Good Friday was Earth Day

So this year Earth Day had the misfortune of coinciding with Good Friday. All was not lost, however, since we did a clean up earlier in the week with the kids at the school, kindergarten and the community center as part of a nationwide peace corps volunteer initiative to have a liter free Bulgaria.

Good Friday was spent in my house but upstairs with Stoika, Dori and Stella learning how to make Kozunak, a traditional Bulgarian sweet bread made before Easter and then eaten on Easter. I watched the first batch of dough being made, and while it was rested and did some rising I made the second one by hand from scratch.

8 eggs to 1 kilo of flour

1st batch done

my batch done

Then we dyed eggs, the first of which had to be red for Jesus' blood. Dori took it out of the dye and drew a cross on mine and Stella's foreheads for good health. We had food coloring type dye and also a shimmer kinda paint substance to color 50 hard boiled eggs. On Easter morning you take these eggs and break them against one-another, whoever is holding the egg that doesnt break wins.

faint cross on head

eggs being dyed

dyed eggs

painted eggs

We had eggs in every other color of the rainbow and let them dry while Stoika rolled out the Kozunak dough into loafs and braided some into roses. Most of them were filled with локум, or as we call it in America Turkish Delight, but one lucky one was filled with homemade plum and walnut jam. 

walnut and plum jam

lokym

braided bread

They were then topped with almonds and sugar and set to rise again before baking. Each batch of dough made about 4 breads. So we collectively made 8. 

Bread Loaf shaped ones

While the bread was baking I went out to find Chris and Sam to do some Earth Day cleaning. Sam had been working on Chris's house so there was building waste, in addition to the normal trash on the side of the road that we had to collect. We got about 7 bags in 45min.

insulation scraps

"bright idea"

gnarly old mattress