Eating on Easter

The Holy Week is here and the groceries are full with chocolate Easter Eggs, lamb, pasch (pasha, an Easter desert made out of quark and found in the Easter table of a Greek Catholic family) and of course the traditional Finnish Easter dessert mämmi, which is made out of water, rye flour and malt and flavoured with dark sugar syrup and sour orange (pomeranssi, Citrus aurantium) peel. The making of this rye dessert is quite difficult and demands lot of time. So I prefer buying it ready made.

But let’s start with the main course. It is traditional to eat lamb and home made cheese, egg-milk and blood sausage on Easter. Nowadays the lamb can be found in many tables on Easter. As a dessert we eat mämmi or pasha. 

Mämmi is often served also to the foreigners happening to be in Finland at the time of Easter. I admit it may look awful, but served with the right accompaniment it tastes quite good. And not even all Finns like it. Never try to eat it warm, without cream and sugar. Mämmi is one of my favourite Finnish desserts, but I never eat it warm or as such. Mämmi has to be cooled to fridge temperature (around + 3 - 4 C) and covered with sugar and almost drowned with cream. If ever in Finland that’s a dessert one has to experience. A foreign friend of mine tasted mämmi after it had travelled on room temperature almost a day to the tropic and of course served as such. I well understand, why my friend is now quite reluctant to try mämmi again. ;) The Finns have been eating mämmi since medieval times in Western parts of Finland.

Then we of course have the Easter eggs. They can be real, boiled eggs, only egg shells, chocolate eggs or even eggs made out of gold and jewelry. The most beautiful, non eatable Easter eggs have most probably been made by P.C. Fabergé and his goldsmiths in St. Petersburg f. ex. to the Russian Tsar and his family. Quite many of the goldsmiths working in the Fabergé’s factory in St. Petersburg were actually Finns. :)

What about then the eggs, that we can eat? The variation of chocolate Easter eggs is huge. Some of them contain a little toy or other surprise in them, some are hollow and made out of chocolate and then there is the Mignon Egg.I personally prefer Fazer’s Mignon egg. It has been manufactured for 117 years. Karl Fazer brought the idea of the egg from one of his business trips to Germany. It has been made since 1896 and it is still one of the most selling Easter Eggs in Finland. Also the Russian Tsar and his family enjoyed this eatable egg. According to Fazer, this year they are manufacturing 1,5 million Mignons (and there is 5,4 million inhabitants in Finland). The Mignon is solely hand made. To a genuine, emptied egg shell a mass of mandel-nut-nougat is poured and the tiny hole in the egg shell is sealed with sugar mass. One Mignon weighs 52 g. 

From the following link you can find a video of the making of Mignon.

http://www.fazer.fi/Tuotteet/Suklaa/Mignon-muna-viehattaa-paasiaisesta-toiseen/Mignon-muna-kasityona-alusta-loppuun/

Before eating the Mignon one can also paint it. The painting of real, boiled eggs or f. ex. Mignons is a nice tradition we also have. The children are taught quite young to paint the Easter eggs. What is needed is boiled egg, emptied whole egg shell or a Mignon. The surface is then painted with watercolors. The style is free. The egg can be decorated with only one color or multiple colors. It can have pictures, texts or patterns. The decoration is fun doing for all, independent of age.

And on 1st Easter Day, next Sunday, if the weather is not cloudy, I shall wake up at just after 5 am and go to see the Easter Sun dancing. ;)

Happy Easter!

Hyvää Pääsiäistä!

Palm Sunday (Palmusunnuntai)

It has been a while since my last post. The Lent (paasto) is quite uneventful time. Of course not many people these days anymore fast. And actually this can be the best time of the year in Finland. We still have lots of snow (80 cm this year) also in the Southern parts, the days may be sunny with few minus degrees and the nights awesome with crystal clear sky full of stars and temperature near -20 C or even below that. A good time to go outdoors: ski, skate, take long walks in the bright sunlight. Additionally the mornings and evenings are getting brighter and longer. But back to the post’s topic.

The Easter time is closing up and the Lent is soon over. Next Sunday we are celebrating Palm Sunday (Palmusunnuntai). And there is a reason why I post this a week in advance. At least week before Palm Sunday we have some things to do, if we want to celebrate the Palm Sunday according to Finnish traditions.

First we dress up, take garden shears and go for a walk in the woods. There we seek some young birches (koivu) and cut branches from them, naturally we have asked a permission for that from the owner of the forest. We also look for willows (paju). The willows already have catkins (pajunkissa). We cut few branches with catkins and head home. At home we put the birch branches into water and after a week we shall have very small leaves and can decorate the branches. The willow branches can be left on the table without any water. There is one more thing to do. We take some soil and plant some grass seeds on it, cover them with clear plastic, place in light and keep humid. On Palm Sunday there shall be nice green grass (rairuoho) to decorate.

On Palm Sunday we decorate our house with bright yellow (to mark the sun, the spring and joy) and green (marking new growth, spring and hope). We may also use some violet (to remind us about the sufferings of Jesus and repentance we should feel). The grass gets small, usually yellow chickens and white bunnies. On the branches of the birch we put  some birds, feathers and small witches. Yes, witches. They have bright colored clothes, a broom, a cat and also a coffee pot. To the same vase we add tulips and daffodils in bright yellow and red.

On Palm Sunday we have even a tradition for the children. Its roots are in the Eastern Finland, and also somewhat in the Western Finland. Young children are dressed up as Easter witches. The children make so called wicker (vitsa), with which they virpoa (wave the wicker) a person and read a poem at the same time. The poem wishes good luck, good health for the coming year. The wicker is given to the person and the child gets a reward, usually a chocolate Easter egg. The wicker is made out of willow branch with catkins and decorated with colorful silk paper rosettes. The children tour around in the neighborhood from door to door. It resembles the Halloween tradition of children in USA.

Originally the wickers were blessed in a service in Orthodox churches on Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday. Then on Palm Sunday the children would wave the wickers to their family or relatives to remember the palm leaves salute done to Jesus and to bless their close-ones in this way. The “pay” (palkka) the children got, could be collected only on Easter after the Lent was over. The children were not dressed up. 

In Western Finland the people believed in witches (pääsiäisnoita or trulli), who would fly in the night between Good Friday (Pitkäperjantai) and the following Saturday and try to curse the house and steal the livestock, because the protection of God was at the lowest due to the death of Jesus on Good Friday. People lid up bonfires (kokko) to keep the witches and bad spirits away. At some parishes lonely women living outside the society would dress up as witches and scare the residents of the parish.

So actually two totally opposite traditions, the good blessing done by the Orthodoxes with wickers in the Eastern parts of Finland and the cursing done by witches in the Western parts of Finland, have nowadays been combined into the same tradition done by children. Many people don’t remember any more the original traditions. Especially the Orthodox Church has tried to tell about their original tradition and how it should be celebrated.

Right or wrong? Mixing old traditions? Maybe, but the children have fun. Most of them are dressed up so cutely and well. And I get beautiful willow wickers, with which I can decorate my house. And I get to see the joy on the children’s faces when they get to choose from the chocolate eggs I have reserved for them.

Virvon, varvon.

Tuoreeks, terveeks.

Tulevaks vuodeks.

Lahja sulle, palkka mulle.

Have a peaceful and sunny Easter time!