Another day, another celebration 🙂 This one is called Mucenicii in Romanian, which translates as the Martyrs of Sebaste. It’s a religious holiday, celebrating the martyrdom of 40 Roman soldiers who confessed their believe in the Christian faith and were condemned to be left naked into an ice covered pond near the city of Sebaste in Armenia, on a cold winter night, so they might freeze to death. The way we celebrate this in Romania is with a feast day, by preparing a special dish in the honor of the martyrs. It’s the only time of year I get to eat this dish and even if it’s not much, not a very sophisticated affair, I really like it. The dish bears the name of the celebration – “mucenici” – and can be prepared in two ways. The ones shown in the photograph above are the kind we prepare in the south of Romania. The dish consists of pieces of dough shaped as number 8 which we boil in water, adding sugar, cinnamon, ground walnuts and a bit of rum. In the northeast of Romania, in Moldova, they bake the dough and glaze it with honey and walnuts and you can see the result in the picture below. They’re quite yummy and I can’t wait to eat them today. I’ll have to excuse myself for the quality of the photos. They’re from my archives and back when I took them I thought I was taking them for myself so I didn’t pay too much attention to framing or setting up the scene.
