Festival showcases Slavic food, music, and crafts

The Annual Slavic American Festival Sunday featured live music, carnival games, bingo, a craft fair, and a rummage sale, but it seems most people came for the food. Among the menu items: holupki (cabbage rolls in tomato sauce), haluski (noodles with cabbage and butter), pirohi (potato and cheese dumplings with butter and onions), kielbasa, and potato pancakes.

The festival, sponsored by the Epiphany of Our Lord Byzantine Catholic Church on Woodburn Road in Annandale, has been going on for 37 years.

At the craft fair, Barbara Koltos was selling Ukrainian pysanki (traditional, wooden hand-painted Easter eggs), cornhusk dolls from Slovakia, embroidered Easter basket covers from Ukraine, jewelry made of glass beads from Chernobyl, and other handmade goods—with the proceeds benefiting Byzantine nuns in Rome. Other sellers offered religious icons, matryoshka nesting dolls, wood carvings, and baked goods.

A new Epiphany church under construction on Woodburn Board should be completed in 2011, says Deacon Gerry McDonnell. Services are currently conducted in the parish center building. He says church members have been raising money for the new church for 35 years.