A twist on the Friday Fish Fry, the Byzantine parish serves up pirohi, halushki and “eggs.”
Epiphany Mall, the name for the Lenten transformation of the parish hall at Epiphany of Our Lord Byzantine Church in Annandale, is a one-stop shop on Fridays in Lent.
Check the bulletin board near the door for the day’s soup selections and the assortment of meatless meals. The pirohi (potato- and cheese-filled dumplings) are sold by the dozen, either frozen or ready to eat both there or carry out. Halushki (sauteed noodles with cabbage) is portioned in plastic containers ready to grab and go.
Each week there are featured vegetarian soups; last week it was potato and green bean, and cheddar broccoli, with a little kick. Breaded, baked flounder, just $3, is a real deal as are the sodas or coffee for just $1.
But there’s plenty more to choose from.
The Men’s Club sells packaged kielbasa (kobase) rings and sticks, promising, “Every bite like a taste of home.”
You can order some of the delicious and beautiful chocolates ahead of time or take your chances that you’ll find the chocolate bunnies, the dark chocolate eggs or the little bags of toffee. There are kolachi (nut rolls) and individually packaged cake slices, tiramisu and brownies. If you gave up sweets, they’ll keep in the freezer.
The Epiphany Ladies Guild sponsors the dinners, and the process is like a well-oiled machine. Volunteers take your order, and the order form is taken to a table near the kitchen where another small army of volunteers is hard at work.
Another nearby table has traditional Slovak and Ukrainian handcrafted items made by the Sisters of St. Basil the Great in Pennsylvania. Those proceeds also go to Ukraine relief.
Daria Parrell has been chairing the annual Lenten Meatless Meals for 35 of the 50-plus years it’s been held. At her side for most of these years is Marsha Puhak. They make the whole enterprise look easy.
Parrell moves from the entrance, past the tables answering questions, pointing out longtime parishioners and spouting statistics on meals served. This Lent they will go through 60,000 pirohi during the six Friday dinners.
One customer bought a half-dozen containers of pirohi and several of soup and halushki for her family. She said she’d be back again before Lent ends.
In the kitchen, huge pots of steaming pirohi are being handled by Bill Fournier, wearing a train conductor hat appropriately, a plaid shirt and huge heat-resistant gloves. Damon Seman ladles on the butter while Jeff Nashwinter and Joe Wegman work on the onions.
Jennifer Walter said she came from Arlington to the Byzantine parish because she was interested in trying Ukrainian food. She gave the fish and soup a thumbs up.
Deacon Elmer Pekarik, who’s been at the parish for 24 years, was manning the dessert table. He said a lot of neighbors come. “They just hear about it and show up,” he said. “Its old Slovak food.” He said many grew up with their parents serving this food. “It’s their heritage.”
Another part of the parish’s heritage is pysanky, Ukrainian Easter eggs. Last Friday, the evening included a workshop to learn how to “write” Easter eggs.
Kalyna Watts and Elisabeth Dablow taught the class. Chris Malm, Watts’ mother, taught pysanky for three weeks each year for 30 years, and Watts learned to do this when she was 3 years old.
“Most Ukrainian families have a table set up at home all during Lent,” Watts said. Her 10-year-old son “comes home from school and picks one up to work on it to think and destress.”
Sean and Alexis Rao, parishioners at the Basilica of St. Mary in Alexandria, brought their son, Elias, 2-and-a-half-years old. They saw an ad in the Catholic Herald a few years ago and decided to come. After the cautions about the dangers of the lit candle, Elias got to work.
Watts explained some of the typical symbols used on Ukrainian eggs. “They all mean something. An eight-point star is the morning star, the symbol of the Mother of God who came before Christ.”
Raw eggs are used and a tool called a kitska is heated and beeswax is used to draw the patterns on the egg. A first dip in a light dye preserves anything under that wax as white. Added designs and another dye preserve those patterns in the first color, and so on.
Watts guided students to choose either fire tones, orange and red, or water tones of green and blue.
The last step is to carefully heat the wax and rub it off to reveal the multi-colored patterns.
“I might do (the class) again,” said Lilly McNeill, who just moved to Fairfax. “I love it.”
Augherton can be reached at [email protected].
Find out more
Lenten Dinners are March 28 and April 4, 11.
For more info, go to eolbcc.com.
