I do apologize. I never got this up over Easter. I should have as it would have been rather timely.

Unleavened bread may not be as desirable a recipe as brightly coloured Easter cup cakes or delicious chocolate eggs but perhaps is more in keeping historically with the period of time leading up to Easter Sunday.

One of my big passions is re-creating authentic recipes from our past history. Currently most of my re-creations date from the home front during the 1940′s although my research is expanding into Medieval history too. However Easter seemed an ideal opportunity to re-create an authentic recipe dating from over 2000 years ago and still used today by many people for religious reasons and others because of climate (unleavened bread packs and travels well if you are on foot or on a camel out in the desert!)

The recipe below made around 10 large saucer size flat breads…. I rolled them out as thinly as possible. To half the recipe I added herbs for some interest. They kept well for a few days and we used them over Easter for family lunches consuming them with some cheese. Pity we didn’t have some wine too!

Unleavened Bread for Passover Service
3 cups whole wheat flour
1/3 cup olive oil,
1 1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup water

Sift flour and salt. (Whole barley flour may be substituted for whole wheat flour). Blend in oil. Add water. When correctly followed, this recipe makes a soft dough. If the dough is too stiff, the bread will be tough. Break off a piece of dough about the size of a walnut. On a floured board, flatten dough with hands, then roll paper thin, as for strudel. Add flour as needed to keep dough from becoming sticky. Roll out until dough is the size of a saucer. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. If cookie sheet requires greasing, use olive oil. Bake at 375ºF. for 7-8 minutes. Watch closely to avoid burning. If not using for Passover, may substitute butter for olive oil and milk for water.

To be totally and biblically authentic I suggest you check out this page on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzo

Images courtesy of the BBC taken from video below- please click to watch

With Royal Wedding fever rapidly spreading like a virulent strain of influenza, it is abundantly obvious that the Royal Wedding on April 29 is going to be a spectacular occasion. A spectacular occasion I may hasten to add that will cost the British tax payers an estimated 48 million UK pounds and the economy an estimated 5 billion. On the other hand there will be over 600,000 people lining the streets of London to be there for Prince William and Kate Middleton and undoubtedly the Royal Wedding will once again raise the status of Great Britain as a unique tourist destination with its sense of tradition, history and beauty as over 1 billion people watch the pageantry world wide via TV & Internet.

I for one enjoy the Royal Weddings…. it is part of history, and will provide stories that will be told in a hundred years to come down through generations. I’d rather not get into the politics of it all…

Tongue in cheek fun- How to be a British Royal

Although these days we are more of a classless society (well that is not totally true but class structure is less pronounced than it was 100 years ago in Great Britain and certainly here in Canada) there are still some interesting predominant characteristics of our more modern monarchs.

One of them is FRUGALITY in normal day to day life… and I totally believe it.

One can sense the Queen is happier in her green wellies and Barbour jacket re-heating leftovers for dinner and watching trashy TV…. than flouncing around in Versace, fretting about a bikini wax and boring state banquets.

I once spent the night in a huge beautiful hall in Norfolk. The hall was owned by an elderly Baron (I shan’t share his name) and his wife. These true blue bloods exhibited the traits of the Upper Classes…behind closed doors they adored trashy loud TV, bawdy discussions, drinking cheap gin and a wealth of smelly dogs…..frugality and penny pinching oozed from their pores but that wouldn’t be surprising seeing large family estates cost a fortune to upkeep….

I have to say they were rather amusing…

Good luck to Prince William and Kate Middleton. I think Wills would be an excellent young king and I hope that if Great Britain maintains its monarchy that we see him crowned.