The Smells of Easter by Roseanne Dowell

Dedicated to my parents, especially my mother who made Easter so special for us. First published in Nostalgia Magazine March 2005

Easter was a busy time in our house during the 50’s.  It began Holy Wednesday, with the baking of our special Easter bread, Paska*, or Babka, as it’s sometimes called.  My sisters and I helped gather the ingredients and set them on the table. Mom stood on a chair and took out the special round pans she used only for Easter bread. I’m not sure why, but this bread had to be round.

 First, we measured the milk and set it on the stove to scald. Next Mom measured the yeast. I loved the smell of it. One year, enticed by the aroma, I stuck my finger in it and tasted it. I couldn't’ get rid of the bitterness out of my mouth and my brothers, sisters and mom laughed at me for being foolish enough to try it.  I wondered how something that smelled so good could taste so bad.               

           Once the ingredients were mixed together Mom began kneading the dough.  I thought it looked like fun, until I got older and she let me try it. Kneading bread dough is hard work and we had to knead it until it blistered. After she kneaded it it was set to rise.  We often sneaked in the kitchen and pinched off a piece and ate it. Something about the taste of raw dough kept us coming back, no matter how much my mom yelled at us.

After an hour or so, Mom turned the dough out onto a special board my uncle made for her from an old table. She reserved a small piece of dough and cut the remainder into even portions for the loaves.  She put the loaves in the pan and took the reserved dough, rolled it between her hands like a snake and cut off pieces to form a cross on each loaf and put the loaves in the oven. The savory smell of fresh baked

bread filled the house for hours.  The bread was then stored in plastic bags for Easter Sunday.

Holy Thursday was beet-making day.   My mother used fresh beets and horseradish for this delicious relish*.  After she cooked the beets, she grated them on the small side of a grater and suffered many a skinned knuckle. In later years, she purchased six cans of whole beets and a jar of horseradish from the grocery store. I’m not sure what gave her the idea, maybe she got tired of skinned knuckles, but one year she brought out her old meat grinder and attached it to the table, added the beets, grinding them into a finely shredded consistency. I loved watching the beets come through the grinder.  After the beets were ground, mom boiled vinegar, added sugar to it and mixed it with the beets. When it cooled she added horseradish, tasting it until it was just right.  The vinegar blended with the pungent horseradish and filled the house with its stinging smell. If we got too close it made our eyes water.

On Good Friday Mom baked a ham and boiled kielbasa.  The kielbasa had been in the refrigerator for several days.  Every time we opened the refrigerator door, the rich garlicky aroma tantalized our taste buds. Sometimes we opened it just to get a whiff.  As the aroma of the ham and kielbasa wafted through the house our mouths watered, but since it was Good Friday, samples of the delicious smelling meats were forbidden.  We could hardly wait until Easter.

 Friday night, Mom made sirok*, Easter cheese.  We called it yellow thing.   My older sister and I cracked several dozen eggs into a large pot and beat them with the electric mixer. Mom filled another larger pot with water and set it on the stove to boil. After we added milk, sugar, and nutmeg to the eggs, we beat the mixture a little more. Mom then took the mixture to the stove and set that pot inside the large one, creating a double boiler.   We took turns mixing it since it needed constant stirring.  As the mixture began to curdle, it formed a solid almost scrambled egg texture. The liquid separated and turned a bluish green. Once it curdled, Mom poured it into a colander lined with cheesecloth.   While it drained, she tightened the cheesecloth into a ball and tied it.  She hung it over the sink from a hook and let it drain overnight.   In the morning, she removed it from the cheesecloth. The sweet spicy smell of the nutmeg lingered for hours.

Saturday afternoon, Mom sent one of us to the attic to get the blessing basket.  She lined the basket with a towel, set a loaf of bread, a large piece of ham, kielbasa, sirok, several hard cooked eggs, and a small container of beets into the basket and covered it with a fancy white doily that she Ohio, many churches carried out this tradition. I believe some still do.

crocheted especially for it. The blessing of baskets was a custom from the old country and even though we lived in

  My father, sisters, and I took the basket to church. This was a special service and before the blessing, we removed the doily.  The Priest went up and down the aisle sprinkling Holy Water over the congregation and baskets of food. 

