Happy Easter - How To Enjoy Excellent Easter Eggs in England And British chocolate

Problem
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
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

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.

Useful Websites
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.

Easter Parades, Passover and Seder: how does this affect me as a traveller, shopper, souvenir hunter and gourmet?

Problem
First - when is Easter?
Second - when is Passover?

Answers
YOUR DIARY

Most diaries list this year's Christian and Jewish and other holidays as well as next year's. No need to thumb through the pages of your diary looking for the dates of Easter and other holidays in tiny print. You probably have a list of Religious Festivals at the front of your diary. (If you don't have dates in this year's diary, last year's diary has this year's dates.)

Five-year diaries don't have dates of festivals. Cut out the religious date pages from last year's diary and tape them into your five-year diary.

EASTER 2018
Christian Western
2018 Good Friday, March 30, 2018, then Easter Day Sunday April 1st, 2018, followed by Bank holiday on Easter Monday, April 2 2018, making a long weekend.

Eastern Orthodox - Easter Day April 8th, 2018

Jewish Passover, 1st day, Saturday March 31
(Some people will have a second seder night outside Israel to be sure they are always celebrating on the same day as they would if they were in Israel. The second seder is often at the home of the mother or daughter or sister or sister-in-law of the first day's hostess, to share the work, and using up any leftover food from the first day on the second day.) If you are visiting or entertaining Jewish people during the festival.

The Discovery Channel did a programme on the origin of the story in the bible and set various detectives on discovering possible origins of the story of the ten plagues which caused the Pharaoh to think God was punishing him and that he had to let Moses and the Children of Israel depart across the Dead Sea or Red Sea (various mis-spellings - too long to explain) to the Promised land.

One set of modern detective findings was that the smiting of the firstborn could have been the same as the origin of the St Vitus' Dance in the USA and Europe, symptoms caused by poisoning by mouldy infected grains stored in a very wet storage house. Hence the custom of throwing out last year's crop before harvesting the spring crop of grain - leading to matzoh made from unleavened bread or cracker, and pancakes using up the last of the stored grain made into flour, on pancake day.

Another story you are likely to hear is that the group left Egypt in such a hurry that they had no time to allow the bread to rise.

It's possible, and it the most likely theory which I have heard.

Why should you care about all of this?
HISTORY -
very interesting for history buffs.
CRIME SCENES -
very interesting for archaeologists and detectives.
RELIGIONS -
seeing how religions relate and develope.
ART -
the last supper, showing Jesus and the disciples around the table with wine and bread would have been a Passover meal.
TRAVEL -
with two festivals coinciding, flights are likely to be booked up in countries celebrating either Easter or Passover or both, and airlines travelling to, from or through those countries on those dates.
HOTELS -
hotels are also likely to be booked up by holidaymakers, both the religious ones holding celebrations or going to particular countries, and secular families and families of other religions simply booking travel during school and work holidays.
CULTURAL OPPORTUNITIES
Religious - Passion plays: Oberammergau in Bavaria in Germany, in 2020, booking now.
Secular - Easter Parades.
Israel and worldwide - a chance to be invited to a family Seder night.
Jewish Orthodox hotels will have big events.
Families of mixed marriages might like to go to communal seder night held at liberal synagogues.

SHOPPING
Easter goods:
UK and European shops and supermarkets will be stocking chocolate eggs, flowers, Easter greeting cards.
Some cities will have Easter parades.
Fifth Avenue, New York. Bring your camera and your bonnet or hat.

Passover goods:
Supermarkets and shops will be stocking:
Kosher for passover wines, matzos and foods.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
2019
Christian Western
Good Friday April 19, 2019
Easter Day April 21, 2019

Christian - Eastern Orthodox April 28, 2019

Jewish Passover 1st day April 20, 2019

Useful Websites
To send a greeting card:
123
http://www.123greetings.com/events/passover/thank_you/
Jacquie Lawson cards
https://www.jacquielawson.com/card/feast-of-freedom/h-0/3352802

Gifts For Your Family Or Your Host's Family
Amazon has loads of stuff including books which you can look inside:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Passover-Coffee-Quotes-Jennise-Conley/dp/0615787053/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522077264&sr=8-2&keywords=passover+gifts&dpID=51fLcUJbMFL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
http://store.chabad.org/catalog.asp?dept=2001
Chabad have a questions page, Seder gifts, and all sorts of suprising and amusing things including a  7 branch candelstick holder with each candle held by a different cat.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I have many other posts on religious and secular holidays around teh world, Israel, Chinese New years, educational, enlightening and amusing. Please share links to your favourite pages. You can also contact me with your questions and comments through Facebook.