Tiny Peasant

Category: Easter Resources

  • Celebrating Easter Mindfully / Grandma’s Paska

    Celebrating Easter Mindfully / Grandma’s Paska

    Slippery, sticky, yellow dough. Exotic saffron. Raisins. Old coffee tins and pretty loaf pans. Generations of women’s hands kneading, shaping, tasting. This is something I want to pass onto our children, especially now that their great-grandma has passed. She would have been 99 this fall!

    I thought I’d share my grandmother’s original recipe (you can see her recipe card there in the photo below), as well as an updated version that subs a few ingredients such as unrefined sugar. Grab the printable Grandma’s Paska PDF to print out the recipe or tuck it away in your recipe folder on your computer.

    If you have a recipe or skill to share that was passed on to you by your grandmother (or grandfather!), please write to us at Heirloom Offerings :: The Grandma Project. We’d love to share your story and skill!

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    This post was shared as a part of Thank Goodness It’s Monday, Fat Tuesday, and Real Food Wednesday.

  • Celebrating Easter Mindfully | Dyeing Eggs

    Celebrating Easter Mindfully | Dyeing Eggs

    One of my fondest childhood memories of Easter is dyeing Easter eggs in my grandmother’s kitchen, surrounded by family, while snacking on grandma’s famous Paska (Polish Easter bread).

    I recall the sweet, yeasty taste of the homemade bread, the smell of the local pickerel or ham we’d enjoy later at dinner, the whole boiled eggs carefully prepared for the dyeing and decorating – yet, in the middle of all of these wholesome parts of such a special celebration, a cardboard box is ripped open, some packets of chemical dies are dumped down onto the counter and then carefully stirred into warm water with vinegar.

    It wasn’t until I was in high school or university that I started to wonder if the chemical dyes on our egg shells could affect our health. Often those bright colours would indeed make their way inside the shell and onto the actual egg. 

    I now have children who also love the excitement of decorating Easter eggs as part of our celebration. I’m thankful that we’ve learned the skill of making homemade plant and food-based dyes that have beautiful results and provide us some peace of mind.

    Download our Natural Easter Egg Dye tutorial. Check out a whole food revamp of my lovely grandma’s easter bread recipe, and head back in time for our Natural Easter Basket Stuffers post.

     

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    This post was featured at Real Food Forager and Nourishing Joy.

    It was shared as a part of Montessori Monday and Thank Goodness It’s Monday, Fat Tuesday, and Simple Lives Thursday, Fight Back Friday, Unprocessed Fridays, and Simply Natural Saturdays.

  • Celebrating Easter Mindfully / Natural Basket Stuffers

    Celebrating Easter Mindfully / Natural Basket Stuffers

    Tiny Maker Kit

    Whether celebrated for it’s religious significance, as a family tradition, or as a way of welcoming spring, we can all agree that Easter is about new life; blades of grass poking through freshly thawed soil, tender shoots emerging from a deep slumber, just as we breathe in the fresh spring air after a long, dark winter.

    Traditionally, children toting baskets and a sense of adventure would hunt for eggs – real, whole eggs – hidden in the grass. The eggs were, and still are for some, a symbol of new life. Somewhere along the way, whole eggs led to chocolate eggs, which led to chocolate bunnies, chocolate hens, jelly beans, marshmallow peeps, and well, you get the picture. The celebration of new life and a new season are easily lost in the sea of candy.

    As a child, I adored Easter. Certainly, I loved the chocolate and candy, but most of my connection to our family celebrations lies in the excitement of the treasure collecting and the feeling of transformation – of going to bed at night eager in anticipation of the newness and lightness that Easter would bring.

    As a parent, I want to bring that anticipation to our home, but I don’t want to bring the sugar. Over the past few years, I’ve come up with a few things that get a check of approval from our whole crew – kids and parents alike.

    Download our Natural Easter Basket Stuffers PDF to toss the sugar, and embrace the sweetness!

     

    Also head over to the Tiny Peasant shop, where you’ll receive 20% off all children’s kits – such as the Tiny Maker play dough kit shown above – they would make a lovely addition to any easter basket! Use the coupon code: SWEETEASTER until March 28.

     

    Check out the second post in Celebrating Easter Mindfully series :: Dyeing Easter Eggs Naturally

     

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    This post was shared as a part of Montessori Monday, Thank Goodness It’s Monday, Unprocessed Fridays, Fight Back Friday, and Simply Natural Saturdays.