Easter Sunday after church, Mom took out the blessed food and everyone had a small piece of it for breakfast. After smelling all these delicious aromas for the past four days, we savored the taste. Easter was a not only a time to rejoice in the new beginning through Christ, but a time to share the love of family and good food.

*Paska or Babka is sweet bread usually with yellow raisins.

*Sirok – a yellow round ball made from equal amounts of milk and eggs (1 dozen eggs to 1 quart of milk) add sugar and nutmeg to taste.

Beet Relish

6 cans whole beets grated

½ cup white vinegar, boiled

2/3 cup sugar 

Horseradish to taste

In a large bowl, grate the beets.  Boil the vinegar. Add the sugar to it and let it cool slightly, then pour it over the beets.  Add horseradish to taste. I start with
2 tablespoons, but depending on hot you want it more can be added.

Trouble Comes in Twos

Roseanne's books can be found at   Amazon  

Monday Was Wash Day by Roseanne Dowell

      Dedicated to my mom who taught me more than how to do laundry. This was my second published work, published in Good Old Days Magazine in May 2004. 

      Bright and early every Monday, Mom and I went to the basement. As I stood by her side she taught me the proper way to sort clothes- whites, towels, colors, work pants and jeans. We pulled the old wringer washer from the corner  to the stationary tubs. She filled it with scalding hot water and turned the machine on to start it agitating. After she added whatever soap was on sale at the time, she always added a bar of Fels Naphtha that she

let me grate on an old grater. The long curls of soap slid off the grater into the water. I loved

watching the scorching water swallow them up as it agitated into suds.

Once the soap dissolved, we put the white clothes in first. Mom pushed them into the water with her wash stick, an old broom handle, being careful not to splash herself with the steaming hot water. She closed the lid. While the clothes washed, we strung the clothes line in the basement on cold or rainy days and outside in the warm sunny weather, which was limited in Ohio.

 Back in the fifties, we didn't have a dryer so everything had to be hung. Besides, Mom said there was nothing like the smell of fresh laundered clothes straight off the line in the warm weather. She climbed on a stool made especially for her and pulled that line so tight someone could walk across it and then gave it another yank before securing it with a knot.

Back into the basement, we scrubbed the two stationary tubs, and filled them with water.

Mom added bleach to the first tub and the other held plain rinse water. After the clothes washed for about 15 minutes, Mom used the wash stick and pulled them out of the washer, the water still being too hot to touch. She put them carefully through the wringer. My job was to make sure they didn't wrap around the rollers, which sometimes happened anyway causing it to pop, separating the rollers. We untangled the clothes and she re-tightened the knob. It was always very frustrating when that happened and took valuable time away from a busy day.

We let the clothes soak for a few minutes in the bleach pushing them around with the stick, so we wouldn't slop the bleach water on ourselves. After we rinsed them, we drained the bleach water and added fresh water and rinsed the clothes again, changing the rinse water after every load. We rinsed the clothes thoroughly by lifting them in and out of the water up and down repeatedly. It looked like fun until she let me do it.  I found out how hard it was and how heavy wet clothes were. It was backbreaking work. After the last rinse, Mom sent the clothes through the wringer and I guided them into a basket that sat on a bench next to the washer. The next load to go in was the towels, as most of them were light colors or white. While they were washing, we hung the first load.
I helped by handing my mom clothespins and the clothes, saving her from bending over. She

always tried to make a game of it, singing and teasing to help make it fun. About halfway through she sent me to the garage for the wooden clothes props which we hooked under the line and raised it up, so the clothes didn't hit the ground. No matter how tight Mom pulled that line, the wet clothes made it sag. The clothes props had a groove in them to hold the line so it couldn't fall out as it flapped back and forth in the breeze.

