Khrystos voskres, Happy Easter

Happy Easter to those who celebrate. Khrystos voskres! Voyistynu voskres! (Ukrainian, thanks to wikipedia for the spelling.)

My friend Ama married into a Polish family here in the US. She and I email back and forth since we live on opposite sides of the country. In her last email she mentioned how she was supposed to get her 7 month old's basket together to be blessed, but she didn't really understand why. This was my chance to enlightened her, from personal experience. My Mom and I used to get baskets together to be blessed for Easter. 

Like most Catholic traditions, Easter is steeped in pagan tradition, which was assimilated with the conquered people and watered down by Americans in the melting pot days. Different websites offer different reasons or explanations for why items are included in the basket, both Polish and Ukrainian. Some even go into all the Slavic countries/areas traditions. I wish I had the books my Mom has, which explains everything including why it is part of the tradition. I found only one website that mentions the basket linen as being judged by the community on the skill (or worth) of the woman or girl who made it. One book I had mentioned that girls would put the basket out to be inspected by the boys in hopes of a future husband picking her, a way to show off her homemaker skills in baking, sewing, and embroidery. And so we have beautiful baskets filled with hard work and delicious foods which were given up during Lent. Check out these websites for info and pictures:

http://www.brama.com/art/easter.html
http://www.polishcenter.org/polish_easter_traditions.htm
http://www.ukrainian-n-things.com/basketphotos.htm

Brama goes into great detail about the Ukrainian history of Easter and has some great pictures. "The traditions which originated in the ancient, pre-Christian times in Ukraine reflected the religious outlook, social structure and the way of life of the people...With the introduction of Christianity to Ukraine in 988 A.D. the Church adopted many of these annual rituals into the Christian holidays. As a result the Ukrainian traditions are rich and deeply symbolic in their content."

http://www.pasgc.org/

 Polish Easter Traditions include (reasons vary widely):
* Egg (pisanka)—Symbol of life and rebirth.

* Sausage (kielbasa) or ham—All types of pork were forbidden under the dietary code of the Old Testament (Leviticus 11.7). The coming of Christ was seen as exceeding the old law and the dietary items now became acceptable (Mark 7.19).

* Paschal lamb—It can be made of butter, cake or even plaster. It is the centerpiece of the meal. Christ is seen as the "Lamb of God."

* Horseradish/pepper—Symbolize the bitter herbs of the Passover and the Exodus.

* Salt—Joins bread in Polish tradition as a sign of hospitality.

* Bread—Christ has been called "the Bread of Life."

* Vinegar—Symbolizes the gall given to Christ at the crucifixion.

* Wine—Symbolizes the blood of sacrifice spilled by Christ at the crucifixion.

Or from the amazing website The Polish American Journal (has a ton of info!):

"A basket is decorated with green parsley, flowers, and sprigs of pussy willow or boxwood (bukszpan), with a ribbon woven through the handle, and covered with a lace or embroidered doily. The basket traditionally contains: a Paschal lamb — baranek wielkanocny made of butter, cake or sugar and carrying in a cross-balanced position, a small banner sometimes with the letters IHS (representing the lamb of God); hand painted and decorated eggs — pisanki (the symbol of new life); meat (signifying prosperity); horseradish (a bitter herb, signifying the suffering of Christ); salt (a Polish tradition of welcome and hospitality); greenery (the awakening of the earth); and bread/babka (a symbol of communion and the Last Supper). This would ensure a good harvest and sufficient amount of food for coming year. " 

http://www.brama.com

 Pisanki. "Although this term has come to mean Easter eggs in general, strictly speaking it refers only to those eggs decorated with the molten-wax technique."


~I have used wax to make decorations on the eggs. Someday I will move up to the fancy decorated eggs, but it is a seriously long, hard process. The outcome is so worth it but until I have the time to devote to it, it is on my bucket list. 

One thing that is not listed but is in some of  the pictures is Makowiec, poppy seed bread/roll. A delicious sweet bread rolled out and filled with sweet poppy seed filling, then rolled and baked. Some people put icing on it, we never did. Ugh, this is my absolute favorite. 

