Easter Bread

Do you ever have something that sticks with you? It's in your brain and you keep kind of mulling it over without realizing it until you have a revelation. The other day, Manuel were at the supermarket buying insecticide (see my future post about creepy-crawlies). We were passing the bakery section and Manuel asked if we shouldn't get a pan de pascua. He indicated a brown lumpy loaf of something and I declined; it didn't seem very appetizing. I remember this very clearly because we later had an argument upon arriving home and finding we had no food. You didn't suggest that we buy food, I tried to explain, you only offered me a brown loaf. In Spanish, pan means bread, and pascua is usually translated to Easter. For some reason, whenever I hear "pascua", my initial thought is of Easter Island, and not of the religious holiday. I thought it was quite amusing when I found out that the name is translated literally: Isla de Pascua. When I saw the lump loaf, I thought it must be some traditional food of the isolated Pacific islanders.

I got here on December 30th, so the remnants of Christmas had been hanging around. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Manuel's mom Maria has a Christmas tree that she decorates every year. It was still up, so I took a picture of it to show April. The strange thing I noticed is that they called it an arbol de pascua. And when speaking of Christmas gifts, they say regalo de pascua. So I'm beginning to believe that "pascua" does not only mean Easter, but has some larger meaning encompassing more than one religious holiday. I was in Maria's kitchen this afternoon washing dishes and thinking about the silly lump loaf with its chunks of nuts and fruit. Maybe it was a Christmas bread, I thought. And then it came to me. Pan de pascua is fruitcake.