For some reason unknown to anyone in my family, we have fritters for Good Friday dinner. Maybe it's a German thing (after all, I am approximately 15% German. A very significant percentage). But probably it all started because someone who lived a long time ago said "Let's have fritters on Good Friday" and the tradition was born.
"What is a fritter?" you ask? Well, the best way to describe it is as a deep fried pancake. Sounds good, right? Kind of. When we were growing up, we used to dread Good Friday dinner and we choked our fritters down down. For some reason, fritters are not all that kid-friendly. I don't know why - but I do know that I like them now. Maybe the tradition make them taste better over time. Or maybe it's the chocolate chips that I add in, I don't know...
Anyway, my Great Aunt Jennie used to make them every year. She would spend all day making fritters for the entire family. The last few years before she passed away, she mentioned to me that I should come over and help her make them because somebody would have to take over the fritter making when she died. When she'd tell me this, I'd say, "No, Aunt Jennie, you're going to live forever" and so I never really took the fritter making seriously. Then, just about four years ago, she passed away. When that first Good Friday rolled around after she had passed, I found our family fritter recipe, I got a hold of a deep frier and I went to work. I was the chosen one - chosen to carry on the fritter tradition by my Aunt Jennie before she died. I am not one to let a family tradition go to waste, so it lives on.
But fritter making is a lot of work! The first year, I under-estimated the amount of time it would take me to make the number of fritters that were required. I started too late in the day and I was literally making fritters during Good Friday dinner - like a short order cook.
The next year, I was prepared and I made the fritters ahead of time, kept them warm in the oven - it still took me almost 3 hours to make them all. Last year, I had a 15 month old to wrangle - but I took on the challenge of adding variations to the fritters. I made plain fritters (as usual) but I also made chocolate chip/banana and apple. This year, I did the same with only slight variations. We had "Old fashioned" fritters (which were the plain ones, but I needed to spruce up the name), plain chocolate chip (which were the favorite amongst the kids) and apple-cinnamon (which were really great!). It took me 2 and 1/2 hours to make the fritters - with two kids - not too shabby!
We hosted Good Friday this year. There was an egg hunt and other Easter festivities. We also had a "Wall of Fritters" where you could write on the wall what your fritter looked like. The best part of fritters growing up (since we didn't so much like eating them) was to figure out what they looked like - kind of like how you stare at clouds and figure out what they looked like. This year, we had alligators, puffer fish, turtles and dinosaurs - lots of different shapes of fritters. If I'm going to be into fritter making for the long haul (pretty much the rest of my life) I should work on my deep frying skills and try to make some serious shapes - Disney themed or maybe Star Wars characters - maybe next year.
Anyway, no pictures of any of the Good Friday festivities because I can't make fritters AND host Good Friday dinner AND take pictures. I am just not that kind of blogger. But here's where the pictures DO come into play...
Next up, we hit the road to Philly to spend Easter with Scott's parents. It was fun to spend time with them and let our girls soak up as much Grandma and Pop Pop time as they could. It was seriously great - so great that I decided to take the day off from parenting on Monday (while we were still there) to have the stomach bug. Not the greatest way to end our Easter weekend, but I'm so glad Scott had his parents to help with the girls while I was in quarantine. We still made it home Monday night and no one else has fallen ill. Woo-hoo!
Dying Easter Eggs in Philly...
At the park with Daddy and Pop Pop...
Easter Egg hunt (notice the bball themed egg)...
Easter baskets...toys galore!
Picture taking proved to be difficult with two uncooperative kids...but we managed some "alright" Easter 2012 pics...
Goodbye fritters and plastic Easter eggs...until next year.
1 comment:
Yeah for Easter in Philly! It was so fun having you all, just sorry you got sick, but fun to have you longer! Your pictures are definitely better than mine, so I will need some sent to me!!
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