Linda http://allrecipes.com

I was talking with some neighbors and apparently the thing to do now is fill fake plastic eggs with candy or chocolate and hide those. Some friends were telling me that thier kids don't get candy, they get clothes, and toys, and books....just like Christmas? I realized growing up, we were religious, Catholic specifically, and so traditions stayed with each holiday and did not mix. They each had their special things we looked forward to, including or especially the food. Like the eggs, for example, we dyed real chicken eggs which were hard boiled. Those were hidden for us to find, not fake eggs. And then we ate them for breakfast. We did have a basket of candy, maybe some pencils or erasers, or small toys but that was it.  

www.blessedsacramentmke.org

One thing I never buy but could eat until I burst is Pyrohy (Ukrainian) or Pierogi (Polish). It is basically a dumpling, ubiquitous to all cultures. They can be boiled, fried with onions and butter, or grilled on a George Foreman Grill.  Filling can be potato and cheese, sauerkraut or cabbage, meat (which usually has another name) or even sweet cheeses or fruit. The sweet ones are delicious when boiled for breakfast. I love my meat or potato pyrohy with sour cream. I'm not sure if it is traditional, but we also make Kapusta. Our recipe is basically cabbage cooked down in butter-one of those things you can't stop eating. Sometimes we use rinsed sauerkraut to help it all cook faster. This is usually served with Polish sausage.....and pierogies if I buy them.

This year we had ham, my diet gravy mix, mazto ball soup, and mashed potatoes. Matzo ball soup is more a Jewish thing, but we have it all the time and especially on holidays. I just can't not have a multicultural holiday. Really, this year it was all leftovers, or easy box stuff and with both of us working or busy until the day of, neither of us thought of buying anything as I am leaving for a week long conference. The ham was frozen, leftover from Christmas, the gravy mix was in a packet, the soup a box. The potatoes were real potatoes, boiled with a chopped onion. Delic! 

For a few years of my childhood we made Italian Easter Pie. It weighed a million pounds and one piece could probably last you all day working out in the fields. It was delicious, but a whole meal in that single slice. I found a great recipe similar to ours at a fellow blogger’s site: 

ouritaliankitchen.blogspot.com/2010/04/pizzagaina-italian-easter-pie.html.

Pizzagaina (Italian Easter Pie)

I hope you learned something this Easter and were able to share a relaxing, joyous day! Feel free to share your menu or traditions.

Deployment Coffee

Guest Blog: Deployment Coffee

 Posted by Guest Blogger on April 4, 2013 at 16:00

(picture published on article page of Blog Brigade)

My publishing credit: credited as “Guest Blogger” “Christina”
Published by Blog Brigade of Military OneSource on April 4, 2013 , in Deployment 

http://blog-brigade.militaryonesource.mil/blogs/separation-deployment/

Blogger Biography: Christina is a proud war bride, military 
“dependent,” writer and volunteer. She met her husband 

while working two jobs to pay her student loans and stay afloat. 
He stuck with her despite the long and crazy hours away from 
each other and so began her experience with the military. 
Scrapping the wedding for a long and dangerous deployment, 
she fully embraced being a military spouse. Christina reaches 
out to all available networks to learn and take advantage of 
what the military has to offer its family. Learning the ropes is
 tough, but she knows she has help.

There is always one thing I consistently do when my husband deploys 
or goes TDY. I would like to say it’s get a massage or a facial,
 but I just never find the time or budget for those things.

What does fit in my budget and what I can sneak a few moments for 
is coffee. Forever ago, I found one specific flavor from a specific 
brand that I just could not get enough of. For years I could only 
find it during the holidays and then it was gone! I refused to open 
the last package for everyday use. Coffee is coffee to my husband.
 (His fishing or car stuff is another matter entirely.) For me, this 
coffee is like his special stuff. He just laughs at me when I try to
 explain it.

It’s even more special because when I finally found it he was 
deployed. I would come home to a dark, cold house and turn on 
the coffee pot for just a cup or two. That gave me enough time
to change out of my work clothes or uniform and into yoga pants,
a sweatshirt and some fuzzy socks. I would turn up the heat and
get dinner started. If it was just me, I enjoyed the coffee while
cooking. If the house was abuzz with activity, I saved it for when 
beds were tucked and guests had taken their leave. I would settle 
on the couch and listen to some music or just collapse into the 
nearest chair for a few minutes of peace.

I would indulge in the smell of the coffee as it wafted up from 
the cup in white curls, savoring each taste as it rolled over my 
tongue, absorbing the warmth of the cup in both hands before 
returning to life, laundry, cleaning, bills or returning missed 
phone calls. When I found it, I couldn't help but send a happy
 little email to my husband. After that, every time we talked 
or emailed until he came home, he would ask if I had my special 
coffee as a clue to how my day went.

Now it’s one of our little jokes. Since I can get it fairly 
regularly, I only buy a few boxes, which stay hidden in the 
pantry waiting for the next deployment or TDY. And they only 
come out then. Once he even came back with two special mugs 
for my “Deployment Coffee.”

