A Good Friday tradition of sorts

In my family, Good Friday was the day where we coloured our Easter eggs. Growing up, this would happen at my grandparents' farm using a whole bunch of boiled eggs, those PAAS colouring kits, crayons and even hot wax. It was an enjoyable time for me, my sisters and my cousins to share that activity. Eventually, we kept the tradition going but in the city with only a few of our family members. This year, being that we are in a completely different province, it was only my sister and I colouring our eggs. We only made about six and my sister didn't quite remember how to make the dye (using food colouring) but they turned out okay. After all the eggs had one coat, we added oil to the dye. It didn't do much but it made cool designs even if the colour ended up less than desirable. So today's favourite thing is colouring Easter eggs.

A Friday tradition

Ever since I was little, Fridays have been a meat free day, especially during lent. Being that we were a pretty big meat-eating family, we didn't actually have a lot of ideas for meal ideas that didn't involve meat, so we tended to have Grandma's Big Pancakes for supper. They are quite similar to crepes in that they are thin and take up the entire area of a regular frying pan but they are cooked on both sides. They are typically served (in my family, at least) with butter and some sort of jam (rhubarb mostly, but occasionally other varieties). If for some reason, you don't eat them all the first night, they taste quite good if you cut them up into smaller pieces, and refry them the next morning so that the pieces are nice and crispy.
To make them you need:

• 3 cups flour (I usually put in 2 cups white and 1 cup whole wheat)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup powdered milk
• a handful of rolled oats (we just recently started putting rolled oats in them, so I just improvise on the amount of them)
• 3 eggs
• water (My recipe says three cups but I have no idea how much I actually use)

Basically, you put all the dry ingredients and the eggs into a bowl. Then you put some water in the bowl and stir it in. You keep adding water until you get a nice thin pourable batter.

You melt some butter on the pan and take a ladle and scoop some of the batter onto the pan. Then you wiggle the pan around until the batter covers the entire bottom of the pan. Once it looks like the pancake is pretty much all a darker colour, you flip the pancake and cook it for a couple more minutes. Then you take it out and repeat as needed. The first pancake needs to be cooked for quite awhile because the pan is not quite hot enough yet. I also tend to flip the first pancake more than the others.

They may not be the healthiest meal, but are certainly quite good.

PS. Colette, this isn't the recipe you told me but it is the recipe that was in Mom's recipe book.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

I hope everyone that celebrates Christmas has a good one. Thus far, it has been a pretty good one for me. I ate good food. Saw my family. Opened my presents. Won some games, and sadly lost some others. It's been a good day. Tomorrow is full of more good food and family interactions so that will be fun. I am trying to think of my favourite part of today but it has been a very good day so far so I am coming up with a bunch. I really enjoy some of our family traditions. First of all, I love apple strudel. We have it for Christmas every year and joy of joys I did not have to be the one to make it. It was made before I arrived on Monday so yay. Today I also enjoyed seeing the presents that everyone received and our tradition of opening one present at a time in ascending age order. It worked quite well for the people over five years old. My four year old niece just unwrapped gifts continously because otherwise we would have been there all night. I enjoyed spending Christmas Eve with my Aunt and Uncle's family. I also enjoyed the $10 gift exchange. Each of us buys a $10 gift and put them in a pile in the middle of the room. We each choose gift to unwrap or steal one from someone else. I believe there are a number of different names for it. Sadly, there was one missed tradition this year. I don't know if it's tradition so much as something that seems to happen nearly every year. The tradition: someone forgetting to wrap a present and put it under the tree. Everyone got the appropriate gifts this year so that's good. A couple years ago, my aunt forgot to wrap one of her kids presents so she had to run back upstairs to grab it. The present was a pair of gloves, and in her haste, she ended up giving him two right gloves.
Merry Christmas Everyone!