Cardamom Banana Bread

Once upon a time I lived where my books live, including the dear booklet of family recipes my paternal grandma helped make before she passed. I'm hoping one day to share that recipe here, but until that's possible I've been using my adaptation of Olga's great recipe. My main changes have been to make the recipe more aromatic and fragrant with the addition of the cardamom and orange blossom water, but the original is definitely worth a try too if you don't like either of those. Whatever you do, enjoy!

Toasty Garlic Bread

This is another 'basic but good' post of a recipe I've long followed with very delicious results. It's quick, easy, and goes with pretty much anything!

Kulich

If you've been to Pascha in Russia, then you've probably seen the dozens and dozens of kulichi in baskets waiting to be blessed on the holiday. They're a standard part of every Pascha basket and Bright Week meal, and are pleasantly versatile, working well when fresh and slathered in syrnaya paskha and when older, toasted, and eaten with butter, jam, or another spread.

Fe'asting Bread

We're officially well into December, which means it's almost time to celebrate the feast day of St. Nicholas of Myra (6/19 December), under whose protection I placed my family not long after my conversion to Orthodoxy. Having a patron saint for an entire extended family is primarily a Serbian Orthodox custom, but when I first came across it the whole idea struck me as extremely practical. I try to pray, but I don't do anywhere near as much praying as I ought to, and so asking someone whose whole life was and is permeated by prayer and who always went out of his way to help others to pray for my family just made sense.