April 3, 2007

• Thoughts on Greek Easter

  As per my pulse the other day,

  I
  like Easter because it involves worshipping a zombie in order to acquire candy.
  Not only that, but the candy is delivered by a mutant rabbit

  Seriously though, all pagan rituals and that jazz aside, how in the world did easter become associated with a rabbit? And specifically a rabbit that shits colored eggs?

  Then again, i guess if i was a rabbit, and i saw jesus rise up out of the ground, i would shit a colored egg too

  

  i dont know why this keeps making me laugh so hard. maybe because stick figures are funny

  Anyway, allow me to briefly explain my happy fun times w/easter and religious background for the new readers to the site. If you know this already, or dont care, feel free to stop reading here

  I personally am a buddhist. It is the religion i have come to by choice b/c i feel it is the one that most closely reflects my own personal belief system. I was raised by a father who was jewish, and a mother is greek orthodox. So as you may have gathered i was exposed to a lot of religious customs and cultures growing up. We had to go to church twice a year on xmas and easter, and my brother and I absolutely hated it.

  However, after the church trip on easter, we would drive over to our relative’s house and partake in the easter feast. The greek easter feast. Which involved suck wonderful dishes as tsoureki (greek easter bread) avgolemono soup, lamb, and my personal favorite, spanakopita (spinach and feta cheese pastry). Now i was one of those kids who hung around the kitchen sneaking tastes of everything so that by time we all actually sat down to eat, i would be almost full

  My aunt was very clever about this…she started making use of me in the kitchen, getting me to help with tasks here and there. Along the way i learned to make all the various dishes i would eat, from both my aunt, and later on my mother.

  While i long ago abandoned the institution known as catholicism (which is not quite the same as greek orthodoxy, but similar enough), i still have and retain very pleasant memories associated with all those easter dinners and associated traditions

  so one day, I up and decided i was going to recreate that for my friends by cooking the full traditional greek easter dinner and teaching them about the various customs and dishes that i had growing up. Cue cheesy theme music, and the rest is history

  So i have been doing this for about 5-6 years now, and from that first dinner with 3 friends and a lamb and some soup, it has grown to a 4-5 day long cooking fest with me preparing a 5-6 course meal for this year about 18 people.

  Now that i have taken a moment to give myself a pat on the back, you can all check out pics of past greek easters

  ((also here!)and here near the bottom is some of the food i have made in the past

  So with all that as background, i will be doing it again starting wednesday. Hopefully you all will be able to join me at least once for doing this

  until next post!

  -J

  • 1:06 am
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