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We realize we may seem a little holiday-fixated around here. But one Easter has yet to come: Orthodox Easter, which falls on this coming Sunday, April 19. The use of two calendars often results in different timing in Western Easter's and Orthodox Easter's arrivals, which makes the day truly a movable feast.

Why is this worth a certain amount of hoopla? Well, look at the hunger pang-inducing bread shown above. One of the centerpieces of the Greek Orthodox Easter table, tsoureki paschalino (tsoo-REH-kee pahs-khah-lee-NO), or Greek Easter bread, is typically baked on Holy Thursday and traditionally shaped in a braid around an Easter egg. (The deep red dye symbolizes the crucifixion.) Tsoureki, a light yeast bread sometimes sweetened with a light touch of orange or almonds, has an airy, eggy texture similar to challah. A similar bread known as pinza is a mainstay on Italian Easter tables.

Within the Greek Orthodox church, Easter is considered by many to be the holiest day of the year. For many celebrants the period of Lent is one of self-discipline and self-purification during which one might refrain from treats or certain animal products. Additionally, on some days (traditionally Wednesdays and Fridays during the first weeks of Lent and every day during Holy Week) both wine and olive oil are also forbidden. The first post-Lenten meal is served after midnight Mass on Holy Saturday, where the traditional meal consists of mayeritsa (a soup made from the internal organs of the Easter lamb) and the deep maroon-dyed eggs that are part of the tsoureki.

Tsoureki is available in Greek bakeries; try this one, which ships its tsoureki.

Continue reading Greek Easter Bread

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Continue reading Using Up Leftover Easter Candy - Tip of the Day

Continue reading "Easter" Candy - 5 Easter Candies in 5 Days

Just as April showers bring May flowers, so do the hard-boiled eggs that arrive via Passover seder or an Easter egg hunt bring us, well, a lot of hard-boiled eggs. What to do with them all?

Many of those who celebrate Easter open a lunch box the first Monday thereafter to be confronted with a big scoop of egg salad. And while that's always an option -- as is the Cobb Salad that centers many an April luncheon -- there are recipes out there beyond the standards. So hide your eggs and eat them too.

First, though, safety is critical. According to the USDA, Easter eggs are safe to eat after the hunt provided you follow a few basic guidelines: Use food-safe coloring to dye the eggs and refrigerate them within two hours of boiling them. Boiling an egg removes a protective coating that occurs naturally on the shell, which leaves the shell vulnerable to bacteria. After the hunt, discard any eggs whose shells have cracked or that nestled in a bacteria-friendly environment such as dirt, hay or anywhere accessible to pets. Don't keep hard-boiled eggs away from the fridge for longer than two hours and use them within seven days of boiling them.

Beyond the jump is a delicious recipe for using those safely-handled eggs. (Hint: It's a salad, but it's not egg salad).

Continue reading Hard-Boiled Eggs - Safety and Salads

Continue reading Peanut Butter Chocolate Eggs - 5 Easter Candies in 5 Days

Continue reading Lemon Truffles - 5 Easter Candies in 5 Days

Continue reading Homemade Peeps! - 5 Easter Candies in 5 Days

Candies can seem like a foreign substance to home cooks -- delicious, sugary concoctions that might have been whipped up by a magician. Hard, soft, chewy, tart, sweet, opaque or translucent, the incredible variety of shapes, sizes, flavors and textures can seem both unreal and a little intimidating, especially with Easter candy. Chocolate eggs that mimic real ones? That's gotta be magic.

The thing is -- while it seems other-worldly, candy making is perfectly within anyone's grasp. You can make almost any candy you conceive of with just a little time, patience, perseverance and creativity -- and Easter is the perfect time to start! That being said, a lot of candy recipes make it all seem deceptively easy, as if candy making is as simple as making a sandwich or whipping up a pie. Some really are that easy, but some are more on the scale of delicate art.

To start you on the path towards becoming a candy-making dynamo, I'm going to spend the week sharing Easter recipes with you. All have been filtered through me -- a woman who hasn't made candy since childhood.

After an uphill battle, I've filtered out the hassles and now have five candies that can make Easter all the sweeter. First up: Molding chocolate into tasty little candies.

Continue reading Tempering & Molding Chocolate - 5 Easter Candies in 5 Days

Easter is almost upon us -- the wonderful holiday for excellent sweets and a proliferation of dyed, hard-boiled eggs. But rather than direct you to chemicals and pricey little packages to color your eggs this year, check out the video above, courtesy of Curbly.

They've taken a natural approach to egg coloring and offer some excellent techniques for getting both simple and fancy looking eggs with a mixture of all-natural ingredients -- many of which you can find in your kitchen. They might not be the dynamic, pastel colors that you can get from a box, but I love the great effects they get with simple additions like vegetable oil, wax and PVC tape. The video outlines just how they do it, and you can check out a text version here.

If you have any other all-natural color suggestions, please leave them in the comments below. Happy coloring!

A Foodie's Notes on the Vernal Equinox:

We very rarely had snow where I grew up, but as I stood at my grandmother's apron strings, I was taught to respect the turning of the seasons.

Winter was cold enough for the warming comfort food most of us still associate with it -- steaming bowls of soup, pot roast in rich gravy, hot coffee and cake to go with it.

Summer meant barbecue, soft drinks ("pop" to grandma, and we never got it except at cookouts) and pies bubbling with the best of the summer fruit while less perfect specimens were packed into canning jars by an assembly line of women working in the basement of the church.

Autumn was pumpkin, apples and turkey as we got ready for Halloween and Thanksgiving. And spring ... well, spring was getting ready for Easter.

On the weekend of the Equinox, my grandmother changed all of the household linens -- sheets to tea towels -- from winter's cream and evergreen to her favorite shades of sky blue and butter yellow.

That Monday, she set up the glass pots with thermometers that clipped onto the sides, steel baking sheets that unrolled like April thunder and vials of curiously intense flavor extracts that heralded Easter candy-making. Always planning, (Depression-era housekeepers needed no time management coaching), she made candy in the mornings before turning her attention to lunch and the afternoon errands.

Keep reading about why a chiffon cake is an important statement of spring awakening after the jump.

Continue reading Contemplating the Vernal Equinox With Orange Chiffon Cake

Escazu is a town in Costa Rica and a chocolatier in Raleigh, North Carolina. According to the Escazu website, chocolatier Hallot Parson formed Escazu Artisan Chocolates after travels through Venezuela and Costa Rica, including visits to the cocoa farms. Thus was born -- perhaps more accurately bloomed -- the vision of artisinal chocolate executed with respect to chocolate's Latin American heritage.

Continue reading Escazu Artisan Chocolates

Therefore, today's moral quandry: you love Absinthe (though you are somewhat disappointed that it is now legal) but you don't like mint. Can you, who have heretofore avoided everything minty except Girl Scout cookies and toothpaste, now embrace a breath mint that combines oil of anise with a pungent hit of wintergreen? If they're these absinthe mints, yes, you can.

Continue reading Absinthe Mints

Continue reading Making a Virginia Ham

Continue reading Grilled Lamb and Asparagus Pitas with Tzatziki