Vigils, Holy Week, and Cooking

As regular readers of this blog know, I was making a real effort to attend all the vigils of the Great Feasts this year. Sadly, because of the Covid exposure, and not wanting to take a chance on exposing my fellow parishoners, I had to miss the vigil for Palm Sunday. So, I'll try again next year.

I attended Matins of the 12 Gospels last night at my parish in Saratoga. It was beautiful. Fr. John Takahashi was visiting us. (He must be close to 90 years old now. I love him. When my son Basil was in the hospital he visited him and did a complete Divine Liturgy in his hospital room.) I have heard some people criticize him for his halting reading of the Divine texts but, come on, English is his 5th langage and he only learned it when he was in his 40s! Subdeacon Paul and Reader John sang all the hymns and responses as a bass and tenor duet. It was gorgeous. It was a three hour service that seemed like 10 minutes.

As far as cooking goes, I'm trying some new stuff. Of course, I am still making the epicurious Paskha cheese recipe. It's been setting in the fridge since Wednesday. Yesterday, I made three pork turines. They are also in the fridge but I am worried they might be too fatty. I could only find 1/2 of the ham hocks I needed so I substituted pork shoulder.

Right now, I am making a paté de campagne. Finding pink curing salt was a pain. No one has it for sale in San Jose. After a couple of hours looking for it in stores I called a sausage company and asked them if they would sell me some. They said they use pure sodium nitrate, whereas curing salt is less than 7% sodioum nitrate, and they can't sell it to anyone who doesn't have a license to handle it; it is poisonous. But he told me that I don't need curing salt if I keep the paté refrigerated and eat it all within a week. So, I'm on the chilling in the fridge before grinding stage so I thought I would take a break and write a blog post. I' need to start on the kulich soon.

Basil is still sick with covid so he is quaratineing at his mother's house. I am sad that he is missing all the services and the fun of cooking.