I don’t celebrate Easter, but I’m very happy to eat the food. In the spirit of co-opting feasts and festive food, today I made Hot Atheist Buns, featuring the eye of Sauron. (In previous years I have decorated the tops of the buns with atheist “A”s, and Flying Spaghetti Monsters.)
(Description: Glazed fruit buns, with impressionistic eye of Sauron somewhat obscured by currants and raisins and sultanas and glace citrus peel.)
The little godless atheists in my household are not fond of fruity buns, so I made some fruit free buns, on which the eye is much more disconcerting.
(Description: Glazed plain buns, with distinct eye of Sauron.)
I used a recipe from Butter Sugar Flour. I made a couple of adjustments to her recipe, substituting brown sugar for caster sugar, and adding a couple of tablespoons full of very very very strong coffee, both in order to get brown rather than white coloured buns.
What food have you been eating, or plan to eat, this Eostre?
Haha, awesome. And ta for the link, I’m always looking for new recipe sources
This is a lot lazier than your effort, but I’ve discovered Hillier’s Hot Cross Chocolate Truffles, and despite being inexplicably missing from the Hillier’s website they’re every bit as wonderful as the name would suggest. Although, they’re really more like a super-condensed christmas cake. Dipped in chocolate…mmmmmm, chocolate. Anyway, I’m going back to the shop tomorrow and grabbing a stash to last me till next year.
Next year, pffft. Who am I kidding…
Chocolate cheesecake. Veal Cordon Bleu. Meatball Arabiatta. Haven’t made up my mind about tomorrow yet.
We tucked into the famous Alex Wuppertaler hot cross, muslim, buns this morning.
This evening we were allowed to have fish and chips because no one blasphemed all day. We needed to pre-order one hour ahead of time from our fave shop where 10 people slaved over the fryers.
I think you should do something with that peanut sauce tomorrow, Paul, or it will go mouldy.
Grumphy – are they really that good?
Thats a rather large bunny that the Hillier gent is displaying on the website. Can anyone person eat that much choccy?
Alas I cant – the caffiene effect so Grumphy and Paul will have to eat my share.
Rather I have recently discovered the benefit of a single orange, eaten first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. I thought this sort of thing was an old wives tale. Certainly increases energy and actually seems to give the appetite a boost especialy when Im struggling to give up the stumulants incl coffee and tea.
However, Happy Easter eating everyone.
The buns look both fun and delicious Deborah.
Started the religious Holy days with chicken soup and matzos on Monday night.
Moved on to Hot Cross Buns today singing loudly
Torn between greed and concern for waist so will eat chocolate egg on Sunday.
Can remember the smoked cod being boiled till it was tougher than old shoe leather and the stink had permeated the whole house. The fish was served with globulous lumpy white sauce, to remind us of Jesus suffering, so no fish!
joe2 @ 3,
Yeah. I was wondering about that. Was getting a little concerned I might poison myself if I left it much longer. Serves me rigfht for blaspheming on Good Friday.
Homebaked Brezn, Weißwurstfrüstück, Weißbier, homebrewed beers of various flavours and types, pa amb tomàquet on homebaked sourdough, and copious amounts of dead animal and homegrown veggies. All week. As usual.
Sorry? It’s what? “Easter”? What’s that?
Oh, I forgot crumpets.
Wombo, Easter is an annual celebration that has something to do with the moon. If you want to really get confused about it read Bede.
Oh, I’ve read Bede Paul. In the original. For fun.
Mmm, crumpets.
Yeah. Crumpets. Today, probably Chicken Parmagiana. Tomorrow or Monday will start cooking my stockpot. Chicken and stuff, it’ll be.
Going a little OT.
Wombo,Re Bede. Yonks ago, it was the first text I read in my serious foray into medieval studies. I made a real botch of it. My lecturer told me I’d underestimated his richness. So I read him again. I have him to thank for learning how to approach and interpret primary sources with some intensity and sophistication. He is fun, that’s for sure.
