POPULAR RELIGION

CAN I PUT JESUS ON THE CAKE? IT’S EASTER RIGHT? DEVILISH EGGS…”NEW” POTATOES….YOUNG ASPARAGUS….LAMB, NOT MUTTON…..VOODOO IN THE SPICE BUNS

APRIL 10 2023

Easter is observed on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

It is thought the term “easter” derived from “Eostre”, a goddess of the Saxons whom sacrifices were made to at this time of year.  Or maybe the Norse take “eostur”, eastur, or ostara” which meant “the season of the growing sun” or “the season of new birth”.  Later Easter became defined by Christianity and the belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Whichever way you look at it,  Easter is about rebirth, new birth, spring and the enchantment of a things anew.

In his seventy years my father’s birthday has not once fallen on Easter…..until this year.  His seventieth birthday landed on the day Jesus supposedly rose from the dead, left his tomb and went around visiting his friends.  I do not come from a religious family nor do I claim to know or understand the Bible but I find appreciation for both the pagan version of easter along with the Christian story.  Different points of view are valuable….and often run more akin to each other than we think.

I decided I would put Jesus on the cake.  I questioned in my head the appropriateness of the act.  My mind wandered back to the bus I used to take into the zocolo in Cholula, my year in Mexico after high school.  I would sit with a bag of potato chips…turning in my hand the little hologram picture of the pope I had pulled from the bag salted and greased….the prize inside, like in the cereal box but it wasn’t popular toys, or popular sports….it was popular religion….and the pope was visiting soon.  He showed up in salty bags of chips and bimbo powdered donut packages, shiny and rainbow, eyes jetting to and fro with a tilt of the card and a glean in the sun.

Across the front of the bus, above the driver’s head, hung a  red velvet fringe tapestry.  The length of it hung small framed pictures of Jesus Christ.  He was there watching over us all as we nervously awaited our turn to exit the bus.  The driver would zip around the corner at the bus stop with no intention of stopping.   He didn’t even slow down apart from having to get around the bend in the road.  It was a leap of faith every day and Jesus was there for support.

Popular religion as defined “ are expressions of the desire of common people to find and recreate religious meaning in their everyday lives”.  This was apparent all over Mexico.  I came to find comfort in the ofrendas glittered with floral confetti, hearing celebrations every night out my window for another saint’s birthday….there is a saint for every day of the year I was told……..finding Jesus or Mary on my milk cartons and every woman in the market, forehead crossed with ash for the onset of lent on Ash Wednesday.

I figured I could put Jesus on the birthday cake surrounded by mountain flowers because it was Easter, right?.  I would make the chocolate mocha cake from the Fanny Farmer Cookbook that my dad used to make in the New England mountain huts.  You pour the hot coffee over the chocolate and let it melt…that was the trick.  He told us about this cake for years as he would reminisce about learning to bake bread on the top of the white mountains in his late teen years…..settling on cornbread and chocolate mocha cake because the guests loved it and you could bake both in the same rectangular pan.

It was Easter and if Jesus hung from bus velvet fringe and found his way onto every product on the super market shelves he would be okay on my father’s seventieth chocolate mocha birthday cake.

In my family Easter is about food.  In my family every holiday is about food.

On Easter it is fried dough in the morning with sliced ham honeyed, cooked in a buttered skillet on the stove.  Chocolate around noon and an early dinner of lamb, asparagus and “new” potatoes. Joey explains the difference between lamb and mutton….and how most Americans eat mutton, but the delight of the sweet baby lamb is something to behold…..as she slices into the meat with an oooo and ahhhh exclaiming how delicious it is. She went to school with the catholic nuns as a young girl…..her stories are often imbued with humor and a cheaky Irish accent…..good old Aussie humor for you. Could most people get away with it? Probably not…..but Jo can and as kids we’d just laugh when she’d put the white napkin with the blue stripes on her head and pretend to be Mother Teresa. I’m not sure we really got what she was getting at but it was funny none the less!

We have deviled eggs too. The devil in the name likely comes from the connection between the spiciness of the yolk mixture, that dash of paprika on top and the presumably hot temperatures in hell…..you learn something new everyday.  My mother proclaimed this year that she’s “been boiling eggs wrong for years!"  I guess if you want a clean peel you have to put the eggs in the water after it starts to boil and not before….then boil for ten minutes.  For some magical unexplained reason they peel perfectly and the angst and frustration of peeling a dozen fresh eggs for Easter dinner just disappears.

For me Easter is usually baking.  Good Friday is for hot cross buns.  A beautifully spiced  bun with a white cross running across it’s back.  Originally a pagan sweet bread offering to goddess Eostre, whom I mentioned earlier, was then adapted to represent christianity and the crucifixion.  The name simple and to the point.

I came across my favorite recipe a number of years ago…..when I read an article about the best hot cross buns in Australia.  Baker Michael James of The Tivoli Road Bakery had won peoples hearts with his buns and so kindly put the recipe to paper and published for all of us to bake and enjoy.  His book The Tivoli Road Baker is still one of my favorites and his hot cross buns delicious.  The magic of boiling whole oranges and pureeing them into a stunning orange paste to mix into dough is like making potions as a kid. And of course citrus is the bell of the ball in Ojai this time of year!

Last year at this time I was deep in the dough of hundreds of these beautiful buns over at the restaurant in town.  I will never ever forget for the rest of my life the moment a chicken bone popped from the dough of a bun I was rolling.  A CHICKEN BONE!  And then another…..and another.  To this day I still don’t know what happened.  I have my theories….that the night kitchen was using our dough room inappropriately for processing chicken and fish…..perhaps it was sabotage, as I was not particularly liked by management…….maybe just straight up voodoo…..or the ghost of Bill Baker unhappy with the new inhabitants……he may have been the one to burn down the storage shed one night by the dumpsters….whole place could of gone up in flames but we kept that pretty quiet.  My heart sunk into my stomach when I found the chicken bones though….so this year I made cinnamon rolls instead.  But how I missed the spiced holiday buns criss crossed and glazed in sugar and spice and all things so nice.

Always holiday memories for better or for worse.  Always so much food.  Days and days of making so many rolls not knowing whether they will turn out or not.  Difficult tasks, difficult processes.   A friend said the other day about being in the kitchen  “well, damn…..You’re making hundreds of cinnamon rolls and I just try not to burn the meat!”  Sometimes I wish baking was that easy!  Sometimes I wish life was that easy!  All I have to do is not burn the meat!  But alas, life is filled with so much.  Thoughts, work, stories, mess ups, love, holidays, food.  We get to make it what we want and hopefully enjoy it for what it is.  Maybe life is  just as simple as eating too many deviled eggs and putting Jesus on the cake.