sLOVEnka: Easter, etc.

Is there anything better than the look on a little kid's face when they find an Easter egg? Not a whole lot, I tells ya.

Easter was a strange one this year. I had hoped to make it to church on Sunday, but with daylight savings and general overall exhaustion, it was all I could do to get Lily out the door so she could go with Daddy to church. I didn't cook. We scrounged for meals. By the time we thought about buying groceries for an Easter dinner we realized the stores would be closed. None of us had any cleaning motivation, and it seemed somehow wrong to clean house on Easter anyhow. The Jehovah's Witnesses came. Lily didn't sleep. Not because the Jehovah's Witnesses came. At least I don't think. The day plodded along like trying to push a JELL-O wall up a hill. It was really sweet watching Lily hunt for eggs, though. And then there was Easter Monday. Both girls slept longer than usual so I was able to (gasp!) get a little exercise in and (gasp! again!) shower! We had planned to go to the in-laws' for a traditional Easter lunch, and after getting our brood aaall ready to go, the car wouldn't start. I broke down and vacuumed because instead of dust (Easter) bunnies, we had dust rhinoceroses. That's not exactly true, but it was time to vacuum. Dedko delivered our lunch on bicycle, the little sweetie. Lily, again, didn't nap. In the middle of lunch, Tomáš exclaimed something along the lines of, ''What a weeeeeird day!'' And I agreed. It was just one of those days where nothing felt normal. In the afternoon he went to his friend's to make hot and sour soup and took Lily with him, which added to the weirdness in that I had a long period of peace and quiet. Rosy returned to her former chill-easy babyness after a week and a half of crying a lot, fighting naps and waking every hour at night. Our friend, Doctor, came for a visit. And maybe for the first time since I've known him, we got to sit down and have a really nice conversation just the two of us. Well, Rosy napped peacefully beside us. It was really nice. He left here, and on his way to meet Tomáš (about one minute's walk from us) a man jumped out of a fourth-story window right in front of him. He, being a doctor, rushed to help him and thankfully he was ok. Some mental issues, I guess. Luckily I got to Skype with my cousin and mom, otherwise the oddness might have been a bit too disconcerting. But somehow, like Tomáš' soup, it was a kind of a nice combination of unlikely ingredients. Except for the window jumper, of course.

Here's what our Easter weather looked like

And in food news, I had been wanting to make yogurt for a really long time and finally did it! We eat a lot of it around our house, but it's spendy, it's wasteful with all those plastic cups, and I don't like the extra crap they put in even the high quality store-bought kind. Some have regulators and emulsifiers and starch, and all have at least twice as much syrup as I'd like. So, one clever student of mine who is a big inspiration for me in that she gardens, she cans, she bakes all her own bread and rolls, cooks everything from scratch, buys meat from a local farmer (and most recently even made her own lunchmeat!), and yes, makes her own yogurt, told me how.

I made up a simple chocolate syrup of cocoa powder, a little sugar and water.

It was delicious and so satisfying. I can't wait to try ground nuts, homemade jam, fresh fruit, honey or nothing at all in it!
It's too labor-intensive for me to keep up with all the time (mostly just going to get the milk), but since it comes out to less than half the price and is so much healthier, I'm hoping to make it often.

And then there was this delicious victory. I had purchased a giant bag of discount spinach (that sounds worse than it was..it was just a little beat up) and I have a bad habit of letting stuff like that go to waste so I made this salad with a simple vinaigrette, cucumbers, tomatoes and Greek cheese. Too vinegary for T, but I loved it.