Yesterday we had:
Babaganoush, tzatziki and hummus with turkish bread, olives, dolmades, keftedes and grilled haloumi.
Followed by 8 hour broiled lamb shoulder and leg marinated in chermoula, with fennel and caramelised onion salad, greek salad and spanakopita.
After which we had home made baklava with cocoa-halva icecream.
I was disappointed there was no chocolate, to be honest…
I had a flatmate once who worked at the in-house bakery at Woolies, in Palmerston North (NZ). The bakers there used to bake a few “666″ buns at Easter for their friends. They were all packaged up and even labelled “666 Buns”, though they weren’t allowed to sell them in the supermarket itself. They never got into trouble as such but one upshot was that Head Office had the label-printers reprogrammed so that the text was defined in Wellington and couldn’t be changed.
My mate never ate the buns himself, of course; he swore all their baked goods were rubbish. Not like the ones in the photos above which look fab!
Oh, and ouzo. Lots of ouzo.
Deborah I hope you were able to tune out from the onslaught of criticisms about big bad “athiests” delivered from a few pulpits yesterday and recounted ad nauseum on the evening news.
We are eating tonight Pacdon’s Lincolnshire Sage Pork Sausages with braised tiny pearl onions and braised fennel, baked tomato, and some of the snappiest green beans I’ve seen for some time (being a City person usually), along with some Penfolds Bin 128 (2003) (hmm…perhaps a whole bottle?). If not fully stuffed by then some delightful vanilla cream millefueille which had our names on them. It is Easter after all – although I feel a mite envious of Andos’ repast, apart from the Ouzo.
Tomorrow is another day but I suspect one which will need to allow for a lot of bushwalking to make up for tonight.
Sun-dried Tomato Chicken with Pasta. Marinated premium breast chicken in a rich, creamy sundried tomato and capsicum sauce. Served with penne pasta and spring vegetables/ (At least, that’s what it says on the packet.) The spring vegetables are zuchinni, tomato, and some sahrivelled kind of asparagus. Very nice.
@mediatracker
Sermons about big bad atheists… wev. I guess they have to entertain themselves somehow. And I groaned with vicarious pleasure when I read what Andos had been eating.
We had friends over for lunch today – a bowl of fattoush, and platters of sundried tomatoes, grilled pumpkin, marinated mushrooms, free-range ham, chorizo, salami, brie, blue cheese, quince paste, hummus, red onion and capsicum jam, fresh bread, followed by chocolate sponge roll, with plenty of NZ sauvignon blanc, ‘though we drank a good Aussie reisling too, all topped off with coffee and more eye-of-Sauron buns.
I can haz recipe?
I’m eating Matzos. I like to plaster it with butter and vegemite…..if my father were still alive he would sigh and roll his eyes at this abomination, it was only last year that I suddenly realised that no doubt his consternation related to the putting of a yeast extract on my unleavened bread at Passover..I mean how stupid was I for doing that?…but really it didn’t even register with me and he never actually SAID anything. I just thought he was being a grump because he hated Vegemite.
“Easter is about the food”
No it isn’t.
Hackensack – Easter is the end of summer, it’s about camping with your mates, BBQs, all day traffic jams, country people going to the city for shopping trips when all the shops are closed. Country towns have street festivals and markets to entertain all the city folk who have returned to the farm or are gasping the last country air before the short cold days of winter arrive.
If Easter is late the office workers can make a long holiday when for 3 days leave you can be on holiday from Good Friday to Anzac Day
Some people undertake superstitious activities like stations of the cross
Kinda bummed about the sermons about “big bad atheists” – the atheists aren’t the problem, the problem is a lot of the social justice doctrine’s been phased out and we’re stuck in a position where nobody likes Christian people as much as they used to.
