Here is my Easter post - eight days late and not what I hoped it would be, but whutEVuh. As Dermonster used to say, "There is no limit to perfection."
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A great part of the pleasure in celebrating Greek Easter is the preparation. It’s a massive undertaking – a solid week, if not more, of shopping, cooking, baking, polishing, pressing, church-going, fasting and, finally, feasting. Year after year, my mother - whose family is from the Peloponnese - somehow carries this off with a minimum of shrieking. But with my mother deep in rehearsals for a play, my dad and I were left to our own devices to whomp up a Greek Easter feast for family and friends, without deviating from any of our usual traditions. We were particularly concerned about Pinwheel, my oldest niece who is almost nine and a bit of a Nazi when it comes to the holidays. If anything – and I mean anything – is not up to her rigorous standards, she gives us the business.
Early on Saturday morning, my dad and I make our yearly pilgrimage to Ninth Avenue International Foods (40th and 9th Avenue), which is run by the surliest Greek in all the land. Chasing me around the enormous bins of spices and grains is an obese, patchy scrofulous cat. He tries to rub his scabby, oozing length against my leg and to avoid him, I trip over a basket of dried cod and fall halfway into an overflowing container of red lentils.
The surly Greek looks on in what can only be described as thinly disguised contempt as I pick lentils out of my bra. Meanwhile, my father arrives wearing a seersucker jacket and a tam-o-shanter, looking every bit the Anglo-Saxon academic. This is not helping our case. What we need is my mother, who gives us an air of authenticity.
“We’re cooking this year,” I explain to the Mr. McSurly. Surly takes one look at us, smirks and continues piling kalamata olives into a glass jar.
One of the oppressed shop boys takes pity on us, and prepares our order. We taste feta and kasseri, scoop up tsatziki and taramasalata. We buy oregano and coffee and earthy-smelling olive oil, and select from a fragrant palette of turmeric, cumin, and paprika. I love this place for its old world feel – bread tins hanging from the ceiling, grumpy old Greek men shouting at each other between sips of Greek coffee, shop boys kicking the cat absent-mindedly.
“Kalo paska,” we say on our way out.
“Happy Easter,” he says back.
We take our loot a few blocks up to Poseidon Bakery, where we buy fresh, homemade philo and tsoureki, a Greek Easter bread that is baked with a red egg in its center. Lilly greets us warmly and presses sweets almond filled pastries into our palms. We are in heaven.
“Where’s mama?” she asks.
“We’re cooking this year,” I explain. She smiles and hands me some candy. While I grow increasingly insecure and filled with doubt about this venture, my dad chomps happily on peanut brittle.
At home, my baby cousin (22 years old and the spitting image of Jackie Onassis) arrives and we dye two dozen eggs dark red to symbolize the blood of Christ. In the meantime, we start making tiropitas, philo triangles filled with feta, mint, and parsley. Because I am incapable of reading and following directions, we skip a few critical steps. Baby Cousin is convinced we’ll be fine because she is young and full of optimism. I tell her we are doomed and to prove my point, I motion toward the oven, where the triangles are rapidly deflating and cheese filling is oozing onto the baking sheets.
Other things we make:
Avgolemeno soupa (egg lemon soup)
Leg of lamb (a la papa)
Greek salad
Roasted potatoes (a la Grecque)
Other things we do:
Polish the silver
Set the table with red and white china and my grandmother’s crystal
Polish the red eggs with olive oil
Fill the house with lilacs, peonies, and tulips
Yell at Fauxhawk for letting the pita burn (repeat)
When my family arrives, my parents' apartment is a riot of babies and small children carrying Easter baskets. We drink prosecco and eat deflated tiropitas while my twin niece and nephew toddle off with sharp objects and busy themselves in front of electrical sockets.
"What is today?" I quiz Noodle, who is cuddling an elephant-shaped plush toy.
"EASTER!" she replies, showing several missing teeth.
"And what are we celebrating?"
"THE BABY JESUS!" The only reason Noodle knows Jesus from a hole in the wall is because of a Christmas book my mother slipped her last year. Since then, Noodle and her older sister, Pinwheel, have become minor religious fanatics.
I look at my brother, who is - after all - responsible for this child's Christian education.
"No Noodle," he says. "It's the day the Baby Jesus died."
"And rose again," I add with the appropriate amount of drama.
Noodle is unimpressed.
"Is that fun?"
Because it is decidedly unfun, Noodle walks off talking to the Elephant of Easter.
Standing around the dinner table, we each pick a red egg, turn to our dinner partner, and crack the noses of the eggs together, and then the rounded ends. The person who comes out unscathed is the victor, and has good luck for the rest of the year. I lose every year because I lack the necessary killer instinct and am squeamish about smashed hardboiled egg. When the carnage is cleared, we sing a Greek hymn about Christ's triumph over death and bless the tsoureki, which has a lucky quarter hidden inside one of the slices.
We feast for three hours and sink deeper into our chairs. Not even coffee and koulourakia can revive us now. Eyes begin to droop. Fauxhawk is the only one with any energy, and he is using it to clean up and curry favor (good boy) while we all lie around like beached whales.
My mom looks relaxed. After three decades of slaving to make Easter full of magic and mystery, she can rest knowing that someone was listening and watching by her side all those years. Someone was paying attention, remembering each detail for posterity.
