Celebrating Easter with Food

Well, here I am again, 16 lbs lighter than I was in mid-February. At least, I had lost 16 pounds by Holy Saturday. (One day the scales claimed I had lost a whopping 20 lbs, but it [they?] changed its [their?] mind the very next day.) The feasting began on Easter Sunday and it hasn't quite  stopped yet. I am avoiding Mr Scales until tomorrow morning when I go back to low-carb, no added sugar life.

As far as I am concerned, the Low Blood Sugar Diet--strictly followed according to the recipe book--works very well. What I liked best was that no gym membership or boring exercise regimen was necessary. The only overall change to my physical activity was carrying out Spring Cleaning---and, come to think of it, a lot of rubbish and recycling, since my husband is not yet physically fit enough to take them out himself.

The funny thing about living on 800 calories a day is that I thought about food quite often, watched even more cooking shows than usual and read several books about cuisine. I feel a bit ashamed of that; I am relatively sure that when monks and nuns fast, they don't spend that much time dreaming about food.

Be that as it may, I very much enjoyed planning, preparing and--at last--eating special Easter dishes. We had up to four overnight guests in the house, so all this food was as necessary as it was enjoyable. Two of the guests were Polish, which gave me an excuse to make exotic stuff, not just solidly British fare.

The Home Cooking and Baking Menu

Good Friday: Hot Cross Buns

(It is traditional in the UK to bake hot cross buns on Good Friday.)

Easter Sunday Breakfast: Żurek (Polish sour soup with white kielbasa); coloured hard-boiled eggs; grilled white kielbasa with ćwikła (beetroot-horseradish sauce); potato pancakes; śledź w oleju (herring in oil, which I forgot to serve); chałka (braided egg bread); mazurek królewski (shortbread pastry with jams); baranek (cake shaped like a lamb--the centrepiece, not to be eaten yet); makowiec (poppy seed cake); coffee.

Easter Sunday Dinner (4:30 PM): prawn salad on baby gem lettuce; roast leg of lamb with butterbean-mint sauce, roast potatoes, gravy and peas; Easter Trifle; leftover makowiec, leftover mazurek; white wine; red wine; cava; pudding wine; Laura Secord chocolate Easter Egg; coffee.

Easter Monday Breakfast or Brunch : Random selection of bread, cheese, black pudding, bacon, fried banana, as half the household gets ready for a wedding, and the other half takes its time while waiting to go to just the wedding dinner/dance.

Easter Tuesday Brunch: Leftover żurek; black pudding; fried eggs; morning rolls with jam and/or butter; the baranek (eaten at last); coffee; tea.

Both my Polish Pretend Children and my Franco-Polish Pretend Son-in-Law were here, so Easter meals have been all very entertaining, with Polish Pretend Daughter insulting Polish Pretend Son at intervals by telling him that he is actually German.

Objects of Happiness 6: Fanlight

When is a light not a light? When it's a window pane. Window panes--or "lights" arranged into a semi-circular pattern are called a "fanlight." (Fanlights are alternatively called "sunburst lights" and are known more often as "transom lights" in the USA.) They are typical of Georgian architecture, first appearing around 1714.

I adore fanlights, and I am so happy I live near Edinburgh's New Town, where they abound. The Historical House was built before 1714, so it doesn't have any. (I cannot complain, however, as we have cunning bullseye windows instead.)

The fanlight first impressed itself on my consciousness when I was three or four and living in Cambridge, UK. If I remember this correctly, my then-small family had been at an adult party in a private house. On our way out, I looked up and was entranced by the pretty window over the door.

Soon after, but now living in Canada, I spent a lot of time playing with wooden blocks. My favourite wooden blocks were a triangle with a semi-circle cut out of it and the semi-circle itself. Otherwise, it was a rather simple set of blocks: rectangles, squares, triangles, two rectangular pillars. Curious that these blocks seemed almost programmed to give a child a love for Georgian architecture. I also had plastic blocks that could be assembled into a castle with round towers, but it was too complicated for passionate love, and once pieces were lost, it could never be complete.

I am now married to a classical-architecture fiend, and as we tour churches, we debate the merits of Gothic versus Baroque. Interestingly Georgian simply doesn't enter into it, for even when B.A. was a Scots Episcopalian, he was a Scots Episcopalian of a very High Church cast. There are any number of Protestant preaching boxes still scattered across Scotland, and although (or because) Georgian, I can't imagine praying in them. A properly regulated home-life may be Georgian, but in that period True Religion--or its freedom to build churches--had pretty much fled to the Continent.