She hung the work pants with pant stretchers in the legs, to keep them taut and made the

crease. As soon as the clothes were dry, we removed them to make room for new ones.  Most days the last load of laundry was on the line by noon. It usually didn't take them long to dry. We snapped them hard when we removed them to get rid of excess wrinkles and folded them immediately, then Mom sorted them onto piles for each of us kids to put away. The clothes that needed ironed were sometimes taken off the line damp or sprinkled with water, rolled into a ball, and stored in a plastic bag. Tuesday was ironing day.

 You can find Roseanne's books at   Books We Love or Amazon 

Fireworks, yum cha and vodka by Sheila Claydon

I'm living in Sydney, Australia for a few months. The deal is a winter in the sun in exchange for caring for my nine month old baby granddaughter on the days when both her parents are working. 

So what is it like living in a small city apartment instead of a sprawling house in a village on the northwest coast of England? Well on a daily basis it's not so different. There are still chores to be done and meals to be prepared. True the garden has shrunk to a few pots and a raised bed on the balcony, but there is still greenery, and the wind that whistles up from the harbour is every bit as blustery as the wind back home. The view is very different though. Instead of trees and fields I have a bird's eye view of the city skyline. I also have the added benefit of a pool and a spa and, of course,  the endless warmth that is Australia. No jackets needed, nor shoes really except to be polite. Instead, suncream, dark glasses, a hat and bottled water are de rigueur when leaving the apartment.

The other differences are more interesting though. My daughter-in-law is Chinese and my son has a Russian boss. This means that as well as Australians and Tasmanians they have many friends in the immigrant community, so over Christmas and the New Year I met American lawyers and chemical engineers, a Chinese tea importer and a Russian who owns several diamond mines, Chinese, South American and English bankers, a Phillipino nurse, accountants and financial analysts from China, property investors from Japan, China and Tasmania, an Australian clothes importer, a retired Australian TV producer,  IT specialists from India, the UK and Japan, and other immigrants from Singapore, France, Vietnam and Spain as well as a whole lot of children with the blood of two nations in their genes. It was an eclectic and fascinating mix and everyone of them without exception was friendly, outgoing and full of confidence. Inevitably this rainbow nation has given me a whole lot of ideas for future books, so many in fact that it's unlikely I'll ever be able to use them all.

More importantly, I've learned a lot about the traditions of other cultures. Although it's obviously a generalisation, I've discovered that many Asian parents co-sleep with their children in the early years. The mothers also follow their toddlers from room to room with a bowl of food or a drink in order to spoon a morsel into their mouths whenever they can. Despite having a well paid and successful career some of the brightest women succumb to their ancestral traditions, another of which includes being confined to bed for a month after giving birth while their mother takes care of the baby. Fortunately, from my perspective, my highly educated daughter-in-law refused to comply when her own daughter was born and my granddaughter is fast becoming a robust Australian who sits happily in her high chair, eats everything offered and  sleeps 7 - 7, alone, in her own bed. 

I've learned that manners vary enormously too and so do eating habits. On the whole the Chinese eschew anything sweet, never drink wine with rice, eat enormous amounts of vegetables and are very health conscious, whereas Europeans, Australians and Americans prefer BBQs with large quantities of meat and fish, rarely refuse the fries, and are happy to drink wine or beer with everything. 

Dress is very casual too. Shorts, t-shirts and thongs are the order of the day whether it's a BBQ, a shopping trip, or a day at the beach, and every Friday is 'Dress Down Friday' at work. The only exception is a party and even then it's mostly the women who turn on the glamour. And how the people of Sydney party. Celebrations started at the beginning of December and carried on until well after the New Year. Now they are enjoying a short hiatus before Australia Day and then it will be the Chinese New Year. 