What is the special thing you do for yourself during a deployment
or TDY?

Deployed During The Holidays

(picture published on article page of Blog Bridge)

Deployed During The Holidays

My publishing credit: credited as “Guest Blogger” “Christina”

Published by Blog Brigade of Military OneSource on December 22, 2012, in Holidays,  Military Life by Guest Blog.

http://blog-brigade.militaryonesource.mil/2012/12/22/deployed-during-the-holidays/

Blogger Biography: Christina is a proud war bride, military “dependent,” writer and volunteer. She met her husband while working two jobs to pay her student loans and stay afloat. He stuck with her despite the long and crazy hours away from each other and so began her experience with the military. Scrapping the wedding for a long and dangerous deployment, she fully embraced being a military spouse. Christina reaches out to all available networks to learn and take advantage of what the military has to offer its family. Learning the ropes is tough, but she knows she has help.

He always seems to be gone at the holidays. Even when he was here, travel killed at least two days, and then the recovery and cleaning or laundry took another two. So we ended up staying home more often than not. Let me describe to you what our past holiday seasons have looked like and what I do when he’s gone.

As a joke, my mother bought me a table top silver tree for which I have found tiny ornaments. That goes on an outdoor “bar style” table we keep inside. I cover the base with ancient towels from my grandmother. The holiday scene depicted is a bit more horror than jolly, but it helps us to remember that traditions and meanings change through times and experience. If we do exchange presents, they are piled near the tree on the table, on the bar stools and on the floor beneath. If he is gone, I get the care package together and take a picture of the open box with the tree. Every year we debate getting a life size tree, but now this tiny one and its joke are part of our tradition. Not to mention it’s easier for me to set up and decorate alone.

Presents are usually opened after dinner while we relax, if we are home and together, that is. If he isn’t home, he and I don’t exchange gifts. But I always buy him something little, usually silly, and wrap it. One year he was able to send me a card.

I like holiday music. He can’t stand hearing the same song sung the same way repeated over and over again. Matter of fact, when he is gone, he likes that he can’t hear one song playing every moment of the day. So our compromise is a wide and varied selection of holiday music from traditional to gospel, to chant to punk, to country to selections from all over the world. The music can be on when I am signing my cards that will go overseas to our troops, to the hospitals nursing our wounded, and to our family and friends. When he is not here and we have no family close enough, it’s on 24/7 to drown out the loneliness.

When we met I had never seen the National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. It just was not my type of humor, but he loves it. He will call and I can tell him where I am in the movie and he can quote the next few lines. When he is gone, watching it is a way for me to connect across the hundreds of miles between us.

He grew up with ham and turkey. I grew up with turkey or steak. So if he is home we decide on the meat. If it’s turkey, the newest tradition is to deep fry it outside, regardless of how cold it is. Sides include pierogies, kapusta, collard greens, sweet potatoes with brown sugar, deviled eggs, squash with butter and salad. Breakfast varies; we usually splurge on cinnamon rolls and get a start on the deviled eggs. When he’s away, I still do the cinnamon rolls.

And we always have matzo ball soup. I picked that up from having Passover Seder with a friend’s family back in high school. It was delicious and fun to make. When we are together for the holidays, I always have a head cold, never fails. So the chicken soup is a help, but far more importantly, my husband is the one stuck making it. Unsurprisingly, it always turns out far more delicious when his practiced hands are in control. Mine just does not stack up anymore. The fact that cooking this has moved from me to him is one of our favorite traditions. He won’t even let me touch it.

One year it was just pasta with tomato sauce. That is all I had that wasn’t frozen. I will always remember it because we were together that year and it wasn’t planned. That was an amazing gift. If he’s gone for the holidays, he will inevitably not make it home for New Year’s Day either. I will go to every holiday event they have on base when he is not here. Actually, it doesn’t have to be around the holiday; I still do it. No point in being alone when you are lonely. When we don’t live near enough to family, I snuggle up on the couch to watch TV and wait for him to finish his shift and sit in line to try to call home.

It’s not the tree or the food, per se, that makes us look forward to the holidays. Whether we are together or apart, for us it’s the “remember when.” Most of our traditions started by accident, cobbled together based on time, distance, budget and circumstance. We came from very different backgrounds and have lived in a wide range of states. The important thing is that we made the holiday our own. So when he is able to call home, after the news that the care package still hasn’t made it there, when we have exhausted everything new that happened since our last communication, one of us will say “remember when,” and we celebrate the holiday together, bridging the distance and the time between us.

