4th Saturday of Great Lent...

Here we are, more than half way through Great Lent already! It's true that Great Lent really goes by faster with each year.

Today, my husband was away all day visiting parishioners, and amidst the craziness with the kids, I tried to do a little reflection in my head of how Great Lent is going for me this year. One of the things that immediately came into my head was that I feel like I have spent every waking hour of this lent on my feet in the kitchen. There's nothing wrong with that, but I feel like cooking and washing pans/loading the dishwasher, and tidying up the kitchen is what I am doing most of my day, every day(this happens outside of Lent, too, but for some reason lately it feels like more time). It's a big frustration to me when I think that I could be spending my time reading, cleaning other parts of the house (like following along with my cleaning plan) and trying to grow in some way before Pascha. So I made a little plan to help myself for the rest of this Great Lent. I whipped out the paper plates, and decided that I am going to use only paper plates from now on until Pascha (but maybe Sundays will be an exception). I started out with this new system for lunch today, and my clean-up was so much easier! I was wiping down the counter within minutes, instead of spending almost 40 minutes cleaning up after a meal (which includes checking that the kids aren't tearing down the house every few minutes, running to break up fights, etc). I'm really hoping that the time I save on cleaning up will add on to my reading and quiet reflection time until Pascha.

In other news, this was a busy week! Yesterday was the first day of spring at last! My family in NY was getting snowed in, but we had a springy temperature of 50 yesterday and today. It has been so nice to wear lighter jackets outside for the last 2 weeks! In accordance with the first day of spring, and tomorrow's feast of the 40 Martyrs of Sebaste, I made zhavaronki (lark buns) yesterday. I look forward to this every year so much! (next to my pan of birdies is split pea soup). Russian tradition has it that as a welcome to spring (which always falls right around the feast of the 40 Martyrs), we make little buns in the shape of lark birds.

Today, I embarked on a new adventure: making piroshki for the first time in my life!!! I am almost embarrassed to admit that I have never made them before, but I have an excuse: my grandmother made hundreds of piroshki at once when we were growing up, and she'd freeze them so we always had them at our fingertips when they were wanted or needed. I did help her make them, though, if that counts! Once I got married and moved away, I was busy with school and Babushka always supplied me with frozen piroshki, so again, I never even thought about making my own. Times have changed a bit now and I am a little more independent in the kitchen than I was back when we first got married. I decided today that it was going to be the big day that I first made piroshki. I had a great time with the recipe (which one of my best friends gave me), and the kids did, too! It was a perfect thing for them to help with, because they loved cutting the circles out of the dough!

As you can see, my filling of choice for this first try was mushrooms and onions. YUM!