Happy Easter!

One thing John and I both love is traditions, so we're trying to get our family's traditions started now that Helena is two.  In thinking today, I realized that Easter is a holiday that allows for many traditions that do not take a lot of prior preparation and that are a lot of fun.  

Tradition #1: Really, what could be more traditional than dyeing Easter eggs?  Baked eggs, a little vinegar, a little food coloring - and we're set!

Tradition #2: Resurrection Rolls. Marshmallows dipped in melted butter then rolled in cinnamon sugar and then wrapped with crescent rolls.  Bake.  They tell the story of Jesus (the marshmallow) being put in the tomb (the crescent roll) and then after they're baked, the tomb is empty!  Helena caught on to this analogy immediately.  Yet with her attention to detail, every time we said the tomb was empty she added "except [for] angels with big wings"!

 

Tradition #3: Easter egg hunts.  Ultra un-original, I know, but I grew up searching for eggs countless times during the week leading up to Easter (which has been a very new idea to many friends I've shared it with). Sometimes my mom would put a snack in them but most of the times the eggs were just empty - but we didn't care at all because it was so much fun!  Helena and I have hidden eggs countless times in the last few days and she always loves it.  She likes to hide them as well - often the exact same colors in the exact same spots each time, like all four pink ones next to the surge protector - and then of course to help find them. Today we hid them in a park and Helena found them - with peanut M&Ms inside.  Great fun.  Definitely need to do that with friends next year.

Tradition #4: Rice Krispie Birds' Nests - Rice Krispie treats in the shape of a nest with M&Ms for eggs and a Peep on top.  Then we take them around to neighbors or friends and say "Happy Easter!"

Tradition #5: Easter Family Photo - really just wanted an excuse to put this photo up :)

Happy Easter to you all!  Celebrate that the tomb was empty so many years ago...

except for those angels with big wings.

And if any of you have traditions you wouldn't mind sharing, I'd love to hear what they are!

For Helena's Cousins

Today we tried out one of the many kid activities on Pinterest, and this one was a real winner.

Here's what you need:
-a pan with lots of baking soda in it
-vinegar dyed with food coloring
-a dropper or pipette

Watch this for the rest of the instructions:

Enjoy the chemical reaction!

It is...

Not an avocado scooper, although I like the idea, Greg.

Not a prosthetic arm for a squirrel, BBS - I really hope the world has not come to making those.  Sorry squirrels.

But it is a butter curler!

My dad has one and uses it to make butter curls for major holidays.  This past Christmas, I really wished I had one, to continue to tradition and to make it all a little more festive.  

So when the kitchen store was going out of business, I asked if they had one.  They had that exactly - ONE - and the lady told me I could probably go to 20 kitchen stores and not find one at any of the stores.  I believe it, as the only place I've ever seen one is in my parents' kitchen!

from Wikipedia

Now when you compare my first attempt to the photo above, I obviously have a bit of learning to do.  I need to learn exactly how long to leave the butter in the freezer before curling, and how much pressure and speed to use to get the curls to roll beautifully.  Plus, I totally forgot about dipping the curler in hot water!  But, now we can have our butter curls for Easter.

A New Tool

I recently bought myself a present at a going-out-of-business store. 

 

Does anyone know what it is?

Maple Syrup for My Birthday

This past Saturday was my birthday, so we decided to live it up.  We went out to Bruce's Mill, a conservation area that has a large Maple Syrup Festival this time of year.  It was the most beautiful day of the year so far, so not only did we have lots of fun, it was most enjoyable to be outside.

A little bit of info about maple syrup for you: the sap comes out of the tree completely clear and has only a 5% sugar content.  It used to be collected in buckets, as seen below, but now the modern more efficient method is to have tubes connecting all the trees to a main line, which carries the sap directly to the sugar shack.

It takes 24 hours of boiling for the sap to reach a 66% sugar content, which is what you want for syrup.  The below photo shows how they used to do it; using three different pots was necessary because you wouldn't want to boil sap with a 5% sugar content in the same pot that you'd just boiled syrup in.  It would burn!  Notice the third pot - it's concave.  This was a recent development in the early 1900s which helped the syrup to boil and froth in to the pot, rather than bubbling out. 

 John & I found all of this really interesting.  There's so much about our food that we just don't know!

Besides being educated on maple syrup, we petted animals, Helena had a pony ride, and we all went for a wagon ride.  Oh, and there were rocks to find, snow to tromp in, sticks and leaves to dig in, and tons of mud that we tried to avoid.

Other especially fun things we did with our rental car were made a stop at Michael's (nearly impossible to get to on public transportation), bought a huge amount of groceries (which means I won't have to push/pull all of them home), and took a gander at this Slovak Byzantine Rite Roman Catholic former cathedral.

Its construction was started in 1984, when its cornerstone was blessed by the Pope, but it is still not completed.  And it is no longer a cathedral, because the church and the church foundation that owns the property could not hold a stable relationship. 

 The day ended at Banjara Indian Cuisine with one of the most delicious Indian meals we've had and then key lime pie at home.  An absolutely fabulous day - thank you John for my great birthday!

Valentines for Friends

Now I know February is over and I know that this treat doesn't really require a recipe.  BUT the responses and questions Helena & I have gotten from our valentines make a blog post necessary.

If you haven't had pretzels dipped in almond bark, then you should make some.  They're delicious.  My sister & I usually make them at Christmas time, and I've always figured everyone has had them.  But that is obviously not the case, since 6 out 8 friends that we gave them to, later asked me how to make them.  That's a lot of people who have not had them, thus this blog post.

They're super simple to make, but to find the ingredients turned out to be a bit tougher than I thought.  The almond bark we always buy for Christmas (see below) seems to be impossible to buy up here.

I went to 4 grocery stores and Bulk Barn, and none of them had it.  At Bulk Barn they did have almond bark with almonds in it, however.  We ended up making them with 4 different melted foods - almond bark with the almonds taken out of it, white chocolate, white candy melts, and strawberry bark.  The white candy melts worked best.

All you do is melt the dipping substance, dip the pretzels in (as much or as little as you want), lay them out to cool on wax paper, and then decorate.  It was a great activity for Helena and me to do together, as she loved adding sprinkles.  After they cooled, she then sorted them by decoration into different containers - something she had lots of fun with, especially as many ended up in her mouth!

We then made up Ziploc bags which contained half plain pretzels and half decorated pretzels.  While you always want to eat one of the treat pretzels, having a good mixture of salty and sweet kept them from being too much, although maybe that's a bad thing as these are quite addictive!