Greek Easter--The Drama Begins

I first posted this in April of 2010, when Orthodox Easter and Catholic Easter happened to fall on the same day.  This year they are more than a month apart and we're gearing up for a big Greek Easter on Sunday, May 1.  Now we're headed off to Bahnan's market to pick up the lamb, and I'm sure the visit will be much the same as it was in 2010.  Happy May Day to all and to our Greek friends, Kahlo Pascha!

Today is Good Friday and in a Greek household that means we can’t eat dairy or meat (that’s been going on for 40 days) and also today we can’t eat oil, so on Good Fridays we usually end up surviving on things like plain baked potatoes and peanut butter on crackers.

But today the Big Eleni, who lives with us and is the best cook in the world, has all sorts of “fasting” Good Friday food ready – Halvah, stuffed grape leaves, rice-stuffed tomatoes, taramasalata (made from fish roe) and some sort of artichoke/spinach/ hummus concoction. And boiled shrimp.

Today was also the annual dramatic journey into Worcester to collect the lamb which we had ordered far ahead from Bahnan’s Market on 344 Pleasant Street. As you can see from the first sign below, the people at Bahnan’s are ready to sell you your Easter needs in four languages: English, Greek, Turkish and Arabic.

(And they now have a café where, according to local Greeks, you can get the only authentic gyros for miles around.)

Shopping at Bahnan’s is like a visit to the United Nations, but on Easter week it’s like several festivals rolled into one.

There was a considerable line of people waiting to get into the refrigerated back room to receive the lamb they had ordered and have it cut up to their specifications. And this was in the morning, before church let out. I imagine by afternoon the line was out the door.

I didn’t last long in the refrigerated room, because of the cold and the proximity of all those lamb corpses, some of which looked the size of a small horse. (Our lamb was very small—I believe 27 pounds.)

I had to escape before the butcher started sawing, I couldn't take it, but this process is still easier than some early Easters in Nick’s Northern Greek village when the adorable baby goats were tied to each house’s front door knob and my offspring loved petting them. Then I had to drag the children, (all three under  ageten) out of town on Holy Saturday to prevent them seeing the general bloodshed as the baby goats were slaughtered and the blood ran in the street.

In the village on Easter Sunday you see spits outside every house, each one tended by the patriarch who is drinking homemade moonshine called Raki and having a good time. We sometimes do the lamb on the spit outside in Grafton, but not when Easter comes this early.

By the way, this was a rare year (2010) when Orthodox Easter and everyone else’s Easter are on the same day. Usually we Greeks are later because Orthodox Easter has to be after Passover. It’s complicated.

In the photos above you see the Big Eleni shopping for Greek cheese at Bahnan’s. We already have our large round Tsoureki bread with the red egg in the middle. And on Holy Thursday, as always, we dyed dozens of eggs red for the Saturday-night egg-cracking duel when you challenge everyone – saying “Christ is risen” “Indeed he is risen”. Crack! And whoever’s egg comes out the winner gets the other guy’s egg.

Tomorrow—Holy Saturday—we will all go to church very early and without consuming as much as a drop of water beforehand. We line up to take communion and then are free for the first time in seven weeks to eat dairy (not meat. Not yet. But we are free to rush to the Pancake House where we traditionally stuff ourselves with high-calorie breakfast treats that have been forbidden for weeks.)

Then it’s back to church again at midnight.—for the dramatic Midnight Mass on Saturday night when the church is plunged into darkness and the priest comes out at the exact stroke of midnight with a single candle and announces ‘Christ is risen!” Then the flame passes from his candle to everyone else’s and the church fills with light as we sing the Resurrection hymn: “Christos anesti!” We try to keep our candles lit as we drive home to break the Lenten fast by cracking eggs and eating the delicate dill-and-egg-lemon soup made by the Big Eleni out of the lambs intestines.

(Actually, she doesn’t put in the intestines because she knows that our kids would never eat it. In fact one is a vegetarian. And after my visit to the market today, I understand perfectly.)

I hope wherever you are celebrating Easter or Passover -- in any language – you are enjoying warm spring weather. Here in Massachusetts it has finally stopped raining and will be a beautiful weekend. Kalo Pascha!