The one exception is James Smith's wonderfully clever Kirk of the Canongate in Edinburgh. James Smith was a Catholic and he built the church when there was still hope that James VII might restore Catholicism in Scotland. Thus, there was a chance the church might be used for Catholic worship, an Smith designed it--says B.A.--with that in mind. Rip out this and add that, and Bob's your uncle's popish priest.

This never happened. Instead the interiors were later thoroughly Protestantized--although later restored--and Calvinism still flourishes within its walls. Still, I am fond of the crazy Dutch-gabled thing and enjoy looking at its could-have-been-rose window from the train into town.

Brexit Impulse Buy

Mermaids in Warsaw go nude.

I was planning to write "This morning I woke up, as usual, in the United States of Europe", so you can imagine my shock that Brexit won the referendum. I couldn't believe it. I knew it would be a squeaker, but I thought it would be a squeaker in which the UK just gave Johnny Foreigner a good scare and then all returned to the status quo. But no.

This almost inevitably means another Independence Referendum in Scotland--eye-roll--and the "I feel Scottish AND British" set might not be able to pull off another miracle on behalf of the United Kingdom. For one thing, a goodly percentage of it  is elderly (my husband's generation and his mother's generation not having had that many children), and young Britons are already all but broadcasting "Death to the Aged!" on Facebook. They point out that the elderly have only 20 years max to live with their Brexit vote; they do not consider that elderly have been paying taxes for 40 + years.

Sadly, many of the English-and-Welsh think they can go it alone without Scotland, and the annoying thing is that they probably can because we are only 5 million people and if there's anything last winter taught us, it is that North Sea oil wealth means zilch when the Saudis feel like punishing someone.

The Scottish Nationalist Party (which is not entirely Scottish and not nationalist like other people are nationalist) does not want to go it alone but be part of the European Union, which is why last night's result means another Referendum. Of course, if the European Union collapses, that's us alone--"an alcoholic madman clinging to a rock in the middle of the North Sea" as one of our parishioners once defined a crofter. And instead of encouraging Scots to have more children--for the SNP isn't into that kind of nationalism--Holyrood will import a new population of tax-payers who won't have the slightest idea who Robbie Burns is or give a damn either.

In related news, today I was in an Edinburgh hipster café owned by a Latin American trying to write a letter in Polish while behind me a black Londoner preached Islam to some white guy and assembled Americans, including a waiter, discussed how racist the Brexit-voting English are and how rich they (the English) were after World War 2.  (A Paddington Bear-style hard stare appeared from behind the English-Polish dictionary at that one.)

Meanwhile, the virtual screaming and yelling over Facebook is unbelievable. People with PhDs are actually posting charts to show how the elderly have shafted the young by voting according to their consciences: it's the most frighteningly ageist thing I have ever seen. I have seen only two posts of joy from Continental Europeans, both of them political science PhDs  from ex-communist countries who hate socialism with a hot white flame. The other Europeans are full of grief, horror and fear, and I do feel badly that they are frightened although I do not believe for a moment anyone will tell a European working or studying in Edinburgh that she or he has to go.

Ryan Air, which was firmly Remain in its EU Irish way, was so sure that the UK would remain that it sent me an email this morning saying "Celebrate remaining in Europe." Amused I clicked on it, and found the following:

"1 million seats from £9

"Celebrate Europe

As the UK's largest airline, we hope the UK will vote to Remain in the EU. To celebrate what we pray will be a big Remain majority, we're launching a 1 million seat sale with fares to Europe starting from just £9.99 – less than the UK's £13 travel tax – for travel in October and November, just after midnight tonight until midnight (GMT) Friday.

Just like the EU Referendum, these fares are once in a lifetime and will be snapped up quickly, so customers should log onto www.ryanair.com before they sell out. And if the Leave side do win, then these will be the last low fares the UK will enjoy for a very long time.

So in a massive attack of mingled panic and greed, I bought a round-trip ticket to Warsaw for £20. The catch is, of course, the two weeks between the departure and the return and, er, the fact that B.A. had stepped out to get the post so I couldn't get him to stop me consult him. In my defense, I tried calling his phone. 

Oh dear. What have I done? The tickets are non-refundable, so this probably means buying an extra, earlier ticket home. Dear, dear, dear.

No naked mermaids allowed in Krakow.

Update: Okay, so I have bought a ticket back to Edinburgh from Krakow a week earlier than my £10 flight from Warsaw-Modlin. At £47, it won't break the bank either. The moral of the story is never to impulse buy a ticket abroad without talking to someone about it first.