On the First Day of Great Lent

Here we are, the first day of Great Lent! No joke, it feels like just yesterday I was baking kulichi and now we are on the path to Pascha once more in what feels like no time at all.

I love Great Lent more and more each year.

This year I decided to meal plan for Great Lent in a new way. I took a calendar for each month of Great Lent, beginning with the end of February and into April, and tried to roughly plan out lunch and dinner for each day. Before you think that this sounds totally crazy, I will explain - I have kept things very simple. I decided to make lunch a soup each day. My husband tends to get very bored eating the same soup too often in a row, so I maxed it out at 3 days in a row for one soup. I am freezing whatever leftovers there are so that we can repeat them a little bit later in Great Lent without having to make a new batch of soup.

This week, my husband is not eating oil products, so that simplified our menu a great deal. I made my grandmother's Normandy Vegetable Soup and am sharing the recipe below. To go along with our soup I made an Artisan loaf of bread this morning which is already half gone. If needed I will make a new loaf tomorrow (I'll probably have to do that).

Later this week, I'll be making an oil-free bean soup which is a first time recipe for me. If it is any good, I'll share it later on. Tomorrow I also plan to make lentil chili, a new-to-me recipe as well. Will share if it is worth it or not.

In the meantime, here is the Normandy Vegetable Soup recipe.

Normandy Vegetable Soup

2 lb. bag of frozen Normandy vegetable blend
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 parsnip, peeled and diced

Pour all the vegetables together into a large soup pot. Cover with JUST ENOUGH water to cover. (I almost always pour more water than necessary and end up annoyed with myself later). Boil. Let this boil until all the vegetables are soft. Add in spices as you wish. Usually I add in paprika, garlic powder, and enough salt - can always add more later. Once the vegetables are soft, take a hand/immersion blender and puree the entire soup. It should be pretty thick still. Add in any creamer of your choice - almond, rice, soy milk, or non-dairy coffee creamer. Just enough to make it to the consistency of your desire. Serve with croutons if desired.

Note: You can also use vegetable broth if you'd like for the veggies. I tend to always use water because I make it on the days my husband is not eating oil products. You can make this non-fasting easily as well and use half and half to thicken the soup instead, and use chicken broth of course!

Great Lent Reading

Here we are... Just around the corner from another Great Lent. I feel so blessed every year at this time when I think, how lucky I am that God has allowed me to reach this period yet again. I always think that this could be my last Great Lent, ever since my mom's cousin died at a young age, and that really puts things into perspective and makes me realize how seriously I should take this period of repentance and preparation for the Feast of Feasts.

Tonight we had Blini for dinner and it was absolutely crazy. It was not a beautiful meal that one can often imagine in their heads. It was filled with whining children who were complaining that they didn't like any of the fixings and ask for syrup instead, it was filled with lots of noise as well. And it was filled with one tired mama in the kitchen who kept frying just one more blin and kept waiting to sit down and eat. But moments like these are great reminders of why we need periods like great Lent. It's so refreshing to have a set period every year for reflection and looking deep into one's soul and wondering how we can become better. Going back to my meal tonight, I did manage to lay out a beautiful Russian tablecloth, wear my favorite Russian apron, and play beautiful balalaika music in the background. And those things made the meal sweeter and the stress less stressful. I will look back on it as a dinner where everything did not go smoothly and that that was ok. The kids are peacefully sleeping in bed, tummies full, and tomorrow is a new day.

Tonight I am sharing my Great Lenten reading. I am working slowly through the Optina Elder books. One is better than the next. I love these. I have been working on Elder Ambrose for several weeks now and will continue,  along with these sermons on Great Lent by St. John of Krondstadt. If I finish Elder Ambrose I'll go right into the next book. Somewhere I'd also love to throw in a reread of Wounded by Love because I love that book so much.

The Meeting of the Lord...

Yesterday we celebrated the feast of the Meeting of the Lord. It is such a dear holiday to me... When I was 13, our bishop (Bishop Mitrophan of Boston) passed away on this beautiful holiday. This year marked 15 years since his repose. He was like a grandparent to me and a relative through marriage, and I miss him dearly every day. The most special part though, is that he was very old when he died, and he died as his two daughters read the prayer of St. Simeon over him. I was blessed enough to be there for that very moment and it is something I will never forget in my life. Since his repose, I have gotten married and had 4 children, and as all Orthodox mothers know, a mama brings her baby to church on or after the 40th day for the first time and has special prayers read over them prior to entering the church together. It is such a joy to bring your newborn baby to church for the first time, and it is for this reason that this feast day really touches my heart. To imagine the Theotokos bringing her newborn Christ-child into the temple really makes me get the chills.

Since the feast day was on a fasting day this year, I decided that salmon was in order for lunch. My husband and I enjoyed our lunch SO much! We ate while the kids had their quiet time.

