on palm sunday

In Finland children decorate willow twigs with paper flowers and colourful feathers, then give twigs to their parents, grandparents etc. on Palm Sunday and get something - often chocolate eggs - for return. Some children go from door to door in their neighbourhood (kind of like trick or treating in the U.S.). Traditionally the twigs represent palm leaves, but this orthodox tradition from Eastern Finland has gotten mixed with the Western tradition: in Western Finland people used to believe that Easter is the time when witches do all kinds of tricks on people, and nowadays children often dress up as witches on Palm Sunday.





I didn't see any witches today, and forgot to get willow twigs, but a dinner party of sorts was a fun ending to this grey, rainy weekend. Miss J and miss R came for dinner and egg painting, and I kind of outdid myself by serving three courses. First we had soup made of frozen peas, very easy but very good.

The main course was beetroots with honey, rosemary and goat's cheese, with some carrots and barley.





And for dessert I had made a chocolate orange cheesecake. I was a bit afraid I'd be left with half the cake, but I needn't have worried - the cake was mostly gone when the girls left.