Spring festivities in Russia and Vietnam
By Tatiana Burke and Sarah Patterson, Students
Spring celebrations in Russia, and Ayurveda
The spring celebrations in Russia can be divided into three distinct parts: The Passing of Winter (Maslenitsa), Lent and Easter. Maslenitsa has been around hundreds of years before Christianity but Lent and Easter are relatively new traditions that were introduced together with the religion. Eventually it too became adapted to suit the Christian religion. Food is a key element in all three events.
In the pagan times the week long Maslenitsa celebrated the passing of winter by honouring the sun god. Pancakes were made to resemble and honour him. In addition a lot of meat, fish, kaviar, butter, honey and other fatty and sweet food was eaten in great amounts. Nowadays almost every household still makes thin pancakes (crepes) often with fillings such as meat, kaviar, curd, eggs etc.
Lent begins when Maslenitsa ends. During the Russian Orthodox lent food is eliminated gradually during the length of the 40days. It starts with the elimination of meat, then fish, butter, cheese, milk, eggs, sweets etc with the diet of the last week consisting of only bread (without yeast) and water. The most religious individuals hold a fast on water on the last day (Saturday).
As the first star appears on Saturday night the fast is broken and the Easter celebrations begin. There are three main ingredients in a Russian Easter celebration which are always blessed in the church before consumption. As all over the world eggs are coloured, boiled, stuffed and so on. Kulich is baked from many eggs, lots of butter, raisins and yeast, topped with a sugar icing. Lastly Pas’ha (a sweet spread) is made from fine curd, boiled egg yolks, butter and raisins. It is traditionally formed into a pyramid but can take any shape today.
Maslenitsia is usually during the rather dry, cold, possibly windy and very snowy part of winter (before spring starts). Thus this is still Vata season and meat and butter should be digested well due to high digestive power during this time. When spring actually starts to emerge a Kapha pacifying diet in the form of lent is observed. It is true that Easter itself is Kapha aggravating but it lasts only two days as opposed to the 40 day lent.
Bitter taste is eaten in the form of buckwheat and pungent taste is eaten in the form of garlic and onion. Astringent taste consumed in the form of different herbal teas and lately black tea. These products are consumed daily and even more so on festive occasions
Spring in Vietnam
Vietnamese food has had a nice time in the culinary spotlight over the last few years, so most people in the US at this point are familiar with the Vietnamese baguette sandwich called "Banh Mi". The word "Banh" really just refers to something baked or cooked or processed to form something that holds something else. "Banh mi" means "bread", while Banh Tet refers to a dish made of glutinous rice that has pork and mung bean in the middle. Banh Tet, aka Banh Chung, is a food that is traditionally sold, given as gifts, and eaten during the lunar new year.
The story of Banh Tet is that King Hung (one of the many), asked his six sons to present to him a dish that represented the sincerity of their ancestors (Vietnamese, like Chinese culture, traditionally worships ancestors as religion and spirituality) and the Lunar New Year. The dishes would be judged, and the best dish would make it's creator the next king. What a way to choose your successor huh. The princes searched for the rarest delicacies available, but one of them, Lang Lieu, was quite poor and could not afford anything very extravagant. So he used the most readily available ingredients to him- Rice, which was a staple of the diet, mung beans, which were also prevalent in the culture's diet, and pork, the most common and inexpensive meat available. He made glutinous rice and formed it around a mixture of pork and mung bean paste, and molded one portion into a perfect square to represent Earth, and one portion into a perfect sphere to represent Sky. He presented these to the king, and though all of the other dishes that were presented were much more rare and extravagant, none of the others held up to the real sincerity that Lang Lieu's dish brought- Ingredients that the ancestors cultivated and ate, true to their culture and history, and representing the physical world in which we live. Since the competition was indeed about sincerity, Lang Lieu won, became king, and the dish became a staple of Lunar New Year.
This is said to be around 1630 BC, so it's definitely a LONG held tradition.
To go a little further with this, rice as a staple has permeated the language used around food too. The phrase that one says when greeting someone near a meal time, after saying hello of course, is the question "an com chua?". They're asking "have you eaten yet?" but it literally translates to "eat rice yet?" the word for "food" and the word for "rice" are virtually interchangeable, but the word for "rice" is always used when talking about eating something, even if that meal doesn't even contain rice. Though it almost always does in some form, whether its rice noodles, rice paper, rice flour, rice gluten, or whole rice grain.
Also Banh Tet is kinda icky. A lot of people really don't like it but they eat it anyway because of tradition
