Litomysl, the small rural parish I belong to that is located west of Bixby on U.S. Highway 218, is having its annual Litomysl Summer Festival this coming weekend. Litomysl is Czech for wistful thoughts. The area was settled by Czech immigrants before the turn of the 20th century and many of the offspring of the original Czech immigrants still reside on the farms where their grandparents or great grandparents settled. This has changed in the last 40 years because economic times have changed for farmers. Many have moved to town and not as many make their main income off their farms.

Litomysl is still a close knit parish, but I have heard some of the life-long parishioners say that the church is now filled with strangers, but that is a good thing as it continues to flourish.

The women of Litomysl are well known for their filled biscuits, known as buchty. The women make sweet dough, roll it out, cut it in to small squares and fill the squares with prune, poppy, or apricot filling. The corners of the square of dough are lifted up kitty-corner and folded in the middle and the dough pinched together. The dough has four eyes on top with the filling peeping out; these eyes are called the four eyes of God. There is a skill in being able to fold the buchty. They are not called kolachies because of the way the dough is folded; in preparing kolachies, the dough is not folded over the fruit filling.

I have made the filled biscuits with the women before. The women that have been making the buchty for years watch the novices with sharp eyes to make sure each square piece of dough is folded properly to get the four eyes of God. In the church basement on baking day, three to four women per table prepare the filled biscuits. The tables have had the legs raised with five-pound coffee cans under each so the women won't injure their backs by leaning over too far as they work. One woman rolls, stretches and cuts the dough squares, another places the filling on the dough, and another woman pinches the dough to make the eyes before placing the filled biscuit on a flat baking sheet.

The first time I helped make the filled biscuits, I was pinching the dough together to make the eyes of God. One eagle-eyed woman that was placing the fruit filling on the dough said, "Oh look, she isn't any good at this. She is getting the poppy seed into the dough and will make the biscuits look ugly and dirty."

I was embarrassed as I was trying really hard, but the poppy seed filling was rather dry and would flake out into the dough. Now the women at my table were watching me even closer, and I was finally asked to go and set the

table for the lunch that was going to be served.

The women who have been preparing the buchty for years each have their own job. One time I stepped in for a woman, who has since passed away, that greased the baking sheets with lard and basted the tops of the uncooked biscuits with a mixture of melted lard and margarine.The pastry brush she used was made of feathers from the wings of geese. When the biscuits came out of the oven, they were basted again with the lard and margarine. I thought that this would be a job that I couldn't mess up and no one would tell me how to do it. I didn't mess up with the basting, and it was fun using such a unique pastry brush, but more than 10 women walked by me and gave me directions as they inspected my work.

"Hmm," each one would say as she walked by, squinting her eyes, checking me out as I carefully basted each biscuit.

"You missed a spot here," one pointed out.

"Are you basting the biscuits before they get put in the oven?" I was asked.

"Are you basting the biscuits when they come out of the oven?" was another question.

These women take making their buchty seriously. This Sunday, they will be selling around 600 dozen of these delectable goodies at the Litomysl Summer Festival. People wait in lines for up to an hour to be able to purchase them. They are made the same way their grandmas made them, steeped in tradition and made one biscuit at a time. They are delicious, and forget about cholesterol or dieting, as these things don't count when you eat something prepared by dedicated church women.

Sheila Donnelly can be reached at 434-2233 or by e-mail at :newsroom@austindailyherald.com