busy in the kitchen.

I was very productive in the kitchen this weekend. I took the day off on Thursday to make paska (Ukrainian Easter bread). It's become a tradition.

There are three different recipes that I reference, and this year I used Mary Capp Bowan's Paska recipe. I altered it a little - added 2 tsp. vanilla and 1 tsp. each of lemon and orange rind - and didn't follow her method exactly. However, I did mix the yeast with the dry ingredients instead of proofing it in warm water first, to my detriment... it didn't rise! When I checked on it after the first hour, the dough was the same size as when I put it in the bowl. Oh dear. I didn't have enough flour to make another batch - I would have to go to the store to get new yeast and new flour and start all over. Ack!

For some reason, I decided to put the dough back in the mixer and knead it for a few more minutes. It kind of looked like the yeast wasn't dissolved - there were little bumps in the dough but they may have been from the lemon and orange rind. Stir stir stir. Knead knead knead. Then I put the dough back into the oven to see if it would rise... Success! I was so relieved.

I made two braids, one with raisins which I fashioned into a ring (and it took some work to tuck the ends in nicely), and other was a straight braid (no pics, sorry, my parents ate half of it this morning before I could take photos).


Saturday afternoon, I made my "famous" lentil-barley salad, which is an original recipe that T-man and I came up with after we had a similar salad from Vegetable Kingdom. (side note, Veg Kingdom has been closed for years, but I think the proprietress Anita sells frozen entrees to Whole Foods Market.) It contains French lentils, pearl barley, celery, onion (preferably green onion but I used yellow), carrots, corn and dressed with garlic, lemon juice, dill, tarragon, olive oil and salt & pepper. It's my stand-by pot luck dish.

That's not all! I also made truffles. Chocolatey goodness. Half are coated with Green & Black's cocoa powder, half with coconut.


I'm not going to cook a thing for the next week!!!