Priecīgas Lieldienas (Latvian for Happy Easter) to you too.
Here are some Latvian traditions for Easter that I grew up with:
Palm Sunday (Pussy Willow Sunday in Latvia) – waking up being swatted with pussy willows while family members recite “Apaļš ka pÅ«pols†– “Round like a pussy willowâ€
Easter eggs dyed with onion sins. Many years ago my family would in addition to the usual egg coloring, would wrap eggs in onion skins and boil them. Here is a link to show you how:
Then before we ate the eggs we’d have an egg knocking contest. We would knock each others eggs as shown in the above video. I just read an article on the “Diena Latvia†site which gives the secrets to producing that hardest egg shell so as to be assured of victory.
The Saturday before Easter was spent baking traditional Latvian festive foods – pÄ«rÄgi, raisin bread, and cottage cheese raisin bread. I’ve tried to find the recipes on line closest to what my family does:
We’ve found it best when it comes to the filling to use cooking onions, and a bacon/Canadian bacon mix where the meat is not cured and were it is sweetened as little as possible with things like brown sugar. This works best. I once experimented with bacon and venison which worked out fine for my tastes. Just make sure that the venison is boiled first before being diced as 15 minutes in the oven may be insufficient to cook the venison.
This link shows how to bake a raisin bread pretzel. For raisin bread, the big pretzel is usually used in place of a birthday cake. For holidays like Easter or Christmas, however, we bake the raisin bread using the same recipe into loafs:
It’s kind of hard for me to locate the Latvian cottage cheese raisin bread recipe which comes close to what we do at home. For us it is important to find unsalted cottage cheese. You may need to find an ethnic food store or an organic foods store. You may try the recipe here:
Our Ukrainian piano teacher gave us a pair of Ukrainian Easter Eggs done in the correct Ukrainian way. We kept them for many years and set them up each year. They were quite fragile and I remember one breaking after several years. Not good. 🙁 Now to get Easter eggs like that, I could spend days working on one using wax, or . . . there are several shortcuts. 1) I found a kit that had Ukrainian Easter egg shrink wrap that gets the job done in seconds. 2) I ordered wooden eggs done in the Ukrainian style from Monastery Icons. Can keep them around year after year no worries about them breaking. 🙂
ïŠ
The existence of the Easter Bunny. Long, long ago, my sister decided to spy on the Easter Bunny to see if he was for real. She reported back to me that the Easter Bunny looked a lot like mom. :-)ïŠ
Milan:
Have a blessed Pascha today.
Spasibo ogromnoe! Hristos voskrese – voistinu voskrese!
Palm Sunday over here, but wishing a Happy Easter to all who celebrate today.
Thanks for the interesing post, Dagmara!
You’re welcome, Milan.
What country are you in? Have a blessed Holy Week!
Thanks a lot! I’m in Serbia. Kind regards.
Dan:
Priecīgas Lieldienas (Latvian for Happy Easter) to you too.
Here are some Latvian traditions for Easter that I grew up with:
Palm Sunday (Pussy Willow Sunday in Latvia) – waking up being swatted with pussy willows while family members recite “Apaļš ka pÅ«pols†– “Round like a pussy willowâ€
Easter eggs dyed with onion sins. Many years ago my family would in addition to the usual egg coloring, would wrap eggs in onion skins and boil them. Here is a link to show you how:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BoB5XMayNo
Then before we ate the eggs we’d have an egg knocking contest. We would knock each others eggs as shown in the above video. I just read an article on the “Diena Latvia†site which gives the secrets to producing that hardest egg shell so as to be assured of victory.
The Saturday before Easter was spent baking traditional Latvian festive foods – pÄ«rÄgi, raisin bread, and cottage cheese raisin bread. I’ve tried to find the recipes on line closest to what my family does:
For pÄ«rÄgi try this one:
http://www.latvianstuff.com/Piragi.html
We’ve found it best when it comes to the filling to use cooking onions, and a bacon/Canadian bacon mix where the meat is not cured and were it is sweetened as little as possible with things like brown sugar. This works best. I once experimented with bacon and venison which worked out fine for my tastes. Just make sure that the venison is boiled first before being diced as 15 minutes in the oven may be insufficient to cook the venison.
This link shows how to bake a raisin bread pretzel. For raisin bread, the big pretzel is usually used in place of a birthday cake. For holidays like Easter or Christmas, however, we bake the raisin bread using the same recipe into loafs:
http://www.entangledinromance.com/2012/12/19/recipes-and-memories-klingeres-from-inara-scott/
It’s kind of hard for me to locate the Latvian cottage cheese raisin bread recipe which comes close to what we do at home. For us it is important to find unsalted cottage cheese. You may need to find an ethnic food store or an organic foods store. You may try the recipe here:
http://www.latvianstuff.com/Danishes.html
More Latvian recipes are found here:
http://www2.arnes.si/~ssgikolj/_private/Izdelki0506/KUHARSKE%20KNJIGE/LATVIAN%20FOOD%20SPECIALITIES
Other Latvian Easter traditions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huQMI0hROJo
Other Easter memories:
Our Ukrainian piano teacher gave us a pair of Ukrainian Easter Eggs done in the correct Ukrainian way. We kept them for many years and set them up each year. They were quite fragile and I remember one breaking after several years. Not good. 🙁 Now to get Easter eggs like that, I could spend days working on one using wax, or . . . there are several shortcuts. 1) I found a kit that had Ukrainian Easter egg shrink wrap that gets the job done in seconds. 2) I ordered wooden eggs done in the Ukrainian style from Monastery Icons. Can keep them around year after year no worries about them breaking. 🙂
ïŠ
The existence of the Easter Bunny. Long, long ago, my sister decided to spy on the Easter Bunny to see if he was for real. She reported back to me that the Easter Bunny looked a lot like mom. :-)ïŠ