the early bird special

Greek Easter

This weekend, due to discrepancies between the Julian and Gregorian calendars and the date of Passover, the Eastern Orthodox churches celebrated Easter. I also celebrated in this holiday. Saturday afternoon my friends came over to my house and I cooked Greek food. I woke up at 6 am to clean my kitchen and grocery shop. I made moussaka, spanakopita, fassolakia, and a huge horiatiki salata, all served with yummy crusty bread. Serendipitously, this weekend also marked Nitsan's brief return to Seattle, so between him and many of the regulars, we passed the afternoon happily. The day was warm and and sunny, and I sat on my patio with several ladies, sipping ouzo and gossiping.

I had spent the entire previous week trying to conceive of a not-gross cocktail using ouzo, so that I could name it something disgusting like "Greek Passion" or "The Freaky Greeky." Alas, inspiration would not come to me. Kevin succeeded where I failed, however, by combining ouzo with Dr. Pepper to create the "Dr. Papanicolaou," named after the inventor of the Pap Smear who is also from the same village in Greece as my ancestors. The drink was surprisingly delicious.

Sunday afternoon, my yiayia and I went to her friend Clara's house for lamb Easter dinner, which was mostly pleasant. Clara is a fantastic ninety-four year old woman who is sassy and independent and I deeply believe that she is one of the few sensible forces in my yiayia's life. Clara's grandson just had twin daughters last fall, so two 6 month old babies were also a point in the awesome column. Slightly less good was the dinner table conversation which started with someone soliloquizing about how "Religion is a pyramid and there are lots of different ways to get to heaven", and an old Greek lady from Walla Walla said "What?! You mean the Muslims too?!"

Uh, yeah. Happy Greek Easter to me!