - the day of Resurrection.

Indeed there are many ways to cook it as well as to cook the cottage cheese itself, but here is one of the recipes.
the recipe is taken from gotovim-doma

Ingredients

cottage cheese (fat) - 500 g,
Eggs - 2-3 pieces,
sour cream - 200 g,
Powdered sugar - 70-100 g,
butter - 100 g, candied fruit, almonds, raisins

Preparation


Rub Cottage cheese through a sieve or twice through a meat grinder.
Put on a little thick-fire pan and melt the butter in it. When the butter is soft, add cottage cheese and stir until the mixture becomes more liquid. Then add sour cream and mix well carefully. At the very least add the eggs one at a time and stir until smooth mass.

Cook on low curds heat, stirring constantly to avoid burnt. Once the mass begins to boil, remove the pan from the heat and put on ice or in cold water, and stir to cool.
Add powdered sugar and vanilla sugar.

Prepared mass is put into the pasochnitsa (it's a kind of a bowl whith s special shape, that will make the shape of your future cake) which is moisten with water and laid with cotton towel. Fold the edges of cloth, put the oppression on it, and put into a cool place not less than for 12 hours.

When ready, Easter cake is carefully extracted from pasochnitsa, bend the edge of the napkin and put it on a dish. Decorate Easter with candied fruits, raisins and marmalade.

Traditional decorations are letter ХВ, first letters from the phrase Христос Воскресе which means 'Christ is risen'; and three-bar cross


There are many other variants of its taste, like Easter with condensed milk, Easter with almonds and raisins, Easter with pistachios, Easter with cocoa, Easter with pumpkin,  Easter in sweet custard etc