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Our Pascha basket

April 26, 2019 /

As Orthodox christians the date for Easter (or Pascha) sometimes coincides with western Easter but sometimes it is a week or so later. The date for Pascha is determined as the Sunday following the paschal full moon, which is the full moon that falls on or after the spring equinox. This was established in 325 A.D.,  by the Council of Nicaea. This year Pascha or Orthodox Easter falls on April 28.

We usually have our Pascha baskets blessed after the night liturgy. This is our Pascha basket this year. Traditionnally, you will place items that you fasted from through lent such as cheese, meats and special sweets. This time, I made egg bread or challah bread but was supposed to divide the dough in two to make two breads! So my bread is as large as a turkey!

The cheese pascha is a sweet cheese spread made with farmer’s cheese (or in my case, cottage cheese), butter, cream, egg, sugar, vanilla bean. At the end of the post I show some of the steps we took to make this.

Our basket includes a bottle of wine, cheese pascha which is a tradional homemade sweet cheese spread, a challah bread, some hard boiled eggs, some specialty meats and some chocolates. My Goddaughter’s mom gave me the pretty egg towel to cover my basket until it is time for it to be blessed. We also light a candle and I usually stick it through the bread.

Hopefully my husband will have time to stop by Patak, a meat specialty store so we can have some European sausages.

I hope you enjoyed a little look at one of our traditions!

A bientôt! Christ is Risen!

Cheese pascha steps:

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