Szmingus Dingus

Happy Easter Monday! Here in Eastern Europe, today is a National Holiday as it is the second day of Easter! In Poland, it's called Szmingus Dingus and on this day, everyone throws buckets of water at each other. I'm not really sure about the history behind this but I know that when we spent Easter in Poland (when I was a kid), it was one of the most fun days ever! My sister and I and all of our neighbors in our Grandparents little village ran around like crazy filling buckets in the well and soaking one another. We had to change a million times but it was a blast. I love this tradition, as crazy as it is! Today, it's a little too cold for a proper Szmingus Dingus in Zagreb. At least it's sunny though!

Easter weekend has been really great!

My Traditions:

 

 

 These pictures are blurry but I love this girl too much not to post them. And the only reason they're so blurry is because we were getting our Rihanna on so hard! Thank you to the cafe/bar Kic for being so friendly and welcoming to us crazy girls!

T-Slav was talking about baking our own bread for our Easter basket but instead I went for these butter biscuits that remind me of one of my old college roommates who is a great cook and baker!

 

 My Carrot Ginger Soup was requested by Tomislav to be at Easter Sunday dinner so his family could try it. It was a huge hit, even with his Dad (!!) who officially gave me his blessing after realizing that I really can cook! Thank you T for doing all the peeling ;)

 

So excited to be making my first ham!

 

Pretty little hammy

 

 Beer and pineapples - the best thing to ever happen to ham! It came out absolutely PERFECT, so juicy and delicious! (T was SO thrilled to be eating meat again!)

Croatian Traditions:

 

 Dying eggs by putting onion skins in the boiling water so they get a nice red color

Most of mine stayed pretty brown but some of them looked redder!

 The Easter basket is both of our traditions since our Polish custom is to get our Easter baskets blessed on Saturday before Easter. The Croatian way is to have plenty of green onions and radishes on Easter Sunday. We also had the biscuits, eggs, salt and pepper, some of the freshly baked ham, and chocolate eggs. The blessed food is the first thing you eat on Sunday morning.

At Tomislav's parents house we had these baked potatoes and cabbage salads

 

Of course, more green onions and radishes!

 

Lamb

 

And finally these awesome glasses that Tomislav's parents both got 2 pairs of (each) recently!

They are the glasses you get for free (with insurance) and in true Croatian fashion, once I get health insurance, I'm totally trying to get a pair. They're cuuuute! T's parents look adorable in them!

  

So if you're somewhere warm today, I encourage you to throw a water balloon, or even just a splash of water on someone in honor of Szmingus Dingus :D I know how I'll be waking T up today!

Meatless Monday Meal

When Oprah challenged her entire staff to go vegan for an entire week, some people were extremely hesitant about it. It was around this time last year that they all went a week without any animal products. By the end of the week, the consensus was that it was actually easier than they had orginally anticipated (perhaps also because all of the lunch options in the cafeteria were made vegan for the week) and everyone felt better inside and out during their week off meat. Many people continued with a vegan/vegetarian diet following that challenge!

During Lent, Tomislav and I have decided to give up meat. Meat is a huge part of Croatian diet (and really, lifestyle). There are a lot of customs and traditions based on making, cooking, and eating meat so it definitely is a challenge for us and we'll be tempted in many ways. I love a good challenge though! I made this absolutely delicious vegetarian soup, which could be a great starter or light meal for lunch or dinner.

The color is so beautiful! This is a carrot-ginger soup inspired by a recipe I saw in Bon Appetit magazine. So simple, I knew it would be good so I really wanted to try it! Here's the page I ripped out of the magazine with the recipe-

  

The recipe calls for roasted peanuts and chili butter on top of the soup. I didn't have peanuts on hand when I first made it so I skipped them but I did make the chili butter (so good!). Of course, if you'd like to make this vegan, omit the butter.

Ok, so for the chili butter you mix butter with green onion and dried crushed red pepper (if you do make it, it makes the soup so luxurious then and the red pepper gives it a little heat that melts in beautifully with the soup). Put the butter mixture in the fridge to harden up.

For the soup:
1.5 lb carrots cut into 1/4 inch rounds
1 big onion -chopped
1 white skinned potato - chopped
2 tbsp minced ginger
5 cups (or more if you want it thinner) of vegetable broth
6 tbsp roasted peanuts (again, I didn't have this when we had the first bowls of soup and it was still so yummy but later we did buy some and the crunch was just awesome!

Sauté all the veggies for ten minutes until they are a bit softened:

Then, add the broth, bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes.

Cool a bit and then purée in batches until smooth. (I had to do it 4 batches because I only have the Magic Bullet but it worked great!) Add salt and pepper at the end. If you want to add the chili butter (or maybe just a bit of chili flakes) and the peanuts, do it right at the end. We squeezed a bit of lime into our soups one time and that was nice too.

 

After Oprah and her staff did the week long vegan challenge, they decided to continue having meatless meals one day a week at their office cafeteria, hence, meatless Monday! It's a great idea to reduce the amount of animal products you eat, even if it is just for one day a week. Or if not for a whole day, try having just one meat meal a day and the rest vegetarian, and definitely try the carrot-ginger soup!

This soup is silky and so flavorful. Next time, I will make a much bigger batch because we gobbled it all up quickly. But the point is, I will definitely be making this one again!