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Busy weekend, lots of cooking

Our Saturday was really busy, with lots of cooking ahead of Jirair’s karasoonk (40th day memorial service) on Sunday.

It was good to get more practice with these Armenian recipes, and there are definitely future posts in the works.

We made:
Five 9×13 trays of spinach boereg
Two batches of imrig helva (which turned out pretty well this time!)
Big pot of gatnabour
About 90 tahini cookies
A ton of choereg, with two different recipes
Vospov kheyma

We also picked parsley leaves off stems for a few hours, and cut bags and bags of pita bread.  Some pictures of the mess below.

 

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Lighting candles for Hagop

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I’ve been going by our church after work a lot since my father-in-law Hagop passed away, to light a candle and say a prayer. One time I went, I saw that someone who visited before me had written something in Armenian in the sand in front of their candle. Often times people will draw crosses in the sand, but it was the first time I had seen a word written out. So I’ve been writing Hagop’s name in the sand sometimes now too <3.

Blessing of the children

Today there was a Blessing of the Children service at our church, and everyone who had a child baptized in the last year came up to the altar for a special blessing.
The service is in keeping with Biblical tradition, and tied to the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord to the Temple, which the Armenian Church celebrates every February 14th. In Armenian, it is Տեառնընդառաջ, Dyarnuntarach (or I’ve seen it transliterated as Tiarn’ndaraj), translated as “the bringing forward of the Lord.”
We are grateful for the gift of baptism for our little baby, and grateful for the wonderful church community he will grow up into.
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Children baptised in the last year, along with their families, at St. James Armenian Church

 

Armenian plaki recipe

I used to HATE plaki. When I first started dating my husband, 12 years ago, it was a staple in their house. My father-in-law Jirair made it all the time. He was quite generous with the olive oil, and I was still a picky, image-conscious teenager, so anything with oil was YUCK. But I’ve come around, a decade later, and now tolerate this healthy and filling dish 😉
My husband and mother-in-law cooked some today, using the Babikyan/Ayvazian family recipe, which is also published in our church’s cookbook.
She doesn’t give a lot of detail, so here are some additional tips!
  • First of all though, there’s a typo in the recipe. We always put in 1 green and 1 red bell pepper into the plaki too.
  • Carrots and bell peppers should be chopped into bite-sized chunks.
  • Finely mince the garlic. This recipe is fairly garlicky, but of course always add more to taste 😊
  • My mother-in-law says you can’t make this with canned beans, but I’ll give it a try someday and let you know how it goes.
  • You’ll know the plaki is done when the skin starts to split on the beans. Don’t let it get too mushy.

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Yotnorek

Traditionally, the one week after the funeral, there would be a graveside requiem service for the person who passed. It would usually be done in the morning, and (I’m pretty sure) is called “Yotnorek”. “Yot” means seven.
We didn’t end up going over to the cemetery this morning, but hope to stop by later tonight. We wouldn’t do the service ourselves without our Priest, but the service is included in a funeral services book that we have at home, so we may say a prayer or two from it. Even if the cemetery is closed and we have to pull over by the side of the road, I’d like to stop by.
Meanwhile, I decided to wear my son’s khatch (cross) today. It’s the cross he was given at his baptism, but it’s sized for an adult, so he doesn’t wear it himself yet. (He’s only 5 months old.) Feeling in need of some extra strength today.
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Giragmoodk and New Sunday

The Friday after the funeral, we got a call from one of my father-in-law’s old friends. He wanted to make sure we knew about a Bolsetsi tradition: Giragmoodk. “We’ll come over. Someone should make halvah.”

So I frantically searched for a halvah recipe… while my husband Googled “Giragmoodk”… and my sister-in-law Mary called her Romanahye parents to make sure this was a “real thing”. With their reassurance, we invited people over for the following evening.
Giragmoodk, according to the Bolsetsis (Armenians from Istanbul), is an Armenian funeral tradition that originated in Istanbul. The Saturday evening after the burial, the family gathers at home, and a priest or deacon comes to say some memorial prayers.
“Girag” comes from Giragi (Sunday), and “moodk” which means entrance. It’s translated something like “entering Sunday” or “entering into Sunday.” In ancient traditions, Sunday begins after sundown on Saturday evening. What’s special about this Sunday, that it needs to be marked in a way?
Well, the first Sunday after Easter is called Nor Giragi (Նոր Կիրակի), or New Sunday. It’s a day to celebrate our new lives, after the Resurrection at Easter. The first Sunday after a person’s death and burial is their New Sunday. We pray that they get to experience it at the right hand of God, keeping company with the saints, and that God has mercy on their soul.
The actual service at our house was very small, but lovely. Two deacons came over, we gathered in the room where Jirair passed away, we lit a candle and some incense, faced East, and said some short prayers. They were reading from the Mashdots, the Armenian book of services, but I’m not sure if it was an actual service in its own right. (It reminded me of the Hokiehankist memorial service done at the end of every Sunday Badarak mass.)
My halvah didn’t turn out great. Correct flavors, but the consistency was completely off. More like marzipan than the fluffy delicious sweet stuff I’ve had at other Armenian funerals and memorial meals (I think I made imrig halva rather than dry halva). I’ll have to try again before the Karasoonk (forty day memorial service and meal.) 
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Can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good

I’ve had a draft of this blog post sitting in an Evernote notebook for a year and a half now.

I don’t know what I was waiting for… Life got in the way. I wanted the first post to be perfect. I wanted to have half a dozen other posts drafted as back up.

But there’s a sense of urgency now, as my father-in-law passed away last week.

He was a man of a particular generation… A hardworking immigrant, with the church in his bones, to whom family was everything. He was so bright, got into MIT even though he didn’t speak English, graduated in 3.5 years, then brought his family to the United States. He passionately and selflessly loved the Armenian people, history, language, and church. He passed along a lot of what he knew to his four sons, including my husband, but he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease in his last decade, and we were away at college for the last good years. There’s so much we didn’t have a chance to absorb, and we’re mourning the loss of that too. Did we miss the opportunity to really learn Western Armenian? Will we ever be able to recover the knowledge he had of the sharagans and Armenian church history? How will we pass that kind of life along to our children, without him as an example?

So, we’ll blog to keep ourselves accountable as we try to create that kind of life for ourselves. To document and preserve the traditions we encounter in the Armenian diaspora. We’re also excited to share some of the tips and tricks, flashcard decks, and other resources we’ve discovered and created for learning Western Armenian. We hope you’ll laugh and learn along with us, when we try to make simit and they turn out tasting like Southern biscuits. Most of all, we hope this blog contributes to the revival and restoration of the rich Armenian Christian heritage that gives purpose and guidance to our everyday lives, and which our dear Hayrig loved so deeply.