March

On 9 of March, we celebrate the religious holiday of "Mucenici", a kind of All Saints' Day, in memoriam of the 40 martyrs killed in Sevastia because of their religion - Christianity, about more than 1500 years ago. Housewives prepare pretzels in 8 or O shape, then they make a kind of soup with a lot of sugar, nuts and cinnamon and of course the pretzels. There is also a tradition to drink 44 glasses of red wine.

Ingredients:
500 g wheat flour
3 eggs
250 ml milk
50 ml sunflower oil
150 g sugar
lemon peel
100 g ground walnuts
1 teaspoonful of vanilla sugar
cinnamon powder

Directions:
Make a dough with flour, salt, eggs, milk, oil and 50 g sugar adding them gradually. If the dough is too hard, add a bit of luke water to soften it. When the dough is homogenous, strech it in a layer of 3-5 mm. Leave it for about 10 minutes to dry then roll thin stripes and make “O”-shaped little pretzels till you finish the dough. Leave the pretzels for about 2-3 hours to get dry. Then boil water and salt in a pan. When the water is boiling add the pretzels. The quantity of water must be over the mass of pretzels. Let them boil at low fire for about 15 min. Then add the rest of sugar, the lemon peel and the vanilla sugar. When they are boiled (you taste them) turn the cooker off.
They are served hot/warm in the cooking water topped with ground walnuts, sugar (if you like) and cinnamon.