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Hey, I'm Jocelyn and we're in the Cretan countryside and I'm looking a little haggard today because I was at church last night until 2 a.m. because it's Greek Easter
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And so I kind of got to thinking maybe we should go over the foods of Greek Easter while I'm here in Greece
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So first off is Megariza. Megarita is really, really traditional. It's a soup and we've been fasting as Greek Orthodox people for eight years
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weeks. We don't eat meat. We don't eat eggs or cheese or dairy or oil or wine. You know, we don't
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eat much of anything. We're sort of vegan. So when we get done, we eat like crazy. And the first
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thing we eat is Megarisa. It's a soup and it's got dill and onion and lemon because everything
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in Greece has lemon, right? And then it also has liver and lung and maybe some intestines
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sometimes from the lamb that we going to roast the next day So it kind of a big thing I really love the soup part I not a huge fan of organ meat but if you have it done right it actually really tasty
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So while we're talking about organ meat, Cocorezzi is another traditional food
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and it's not always just for Easter, but it's definitely a celebratory food
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And it is lung and liver, and it's wrapped up intestines, and then you roast it in the forno
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the outdoor sort of, like, coal-fired wood-fired oven. So, you know, it's just, it's got a great smoky flavor and all that
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Okay, so I don't really like it. But my friend Sandra absolutely loves it
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And actually I have lots of family and friends who swear by Coccarezzi
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It's just not my jam. So then there's also red eggs. And, you know, even Americans dye their Easter eggs and they're all like pretty colors and whatnot
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Greeks dye their eggs red. And it symbolizes the blood of Christ. And then we have this fun little game where we tap the eggs against one another And if yours doesn break and you continue to win then you get good luck for the rest of the year There also codosuvli and it pork
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pieces of pork with onions and peppers, and it's all kind of put on a stick and roasted
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Usually there's tomatoes in there too. Anyway, you put it on, like, you know
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in America we think of them as a kebab, but anyway, you just roast all of that together on a stick
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and obviously tasty good stuff. And then we come to the lamb
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So lamb is a traditional food all over grease for all different things
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But for Easter, we typically take a whole lamb and we put it on a spit and we roast it all day in the front yard
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or maybe the backyard. But also some people cut it up into like five or six different pieces
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I think it's usually six. And they put it in the foreno, that great oven where you get that smoky, woodsy, yummy flavor to it
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And, you know, we just, we eat lamb all the time, right? And then there are a few different sweets that we eat One is calytsuni and it a cheese pie It a sweet cheese in the middle and then it sort of has like a pie crust around it really tasty good stuff And then the big thing that we have is Suraki
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And that's a sweet bread. My ya-ya used to make it, and she would put the red eggs on top when it was baking
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and it would puff up around those beautiful red eggs. Anyway, it's just a traditional sweet bread
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and then some people make it into little cookie kind of things, like a little biscuity cookie
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So there's different things. Anyway, those are my favorite foods. Those are the things my family eats the most for Greek Easter
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And then there's always the olives and the cheese and oh my gosh, the wine, all the wine
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And the raki. There's just tons of different stuff. So if you are an expert on Greek cuisine or, you know, Greek Easter, go ahead, put your ideas down in the comment section
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because we love to like spread this with everybody and kind of educate everybody on different great cultural foods