The thing I've noticed more than anything though, is how young the population is. Everywhere I go there are young people enjoying themselves and pregnant women and babies of all nationalities, shapes and sizes. In the city as well as at the tourist spots there are fathers pushing strollers, tiny babies in carriers, toddlers tripping over their own feet, and older children, brown as berries, dancing along in thongs and shorts. Of course with all this youth comes technology and on the train the other day my husband and I were amused to discover we were the only people actually conversing. Everyone else in the very crowded carriage was plugged into a device be it an iPod, a cell phone or an electronic reader. 

Best of of all, however, was my meeting with an Anglo Indian from London who is married to an American lawyer and lives in New York. She was visiting her brother and his Chinese wife for the festive season - the ethic mix in Australia is truly mind blowing. Discovering that I am a writer  she not only downloaded Mending Jodie's Heart, the first book of my When Paths Meet trilogy, while she was talking to me, she also told me she was taking it to her book club as soon as she returned to the States. She did, however, check with me first that the heroine was feisty and independent. If not then the book was an absolute no no! As if I would ever write anything else.....

And lastly and most intriguingly I met Lady Sippington but you'll have to wait until next month's post to discover her story.

Many of my books can be found on the Books We Love website at  http://bookswelove.net/authors/sheila-claydon/

What makes a writer?

What makes a writer? There must be a thousand answers to that but in my case it’s because other people fascinate me, and on my recent journey to Russia that fascination got the better of me despite the glory of my surroundings.

The Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg is almost beyond description. The 3 million people who visit each year cannot begin to view even a fraction of the millions of artifacts on display or stored in its ten buildings, seven of which are monuments of 18th and 19th-century Russian culture, so when I was taken to the banks of the River Neva to admire one of the most iconic views of the city, I should have been concentrating.  Instead something else caught my eye.

Sitting close together on the edge of the cobbled walkway were a young couple. Next to them were discarded takeaway coffee cups. She was holding a camera. Why was I more interested in two strangers than in the magnificent view opening up before me? Why did I stop looking in the direction of the tour guide’s pointing finger, and what made my ears deaf to the history all around me?

The answer is simple. I am a writer. So while my companions listened to the guide’s potted history of the city and how, once upon a time, it had been a great trading port, I was more fascinated by the couple in front of me who appeared to be completely oblivious to the rest of the world.

Why were they here? It was eight thirty in the morning, which explained the coffee but nothing else, so while everyone else in my tour group learned about the construction of The Great Hermitage (1771-87), the Russian Revolution (1917), and how more than a million items were evacuated from the museum to the Urals during World War II, I began to create a story about the here and now.

Were they illicit lovers who were stealing a few moments together on their way to their respective jobs, or were they new lovers who couldn’t bear the thought of having to spend a whole day apart? On the other hand, maybe the camera was the clue and they were just tourists like us who had set out to enjoy the view and been sidetracked.

I was intrigued by their body language too. The woman was slightly hunched against the early morning chill, one hand in her pocket, so had it all started when he’d put his arm around her to keep her warm? Was that her clever ploy? Was this their first kiss? Or maybe they were they saying goodbye, knowing they wouldn’t see one another again for a long time, if ever. No! They looked too happy for that. One thing was for sure, they were in love…hopelessly and ecstatically... and for a Romantic fiction  writer like me it was a joy to see.

I’ll never know their story of course, and nor should I. I will use that short glimpse into their lives though. One day, in one of my books, there will be a young couple sitting beside a river and they will be so locked into their own world that they will be completely oblivious to the people passing by. She might even be wearing a green coat…but the story will be mine. Whether The Great Hermitage will also feature remains to be seen!

Visit my website at sheilaclaydon.com where I often use things I have learned on my travels and where readers are promised a ticket to romance when they read one of my books.

On the Casting Couch with Margaret Tanner

Books We Love author Margaret Tanner is the first of the writers who have agreed to sit on my Casting Couch in 2013. As she mostly writes about the tough, hard men who lived in frontier Australia, it is interesting to discover how she 'finds' them, and what she expects them to endure. Margaret's take on working with her characters is as challenging as the characters themselves, and it is fascinating to discover that she prefers tortured heroes with dark secrets. 