By the way, I find it necessary to note that my favorite way of cooking salmon is to bake it on 400 degrees for 20 minutes... Prior to baking it, lay it on a baking sheet, sprinkle with olive oil and rub it in nicely (I do this with a basting brush). Then, sprinkle on some salt, pepper, garlic powder, and finish off with a generous drizzle of lemon juice (fresh if possible). So simple, so healthy and so delicious! As an extra special treat, I love to fry up some onions and peppers and put them on top of our fish. It really was like a restaurant meal!

Christmas

Christ is Born! Indeed He is Born!

What a whirlwind this past week has been! The children and I survived 4 days of services in a row, some days two services. It was butter cold out as well, so we had to bundle down to hats and gloves each time we left the house. It was a challenge, but it was worth it. A lot of memories have been made in the process!

I had LOTS OF fun decorating the sugar cookies this year on my own after the kids were in bed one night.

Our tradition each year on Christmas is to come home and break the fast together with a few yummy snacks, and also break our cesnica (pronounced ches-nee-tsa), which is a Serbian Christmas bread, together. The bread contains a coin and the person who gets the coin gets good luck that year. Our younger daughter got the coin this year :-).

After that, we head to my brother-in-law's place for some Christmas fun and feasting!

I was supposed to go visit family in New York this week... but I ended up completely overexhausted and not feeling up for it. The good news is my airline gave me a credit for the full amount paid for the flight to use at a later time. The other good news is that we have been having a great week together as a family. My husband has also been taking it easy with his responsibilities this week, so we are all recuperating together and enjoying our family time very much. I knew it in my heart that the right thing to do was to take our Christmas break from school this week! Our week has included a certain special 3-year old's birthday, eating out several meals, doing very minimal housework, spending lots of time lounging around and knitting for this Mama , and playing a board game as a family.

Here are a few photos of our festivities!

The birthday girl HAD to have a Peppa Pig cake! Ice cream cake - YUM!

A new session of swim lessons, for our 3 year old as well!

Late night snack for Mama - hot chocolate with milk, marshmallows and whipped cream, and a slice of nutroll from a parishioner

Christmas morning

Christmas Cookie Marathon

This year I am NOT pregnant during Christmas season! That is huge, because this being our 8th Christmas season as a married couple, I have been pregnant or adjusting to having a newborn for 4 out of those 8 years! Each time I am either postpartum or very pregnant, I try to lower my standards and not overdo it with holiday preparations. However, this year I am very fondly remembering my exhausted third-trimester pregnant self last year, and even though I am still definitely exhausted (the little guy still does not sleep through the night), I do have a little more energy this Christmas season.

I made a list of Christmas cookies that I would like to make this year, and I am giving myself some lee-way here because I just do not know if it will all get done, but this is the list of what I'd like to make: 

-Sour Cream Sugar Cookies (these are so tasty!) - These I actually already made earlier today. They are in the freezer waiting for us to frost and decorate them a little closer to Christmas.

-Kahlua Balls (for the adults only) - a recipe a friend gave me

-Rum Balls (again, for the adults)

-Chocolate Thumbprints - These are SO good! They are my favorite out of all of these.

-Angeletti (from the Good Housekeeping Holiday Cookbook) - This will be a new recipe this year...

-Linzer Cookies

-Chocolate Almond Clusters (from the GH Holiday Cookbook) - a new recipe this year for me, but I can't possibly imagine chocolate and almonds mixed together not tasting good!

I will let you know how it goes!

A Whole Decade

Today is a very special day for my husband and I because it is 10 years since we began dating! It has been a much more eventful decade than I could have EVER imagined! In ten years, we:
-Dated for 2
-Got engaged on Christmas Day 2009
-Planned a Chicago wedding from New York
-Got married
-Moved to Chicago (for him it was moving back to Chicago)
-Had an ordination to the diaconate
-Moved again
-Had our first baby
-Flew to Serbia for 2 weeks for a family wedding (SUCH a great experience!)
-Celebrated my college graduation (6 years after I began my college career)
-Welcomed Baby #2 into the world
-Moved once again
-Welcomed Baby #3
-Celebrated an ordination to the Priesthood
-Moved AGAIN, to our first parish ever
-Had Baby #4

The blessings and excitement just keep on coming. God has been beyond good to us in our time together so far, and it is exciting and overwhelming to think back to all that we have gone through together so far. I have no doubt that the next 10 years of our lives together will be exciting (and probably still overwhelming :)) as well!

St. Nicholas Day

It has been absolutely freezing here this past week, so St. Nicholas knew just what the kids needed. He changed their shoes out for warm woolen slippers. Oh, what a surprise! They kept them on ALL day...that was a big deal for my little ones who usually run around barefoot all year round.

Happy feast of St. Nicholas to you all!