Latvia Unit

I have been blessed enough to learn a small amount about Latvia from my friend. She grew up in Latvia and moved here in her 20s. Every summer she goes back for a month or so with her husband and children to visit her extended family. The two big things I’ve learned: in Latvia, they don’t celebrate birthdays so much as “Name Day,” and they would announce on the radio whose name day it was and you would make sure to wish a person a happy name-day (maybe this was Saint Day?), AND they don’t dye Easter eggs with bought dye, instead they dye them with natural dyes and would tie flowers or other items on to make relief in the dye. Not exactly super helpful to explain for a geography lesson but it did give me a hint of all the cool stuff I was going to learn in this Latvia Unit.

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Latvia Unit Resources

• Latvia Facts
• More Latvia Facts

Okay, so I do have one more thing, but it’s more of my friend sharing how they celebrate Easter in Latvia, so it’s kind of an unusual post, but I thoroughly enjoyed it: Easter in Latvia.

So, we headed over to our classic Geography Now, which as we’re hitting all the countries that are less easy to find materials on has become my favorite channel ever.

Also, I like his sense of humor.

Oh wait, my friend did mention one other thing, the music there, everyone was singing. This leads me to the coolest story ever, the Singing Revolution:

Latvian Piragi recipe

I found this Piragi recipe, there were a couple of other recipes I was curious about, but the piragi recipe reminded me of the kolaches we have here (from the German roots in central Texas).

Just as a side note, as I’m re-reading the recipe to type it up with our adjustments, I am struck again by just how much this is like our kolaches.

The lazy man way to make kolaches here is to pick up crescent roll dough and cut it into rectangles and stuff with your chosen filling, then bake. The most commonly chosen filling at my home is mini-hot dogs.

Piragi Ingredients

• 1 onion diced (I minced it, because that’s my preference)
• 1 package of bacon diced
• salt and pepper
• 3/4 cup milk
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
• 1 egg, beaten
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 2 tablespoons sour cream

1. Heat the milk to almost boiling then pour into a bowl and add butter and salt. Let cool for 5 minutes.
2. Dilute the yeast and sugar in the warm water (when I learned how warm the water should be, think of it as a fairly warm bath, you should feel comfortable touching the water). When it starts to foam, add it to the milk mixture, then add the egg.
3. Add the flour and sour cream, then beat until you have a smooth dough.
4. Cover the bowl and let the dough rest for 10 minutes, then knead for 5 minutes.
5. Put the dough in a greased bowl, cover and let rise for 1 hour or until doubled in volume.
6. While that is rising, cook the bacon until crispy, drain on paper towel, and then mix with the onions, pepper, and salt.
7. Divide the dough into small balls slightly bigger than a golf ball then roll out. Put a teaspoonful or so of filling in the middle, then fold the dough over and pinch the seams together. Place the rolls on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper (I’ll admit I just put it on my stoneware and didn’t bother with parchment paper).
8. Let rise in a warm place for 30 minutes, and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
9. Cook for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Latvia Piragi

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Latvian piragis are a roll filled with meats or a sweet filling that can make a great breakfast.

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes

Additional Time 1 hour 30 minutes

Total Time 2 hours 5 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 onion minced
• 1 packed bacon diced
• salt and pepper to taste
• 3/4 cup milk
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
• 3 tablespoons warm water
• 1 egg, beaten
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 2 tablespoons sour cream

Instructions

1. Heat the milk until almost boiling, then pour into bowl and add butter and salt. Let cool for 5 minutes.
2. While the milk is cooling dilute the yeast and sugar in the warm water. When it starts to foam add it to the milk mixture and add the beaten egg.
3. Add the flour and sour cream and beat until you get a smooth dough.
4. Cover the bowl and let the dough rest for 10 minutes. Then knead the dough for about 5 minutes.
5. Put the dough in a greased bowl, cover and let rise for 1 hour.
6. While the dough is rising cook your bacon to desired level of crispness, then mix with the onions and salt and pepper to taste.
7. Divide the dough into small balls slightly larger than a golf ball, then roll out. In the middle of the circle add a little over a teaspoon of the filling. Fold in half and pinch the edges closed. Put on the baking sheet with the seam on the bottom.
8. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and let the piragis rise for a second time for 30 minutes.
9. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes or until golden brown.

All in all, it was a yummy treat, but more of a breakfast food to my mind than a dinner meal.

Latvia Notebooking Pages

On the list of things I’m curious to learn more about in recent years Baltic Paganism has become a religion of note. It’s not a large number of people, but large enough to be mentioned. I’m really curious just what this means.

I had a lot of fun learning about Latvia, and in particular, was highly amused to find out they’ve turned a former Soviet prison into a hotel.

Oh and the Latvian Singing Revolution (I’ve now scrolled up to the resources and added in a video about this), which has recently been making the rounds on Facebook as a meme of “You obviously had a terrible education if you haven’t heard of this,” and those types of posts always annoy the heck out of me because most people who are sharing it were IN HIGH SCHOOL when this was going on and so it wouldn’t have been taught in history, maybe current event class if that existed at the time. But, let’s all shame people for not knowing.

Well, that’s our Latvia Unit, it’s nice and simple and delicious, because I like kolaches, I mean piragis.

More learning fun

Let’s see, what can I include for more learning fun…. I know, here are 5 things categorized under 8th grade:

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• Design a Shaduf
• Czechia Unit- huh, maybe I don’t have this post done and I’ve just got pictures added?
• Brunei Unit
• Ancient Sumeria booklist
• 42 Electronics

“Riga Latvia -“ by Ivan Zanotti Photo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0