Easter is a religious festival but also a commercial success story. The shops are full of flowers - the oddest thing is the blue flowers. The huge orchids are magnificent.
Best of all, Easter eggs.
Which eggs?
Answer
My favourite is anything which has a second use as a game or a toy or something to keep. One year eggs came with mugs.
Cadbury Creme egg mug, with dieter hiding. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
Last year, after Easter 2017, I bought a creme egg mug in Tesco Express and I thought it came 'free' with an egg. This year, Easter 2018, you can buy direct from Cadbury's, a set with two mugs and assorted eggs. The price when I looked on Sunday April 1st was £18 reduced to £15, plus £3.95 postage in the UK. (Details of websites at end.)
This year I got out my old mug to use it. What does this suggest? Cream eggs and drinking chocolate. Both are highly calorific.
This year I couldn't find anything free. I am a sucker for anything free and permanent. This year what caught my eye on Saturday in Tesco Express was a packaging which makes a mini-theatre. Just a bit of carboard? That won't last long. Later I regretted not buying it. I sent somebody in to get one, or at least take a photo on Sunday, but the item had already sold out. it wasn't online either.
I looked on line at converting cardboard boxes into theatres, and realised that any box with a window, in face any box when you cut out a window, makes a miniature theatre for a child with finger puppets.
Cheap DIY Easter Eggs
I wish I had time to make dyed boiled eggs.
If you invest in a chocolate mould one year, you will have make-your-own Easter egg apparatus forever.
This is the time to buy Easter eggs, but for chocoholics, no need to stop when Easter ends. That's when you can buy a bargain, if you wait until just after Easter when the prices come down - or indulge during Easter and afterwards.
The Height of Luxury - The Harrow Restaurant At Little Bedwyn
The best 'egg' ever is this mock egg at the expensive but worth it for special occasions Haro at Little Bedwyn restaurant. We sign up to their newsletter and once of twice a year we indulge in a special offer meal.
Here's the dessert. Spoiler alert. It looks like an egg. But it's some kind of white mixture, a cross between cream and meringue, with a yellow center inside - might be mango. Plus a sweet biscuit to dip. Mock up of a soft boiled egg.
Dessert Egg At The Harrow restaurant, Little Bedwyn. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
The Harrow at Little Bedwyn, near Marlborough, England, UK.
In case you were wondering, dessert with the double ss is the one with lots of sugar. The desert with one s is the desert with sand and little water.
What's the real story behind all this Easter business? If you go way back, you'll find pagan or pre-Christian celebrations of the arrival of spring, the spring flowers, the eggs, circles and symbols of new life, animals coming out of hibernation to enjoy the warmth. and rabbits breeding like rabbits producing Easter time bunnies. The Christians were banned from eating egg during lent, a time when you give up flour - hence pancake day using up the last of last year's flour, (like the Jewish Passover where you can eat crackers but not leavened and risen bread.
As for eggs, Victorian times brought in eggs in satin boxes or with silk cloth coverings. Then there were Fabergé eggs, jewel-encrusted eggs. When I was a child in the 1950s I remember my delight at the hard sugared eggs with teeny scenes inside, viewed through a hole creating a window at one end.
Now we have chocolate eggs which have high calorie counts despite the hollow centres.
Chocolate Bunnies
If eggs aren't your thing, how about chocolate bunnies?
DIY Decorated Eggs
In Eastern Europe eggs are decorated at home, using wax to draw a pattern, with a home-made point on a homemade pen. Dyes are natural, such as using onion skins, which takes several hours. Leaves can be used to create patterns. Geometic designs are also popular. Wiipedia explains how to dye eggs and even how to make the writing instrument.
Here's the wonderful Pysanka Museum in Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (region), Ukraine.
Українська: Музей писанкового розпису в Коломиї, Івано-Франківська область
English: Pysanka Museum in Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine
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| Date | 20 August 2017, 17:15:52 |
| Source | Own work |
| Author | Tohaomg |
| Camera location | 48° 31′ 41.49″ N, 25° 02′ 23.91″ E   | View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap - Google Earth |  |
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Pysanka, decorated egg, is the singular. Pysanky is the plural.
From Wikipedia article on Pysanka. Photo by Lantuska of eggs in Pysanka Museum in Ukraine.
For more see next post.
https://www.cadburygiftsdirect.co.uk/gift-ideas/shop-by-occasion/easter-gifts/cadbury-creme-egg-easter-gift.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pysanka
Official Ukraine tourist board - to visit the egg museum
http://www.traveltoukraine.org
Excellent website showed me everything from opera and jeiwhs music to a Youtube video on how to paint Easter eggs, and the fact that in 1066 Lviv was the biggest city in Euopre with a population of 50, 00 compared with 20,000 in London, England.
Official UK tourist site if you need to visit to visit The Harrow restaurant, Cadbury's Chocolate Tour or shop in Birmingham
visitbritainshop.com
theharrowatlittlebedwyn.com
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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