I personally go by the Jew Rule – that is, if Jews can live their lives without being ashamed of having affiliation to God, it should have the same sense of dignity for Christians who may not have a cool exclusive membership deal but shouldn’t really be picked on for believing in God. This is coming from a guy who was saddened that atheism was left out of my school’s Religious Art Prize, so I helped my atheist friend create one of the first ever Irreligious Icons of St. Douglas Adams of Britain, First Convert to Atheism. The halo we thought could be replaced with an atom pattern.
Maybe I’m just grumbling because I’m nostalgic for days where I wasn’t even born, back when the Church essentially – erm – helped people instead of alienating them.
Deborah, I’m wondering how you managed to get the FSM onto a hot cross bun. Skillz, you haz them.
All I’ll say about yesterday’s feast is that there was very little eaten today.
As far as I know, Katz, the cocoa-halva ice-cream involved some cocoa halva and vanilla icecream from the shops combined in a bowl and re-set in the freezer. It was awesome. 150 g halva to 1 L ice cream.
Sorry, Pavlov’s Cat not Katz.
Felines. We has them.
Thanks v much for iceream tips, brilliant idea. I’ve never tried to freeze halva but now is clearly the time to have a go.
Have put:
I whole chicken.
3 carrots chopped
6 sticks of chopped celery
i tin of Four Bean Mix (drained)
2 large mushrooms, chopped
2 large tins of whole tomatoes
2 large chopped brown onions
1 small bag of small potatoes
a dash of chilli sauce
some salt,
intro a stockpot and am right now starting to slow cook it for several hours.
I’ve got the third and probably final (for this year) batch of buns rising, for afternoon tea with friends today. Ms Eleven has been making them with me. We should have the recipe perfected by the end of the weekend.
Have tasted the stockpot. Its okay. Well, its mainly what I’m eating for the next week so i”m quite pleased.
As one of Deborah’s friends I’d just like to say that the burning eye buns were delicious, as was the bagoush! Thanks for lunch Deborah
Thanks, Scott. The good company was the best thing of all.
Stewed quinces with cream.
They’re better with a mascapone sauce…warm mascapone, scrape out a vanilla pod on top, add enough milk (or cream) to make it a sauce.
This is hilarious. A Christian group tried to put on a *real* Easter display – dealing with the absolute nitty gritty horror of what Good Friday is really all about –you know, as opposed to cute bunnies and fluffy dyed chicks and sweeties and consumption, consumption, consumption.
And what do you think the authorities did? Banned them for being “offensive”, that’s what.
(I wonder if the same people that publish factoids about a supposed “war on Christmas” will get just as exercised about this? Or is it different ‘cos they can’t blame it on foreigners?)
I sauppose I’m the only person in Australia who could do this but I just burnt my week old peanut sauce more or less to a cinder in the microwave. (Was wondering if it was safe to eath anyway.
Toss it away PB … apart from tasting appalling, the remaining nutrients will do you little good.
Have done, Fran. Thanks, anyway.
We’ve been discussing that over on the Creeping Secularisation thread, Helen!
Since you’ve discarded it, this now comes into the totally useless info category, and of course I don’t know what was in your peanut sauce, but I suspect that since the principal source of calories — peanut oil C57_H106_O6 is a rac glyceride, its combustion residue will probably be similar to the result for burning vegetable oils in general.
It is said that reuse of cooking oil is hazardous to health — and one of the things that occurs in developing countries that contributes to various illnesses. Polymerization should occur and consuming this is undesirable for kidneys, liver and other organs. Three is also some discussion in relevant literature about how carcinogenic it is. Peanuts as you probably know, support aflatoxins. If your peanut source contains starchy things, acrylamides are a separate source of risk.
But as you chucked it, it’s all good …
Hadn’t got around to checking out that thread, TT. Sorry for the redundant comment!
Lucky escape, then, Fran.
First time I’d ever made it. At the risk of giving you an opportunity to utterly freak me out, I cook with magarine. 
Olive oil, which is a mono-unsaturate, would be rather better Paul, due to the rather better balance between high- and low-density lipoproteins.
Well, at least it won’t kill me. Thanks, Fran.