Easter Brunch

Easter was probably my favorite holiday when growing up. I think I liked it more than even Christmas and the huge meal we eat on Christmas Eve. Even though we're in the US now, we keep up with most traditions regarding the food. We still dye eggs and eat a nice brunch meal on Sunday.

This year's main course included two types of protein: grilled turkey breast and pork skewers. The skewers also had baby mushrooms and roasted red peppers. We had two side dishes as well: a beans/corn salad and a fresh green lettuce salad. My mom's beans and corn salad is one of my favorite things. She uses canned pinto beans and pre-made tomato sauce, but she adds freshly cooked carrots, celery and corn kernels. An interesting (and secret) touch is the addition of ketchup... I could eat this salad as a main meal. I can never have enough!

The lettuce salad is a traditional Bulgarian dish that's part of most of my family's meals over the spring and summer. Here we used green lettuce, but romaine also works great. It's cut up on small strips, and tossed with a little bit of salt, oil and vinegar. It's this simple. You can add sliced cucumber and kalamata olives to make it even better. Sooo light and delicious!

Unlike previous Easter meals, we added a dessert this year. The name of it is officially Tulip cookies, but we heavily customized it :) At the bottom of the plate there's a cookie wafer that tastes just like a fortune cookie. However, we left them out overnight and they lost their firmness and became too soft to hold their shape as a wafer cup. Inside the "cup" we added some orange sherbet. We customized this basic dessert by adding tons of fruit: melon and pineapple slices and a fanned strawberry. To top it all off, there's a drizzle of cherry syrup.

Finally, it was time for the two most-traditional Easter items: kozunak bread and dyed eggs. The kozunak looks like challah bread, and is flaky like challah, but it has quite a different taste. I can't even explain what it tastes like; it's a very distinctive flavor. All I can say is that it's sweet and thus a dessert bread. (Yes, we can eat two desserts on Easter... Or three desserts on other random days... Remember, Cashew? :P)

In Bulgaria we're very particular about dying eggs. The process of dying can be done only on the Thursday or Saturday before Easter, the first egg must be dyes red, and you need to rub your cheeks with this egg later for health. By the way, we don't do any egg hunts with Easter eggs. Instead, we play a game with them right before we eat them. To play the game, each person chooses an egg. Then, one person "fights" another to see whose egg is stronger. The fight consists of bumping the eggs together: first pointy end to pointy end, then the butt of one egg to the butt of the other. If your egg becomes cracked, you eat it. The goal is to choose an egg that "kills" the most opponents' eggs. Of course, it's pure luck. It's quite competitive, though, and some people resort to cheating. You can buy wooden eggs that look just like real, so you can kill everyone else's eggs.

Anyway, I think all the traditions surrounding Easter made it so much fun as I was growing up. There are a lot of non-food related things. Some examples include circling the church as part of the service, passing under a table inside the church, going to midnight service (huge with young kids not allowed to stay up late!), fighting for flowers when the pastor starts throwing them at the church goers during one of the services, walking home after a church service with a lighted candle and trying not to have the flame extinguished... I never learned the religious importance and symbolism of any of these, but they sure were fun to a little kid :)