Every Light in the House is On

(uncredited picture published on article page of SpouseBUZZ)


Every Light In The House Is On


My publishing credit: credited as “Guest Blogger” “Christina” (see bio below) (I am going to frame my acceptance email!)

Published by SpouseBUZZ of Military. com on November 30, 2012, in Deployment, Military Life by Guest Bloggers.

Everyone has weird quirks, some are weirder than others. One of my biggest quirks, which hurts in the pocketbook, is leaving our holiday lights on all night long. I’m talking 5 p.m to 5 a.m.; our house can probably be seen from space when it’s decked out for the holidays.

My husband sees those lights and he sees dollar signs.  He thinks winter is a time when we can recoup from the languid, unbearable Florida summers of non-stop air conditioning.

I see those lights and see comfort during long deployment months — something that is vital at a time when, traditionally, families are coming together, not being split asunder. While our military operations abroad might be drawing to a close, I will continue to fight this battle at home.

I fight the good fight with Christmas lights. Because I was alone during our first Christmas as a married couple. It was hard to come home and destress about work or traffic to no one. As many spouses know, talking out loud can sometimes make the room seem so much more … empty.

Due to the nature of the mission I could talk to my husband only about once a month.  I was holding my breath in dread, weeks on end with every news report that came out. I never knew how my husband would be described if his time was up. Would it be just a number of casualties, would they mention his country of origin, his branch of service, his rank, his age, his name?

I was most assuredly jealous of my fellow spouses who complained that they couldn’t deal with the multiple calls a day from over there:  doesn’t he/she understand?

Oh, I understood the need to make those calls; I would be the one calling every other hour if I was over there. So much for being the strong, independent one.

To fill the void in the hours after my solitary dinner and before report-time for work the next day, I went out the door of what had become my narrow life and into the greater world to search for the light. Holiday lights.

Sometimes I bundled up and walked around the neighborhoods. Other times I drove around to the more affluent areas and basked in glory and appreciation for the lengths these people went to: single color, multicolored, flashing, strobe, ropes, net lights, minimalist, circus-worthy, wreaths, vehicles, characters, deer, polar bears, menorahs of all sizes, colors, and quantities, lighted fake palm trees, manger scenes of various sizes, cultures, and ethnicities, toy soldiers and purple hippopotami.

I was especially thankful, and made the point to silently thank, each and every time, those who left their lights on all night. Some were surely forgotten, others, it seemed, left them on just for me. Perhaps they actually did.

So last year I was dead-set on leaving my lights on all night long. One night, my husband and I had another round about why the lights needed to be on even after we had gone to bed and why we couldn’t take them down until the end of January. I stepped outside to enjoy my lights. I saw the two candles I had placed in the windows–part of that age old sign of welcome–were not lit.

I wondered if I could replace them without my husband noticing. Because I will leave the lights on for that one person who may be searching for solace and healing the wound of the missing other.

Christina is a proud war bride, military “dependent,” writer,and volunteer. She met her husband while working two jobs and he stuck with the despite the long and crazy hours away from each other. And so began her experience with the military. Scrapping the wedding for a long and dangerous deployment, she fully embraced being a military spouse. Christina reaches out to all available networks to learn and take advantage of what the military has to offer its family.

Read more: http://spousebuzz.com/blog/2012/11/every-light-in-the-house-is-on.html#ixzz2FAZTUC4q
SpouseBUZZ.com

Eglin Vet For Our Pets

Eglin Vet for our pets

Not credited but printed with my permission
Published in the February/March 2011 issue of the Military Voice & Community News
Our pets are our families. While some would rather favor one over the other, they have nevertheless helped us relax and exercise through countless moves, holidays, and deployments. But where to get the best care of them?
Look no further than the Eglin veterinarian at the 96 Force Support Squadron Army Veterinarian Treatment Facility. While its primary mission is to take care of the Eglin and Hurlburt working dogs, the clinic is also open to our best friends. They do not offer bathing or nail clipping, but care for pets of active duty and retired military personnel include rabies vaccinations, outpatient treatment, heartworm checks, and general immunization.
If you are worried about moving or have a roving cat or dog, the Eglin pet Vet offers an affordable HomeAgain microchip implantation system and American Kennel Club Companion Animal Recovery (AKC CAR) database enrollment.
Interested? Pets are seen by appointment only at Building 888. Eglin Vet hours are 7:15 am to 3:00 pm Monday through Friday, closed federal holidays, and can be reached at 882-8250 or 882-2233. This is not an emergency facility but you can find the number for the Emergency Veterinary Clinic, which is 850-729-3335. For more information on the AKC CAR program, visit http://www.akccar.org/about/profile.cfm.