Happy New Year and thank you for agreeing to sit on the Casting Couch Margaret. It’s always a treat to talk to a multi-published author and discover how she casts her characters so, assuming you are sitting comfortably, let’s begin.

* * *

Which characters are the hardest for you to develop? Is it the hero, the heroine, the villain, or the secondary characters?

The secondary characters by far. I love a villain, the blacker the better. My heroes are always tortured men with dark secrets.

I'd love to know the psychology behind that choice Margaret! Do these tortured characters start the story for you or do you work through the plot first and then cast the characters later?

I usually have a basic plot first, then the characters grab me by the throat and won’t let go until I write their story.

Wow, they certainly are strong and tortured men aren't they! Can you give an example from a published story?

'Savage Possession' is a good example. Two feuding families. I thought of what would happen if a man got the chance to take his revenge against the daughter (in this case the granddaughter) of his mortal enemy, only to discover that the hatred he had carried around in his heart for years was based on a lie.

That sounds like a very insightful story and one I want to read. When deciding how your characters should look, do pictures inspire you or do you think of someone you know? Or perhaps you just rely on an active imagination?

I rely on an active imagination, but my characters have to be amenable to all the torture and drama I plan to put them through before they get to their 'Happy Ever After.'

You really do like them to be tough don't you! Do you have a system for developing their character traits? I know some people use Tarot or Astrology while others produce detailed life histories. There are also writers who allow their characters to develop as they write. What's your method?

I don’t do any of the things you mention. I somehow get an image in my mind and I work with that. If I close my eyes I can actually see my characters in the flesh, so to speak.

Can their goals usually be summed up in a word or two, or are they multi-layered? Do they change as you write the book? Could you give some examples?

I couldn’t let my main characters get away with just one goal as it would be too easy for them. So, I guess I would have to say they are multi-layered. Most of my heroes are tough, hard men. As I write historical romance set in frontier Australia, they have to be tough to tame a rugged, hostile land. It is the heroine’s influence that eventually softens them.

I'm so relieved to see a little softness creeping in at last!  How do you discover your character’s specific goals? Are they based on back story or do other elements influence their motives?

I think they are mostly based on the back story, but the environment in which they live plays a big part as well. Frontier Australia, like frontier America, wasn’t for weaklings. Only the strong survived.

Times were certainly different then, as shown by the characters you write about, so, last but not least, do you like them? Are they people you would want to spend time with?

I love all my main characters. I wouldn’t be able to write them if I didn’t. They take over my mind, become my friends until their story is done, then they let go of me and ride off into the sunset so I can start on a new story with new characters.

That is so fascinating Margaret. As someone who regularly visits Sydney and enjoys the wonderful lifestyle of modern-day Australians, I definitely need to search out of some of those rugged and fearless men you write about if only to remind myself how hard life used to be on the frontier all those years ago.

* * *

Margaret Tanner is an award winning multi-published Australian author. She loves delving into the pages of history as she carries out research for her historical romance novels, and she prides herself on being historically correct. No book is too old or tattered for her to trawl through, no museum too dusty. Many of her novels have been inspired by true events, with one being written around the hardships and triumphs of her pioneering ancestors in frontier Australia. She once spent a couple of hours in an old goal cell so she could feel the chilling cold and fear.

Her favorite historical period is the 1st World War, and she has visited the battlefields of Gallipoli, France and Belgium, a truly poignant experience.

Margaret, who can be seen here standing beside a historical statue to promote the fact that she writes historical fiction, won the 2007 Author of the Year Award at AussieAuthors.com. She also won it for a 2nd time in 2010. In addition, Frontier Wife won the 2010 Reader's Favorite Historical Romance Award and Wild Oats was a finalist in the 2010 EPIC awards for best historical romance.

Many of Margaret's books have been published by Books We Love. They are available from Amazon at http://amzn.to/136cA26 and you can also visit her website at http://www.margarettanner.com