Nicolas’s First Birthday--Fun to Be One

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When a baby turns one year old, as grandson Nicolas did on April 2, the ensuing birthday party is really for the rest of the family.  All the one-year-old wants to do is rip the paper off the gifts, play with the empty boxes, and smash the cake with his little fists. Fancy bakeries even offer to sell a “smash cake” for that purpose along with the “real” cake.   

  We said no thanks to the smash cake, but the carrot cake that we ordered from Yummy Mummy in Westboro was beyond delicious and, for some of the Greek relatives, their first encounter with carrot cake.

Mother Nature pulled an April Fool’s trick of producing a snowstorm the night before the party, leaving everything looking like a winter wonderland.  Meanwhile the blossoms on my magnolia tree froze.

While Mommy and Yiayia were decorating, Papou entertained the birthday boy by showing him photos on his I-phone.

“Tell me a story about that one!”

“You expect me to believe that? Do you think I was born yesterday?”

The decorating theme of the party was “It’s fun to be one”, with a jolly group of circus animals including a huge balloon of a lion that became the star of the show (because it was both terrifying and fascinating to Nicolas, who, by the end of the party, could imitate the lion’s imaginary ROAR.)

Here’s everyone ready for the party, including Amalia in her gold and white dress.

People came and they got food buffet-style, and then it was time to blow out the candle on the cake.

Nicolas didn’t understand the protocol, so Amalia moved in to help.

After cake and ice cream, according to Amalia, it was time for the PINATA.  (She also insisted on making goodie bags for the three kids at the party: herself, Nicolas, and five-month-old cousin Stone.)

Amalia tried valiantly to smash the piñata, with Papi’s help, but no luck.

When Papou took over, the piñata was soon in pieces.

Amalia and helpers scooped up the loot.

And after everyone left, Nicolas still had hours  of fun with that scary lion balloon, creeping up to it and then pushing it away.  Just like it said on the napkins, tablecloth and balloons, he concluded, it’s fun to be one!

One Sunday on Lincoln Road, South Beach, Miami

Lincoln Road in South Beach is the capital of strangeness every day, but on weekends the antique dealers and food sellers and purveyors of art and eccentricity come out, and you can see and buy some interesting things.  Here are a few photos I took on a Sunday not so long ago.

You can buy Barbie and Ken porn.

And Sanders and Trump caricatures.

I had to buy this wonderful pop art jacket for daughter Marina...You see, her boyfriend's name is Jeff.

 Many are offering a healthy life style.

Juice therapy...

And exotic fruits I cannot identify.

Not to mention a variety of dishes for dogs.

A former Cadillac dealership now offers leisure wear

A sinister face looms over a door to a store that's for rent.

You might want to take in "The Golem of Havana"

This lady has a warning for the people of Lincoln Road.

Mezcal & My Favorite Mexican Photos

 I keep reading articles about how mezcal is becoming the trendy drink, for instance "Mezcal Sunrise" by Dana Goodyear in the current New Yorker.  That inspired me to look up and re-post this photo essay from five years ago.  I really miss my annual cooking tours to Mexico with Susana Trilling and her "Seasons of the Heart" and the painting and photography classes in Oaxaca with my friend Mari Seder, but nowadays my travel lust takes me just to Manhattan and my grandkids.  When I turned 75, Nick said to me, "What do you want for your birthday?  A trip to Mexico?" and I instantly replied, "No, a trip to Disney World in Orlando with Amalia and Nicolas!"  So that's happening during the last week in April.  And of course I'll blog about it.

 Back in 2008, when Michael Covino and the Niche Hospitality Group opened Mezcal Restaurant on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, Mike commissioned me to  print, mat and frame nearly 40 photos of the Mezcal-making process—photos I took on a trip to Oaxaca.

In the town of Mitla  I photographed many family-owned Mezcal “fabricas”. Mezcal is made from the heart of the Agave cactus–called a piña because of its resemblance to a pineapple. I got great photos, all related to the Mezcal-making process, but I convinced Mike to let me frame as well some non-Mezcal portraits of people I had encountered in Mexico.  He hung six of my portraits of women in the ladies’ room and six hombres in the men’s.  These “bathroom” portraits proved to be so popular that people kept stealing them, which I took as a compliment.

Mezcal Restaurant in Worcester turned out to be a huge success.  It was voted best Mexican Restaurant in the city. Every time I drove by, I saw people waiting to get in.

