These poor saints share a feast day with St. Valentine and, at least in this part of the world, are completely ignored or overshadowed by him. Neither my Cooking with the Saints book nor my Slovak-American Cookbook offers any suggestions for appropriate dishes in their honor. I could tackle a rolled pastry of some sort, but we have leftover “death cake” as my kids call it (plus various chocolates purchased in honor of that other guy’s feast day), and just don’t need any more sweets right now.

St. Cyril is responsible for the Cyrillic alphabet. I’m not really sure if we should thank him for that. Once in the very early 90s, I happened to be traveling with a German, a Brazilian and a Slovak (this sounds like the beginning of a really bad joke, huh?). We were heading for Prague and stopped at a rest stop sort of place. We were hungry. We opened the menus. Three of us almost immediately closed them and turned to our Slovak friend and asked her to order for us (I do NOT recommend Haluski). There was no way that we could make any sense of what sort of food was even offered. I mean, I don’t speak French, but I know some words like poulet. Find that word, point it out to the waiter as what you want, how bad could it be? But on that menu, pointing to things on the menu might have brought me a glass of water or “the tongue of a castrated bull” as one man once described the food on the table in another country at a different time. No thanks.

If only my sister lived nearby. I’d have her trudge over through the snow and ice on the streets. She’d have to bring her kids, too, since schools are closed today, and we could all sit down and learn a few letters of the Cyrillic alphabet. Barbara studied Russian, and I’m sure is right now grinding her teeth at my dispraising of her favorite subject!

Morning prayers in the Magnificat included prayers for the Slavic peoples. Amen to that. Sts. Cyril and Methodius recruited locals as clergy and established a Cyrillic liturgy despite opposition from those troublesome Germans. Thanks, guys, for laying the foundation for my ancestors.