Easter holidays like any other school break can, for the time pressured parent be a moment of despair. If you're stumped for ideas to keep the children occupied here's something that my Granny used to keep us off the streets... or in my case out of the lambing fields. It involves a country walk, fresh air, recognition of flora, a certain nimbleness of fingers, sewing and cooking skills, and keeps up a traditional custom. And most importantly takes ages. Although when I was a child none of those things occurred to me. How to make a traditional Pasche egg. You will need: - Fresh eggs.
- Gorse flowers
- Onion skins
- Cotton rags
- Optional; flower heads (must be edible).
- Very optional; A day old lamb, a warm oven a cardboard box.
1. Pick the gorse flowers carefully the thorns are vicious. Wrap up warm, April showers can be wintery. 2. When you have gathered all your materials sit around the kitchen table. 3. Place the lamb on a newspaper in the cardboard box and put beside the warm oven. Not in the oven that's another recipe entirely. 4. If you decide to go down the lamb option be prepared to feed the lamb a small amount of ewe's milk at regular intervals. In case you're wondering how the lamb got into this it's cos there was always a lamb in a box at my Granny's house so I thought you might like to keep up the old country ways. 6. Making the eggs ready is really simple. Place onion skins, gorse flowers and flower heads around the egg, tightly wrap in the cloth and then sew up as tightly as possible. If you are using flower heads, and plan to eat your cooked eggs, ensure the flower heads are safe to cook with! 7. When all the eggs are ready place in a pan, cover the eggs with cold water and boil the eggs for about an hour. Yes they will be very hard boiled. And yes they do taste a bit odd but they are edible and again, according to memory, keep a very, very long time. 8. After the eggs have boiled leave them to cool, then unwrap them from the by now messy cloth and damp onion skins and if you're lucky a beautifully marked egg will be revealed. I don't think I will ever forget the smell of pasche eggs, newly born lambs and dog, as we ate our way through our tea of pasche egg out in the fields while my parents battled with yet another lambing season. Which may explain why I prefer chocolate eggs. Yummy. According to Wikipedia: In Christian tradition, decorated Easter Eggs are sometimes said to have an origin in Mary Magdalen giving a red painted egg to a Roman emperor who had previously said that red eggs were more likely than the resurrection of Jesus. There are also many theological interpretations of the eggs as having strong Christian symbolism. However, the giving of decorated eggs at the start of spring predate Christianity by several hundred years, eggs having long been a symbol of fertility, a property strongly celebrated during spring time. Pasche 'Pace' comes from the old English 'pasch' meaning 'Easter'. | 
