Chess Easter Eggs!

It's after midnight, so, it's technically Easter Sunday now where I live... Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates, and a wonderful time to absolutely everyone! I actually don't celebrate, but I participate in the fun local traditions anyway - and clearly, the best of those is getting to paint eggs! (I'm just treating it as a generic celebration of spring.) Any excuse for some creative activity! :D



This year's easter egg theme was actually a bit of an emergency solution - I usually prefer having a variety of colors, but the only eggs available in all the local supermarkets were brown (and, let's face it, with the food situation being what it is, we were lucky there were eggs), which means I was somewhat limited. (Green and blue dyes only look good on white eggs, and yellow on brown? Forget it!) I mixed red and orange food colorant to get the background color, because I figured pure red would be too dark for proper contrast with the drawings, and pure orange wouldn't really show up on brown eggs. I drew the chess pieces with a brand new food pen (you know, the kind you also use for drawing on fondant and the like) that will be getting a 1-star review from me because it ran out of ink and I wasn't able to fill the dark areas properly, which if you ask me is wholly unreasonable after only six tiny drawings. Anyway, as improvised as they are, I'm happy I have chess easter eggs now. Silhouette style always works for me! And they were so much fun to paint! Maybe I'll eat them while playing online chess? Then again, I wanted to do some old-fashioned baking tomorrow, so, we'll see. :)

Easter fire... and Easter baking.

Guys, if you're thinking that by 'Easter fire' I'm talking about the lovely Pagan tradition, you're wrong. We did not go to the Easter fires last night though I'm sure there were plenty along the riverbanks. Rather, there is a fire in some warehouses, and the city is under a dome of toxic smoke. When we woke up this morning, we were surprised there were no church bell sounds whatsoever, which was a huge surprise - usually, on Easter, all the bells are ringing, and I mean, Hamburg has many old churches with bell towers. We wondered what was going on. Oh, yeah, there's a disaster warning. Citizens are supposed to stay at home keep their doors and windows closed and switch off any ventilation systems, and if even the Christians (who were all for keeping church events open during the pandemic because the lockdowns "interfered with their religious freedom"; I still wonder how many elderly people they killed with that) collectively support that message and cancel their Easter services, I guess shit is serious.

Meanwhile, I was displaying the most important virtue of the good German lady: simulate normalcy while the world is burning. I was planning to bake today, so, I baked!



That's a traditional Easter wreath, in case you were wondering - it consists of a slightly sweetened yeast dough with milk. I used this recipe with some slight alterations. First, I halved the amount of all ingredients, because this thing needs to be eaten today (not just because of tradition but also because tomorrow it will be dry) and also, a larger one would likely not have fit in the oven. Then, the ratio of ingredients (250g flour, 125ml milk, 40g sugar, 40g butter) resulted in something that was too wet to shape properly, so I had to add a bit more flour. Oh, and I used dry yeast. By the way, the recipe's suggestion to use lemon peel in the dough is decidedly nonclassical but I went with it, and I mean, it works! (I deviated further and used a frosting made of powdered sugar and limoncello; might as well amplify the theme...) I'm kind of appalled by the idea to use extra eggs as 'placeholder' for the easter eggs while baking, as they did in that recipe, though. Wouldn't have done that even before eggs began to cost their weight in gold. It's a waste of food (I mean, you can't eat them after more than half an hour in the oven), so I simply left more space between the strands. The easter eggs I painted last night are held in place by the frosting anyway! That being said, the result tastes good, so, the recipe isn't bad, it just needed some adjustments.

Now, I'm watching the chess world championship (GM Ding Liren vs. GM Ian Nepomniachtchi) livestream. Today's the first game, and while I missed the beginning and joined in the middle of the game, it's very interesting! They're both players with very entertaining styles, so I'm very happy it turned out to be these two playing a world championship match! Also, the commenters on chess24 (GM Daniel Naroditsky and GM Anish Giri) are doing a great job. (It's a fascinating pawn endgame with knights and bishops, and without commentary by these top players I'd have no idea what's going on!)

EDIT: Ah, it's a draw now.
EDIT2: The fire seems to be under control now. I think I'll wait with opening the window, though.