Last spring Mike asked me to print out a new set of photos for a new Mezcal Restaurant that the Niche group was opening in Leominster, MA.  It’s just now officially open, and my favorite portraits of Mexican men and women are again in the restrooms.  I hope they don’t get stolen!  But if they do, I’ll just re-print them and take it as a compliment.  Here’s the story behind the dozen photos:

1. Guelaguetza Girls. These lovely young women were practicing for the ceremony called Guelaguetza that takes place in Oaxaca during late July.  Originally meant to worship the corn god, it was celebrated by the indigenous people long before the Spanish came.  The trajes (costumes) these women are wearing and their lace headpieces are so stunning! No wonder Frieda Kahlo adopted the fashion for herself.

2. Fiesta tot. This adorable child was photographed some years ago at a Candelaria Festival on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.  The Zapotec Indians of the Isthmus have their own language and traditions, and it’s a strong matriarchal society—the women rule.

3. At the Candelaria Festival, most of the dancers were women dancing with each other. (The men mainly watched from the sidelines)  But this young couple was the focus of all eyes, because they were so beautiful and so clearly in love.  I hope by now they’re married and bringing their own fiesta tots to the Candelaria festival.

4. The Tortilla Lady.  She’s cooking (with helpers) in her courtyard in preparation for the Candelaria feast.  She is one of the many local cooks I was introduced to by Susana Trilling in the course of one of Susana’s culinary tours.  Those tours are always full of adventure and  take you far, far off the beaten track, because Susana knows the culinary secrets of Mexico better than anyone.  Info about  her tours is at www.SeasonsOfMyHeart.com.

5. Candelaria Parade.  These beauties were tossing favors, just as people do in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. Candelaria happens on Feb. 2 (same as Groundhog Day).  Because it’s 40 days after Christmas, it marks the day when the Virgin Mary took Jesus to be presented at the temple.  In Mexico, every family buys a new outfit for the Christ Child doll on the family’s home altar and takes him to church to be blessed.

6. You’ve seen this urchin on my blog before--cheerfully carrying her little brother on her back.  When I was walking around San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico in 2009, also on one of Susana’s culinary tours (this one was “Chiapas & Chocolate & Tabasco”), I encountered this girl and lots of her friends, all selling cheap jewelry. The first day I ran into her, she was unencumbered by her sibling, but she was always smiling. Of course I bought some of her bracelets.

7. This blind musician was also someone I encountered on the streets of San Cristobal.  It’s a wrenching portrait.  For some reason, almost all the photos I’ve taken of old men in Mexico bring tears to my eyes.  I think because they make me think of my father, who died about 25 years ago.

8. This old man, holding his bottle of beer and staring thoughtfully into space, was at a Day of the Dead celebration, which is usually a rollicking event in this village outside of Oaxaca, with bands playing and people dancing.  But I suspect he’s pensive because he’s remembering friends who have passed away.

9. This man who entered the church in Tlacalula, immediately knelt down and continued to pray for a long time.  I suspect he’d come a long way on this pilgrimage.

10.  The Red Devil.  He’s one of many devils that delighted in harassing us at Carnival time in the village of San Martine Telcajete.  I was there while taking a class in collage, shadow box & photography with photographer Mari Seder.  Every year the class visits the Carnival celebrations in this small town, which include a hilarious mock wedding featuring trans-dressers and much mischief. (See more about Mari’s  classes at www.artworkshopsinoaxaca.com. )

11. This photograph was taken at the ancient ruins of El Tajin on another one of Susana’s culinary tours—“Veracruz & Vanilla”. At the Spring Equinox, the indigenous people come to the ruined pyramids of El Tajin, everyone dressed in white, to absorb the power of the sun god and to  have  a cuerandero (healer)  perform a cleansing ceremony.  At night there were native dancers and children handing out clay images of the gods and the next day everyone came back to see the Vanilla Queen, the Voladores (flying dancers) with their dangerous rituals, and of course, to be cleansed.

12. The young man above is happy because he’s off to the Candelaria parade which is followed by the fiesta.  As I recall, the price of admission was a case of beer.  The Mexicans of the state of Oaxaca, like the  customers at the old and new Mezcal Restaurants, know how to have a good time.