Spinach and Rice

New York Stories

Wall Street Greek's Fine Arts Contributor and New York Stories Columnist Nicholas Zaharakos offers us a Lenten treat that's not at all lean on humor, sprinkled with the witty antics of his "good boy" brother John. Apparently Spinach and Rice was spiritually filling to the Zaharakos clan for years after one such meal. (In photo from left to right, Nicholas' Yiayia Eleni, brother John and mother Panagiota)

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Spinach and Rice

In the Greek Orthodox Lenten Season there are dietary restrictions that can vary with respect to their severity. Some people give up eating meat on certain days others sacrifice dairy products as well as their beloved olive oil, up until the day of The Resurrection. Usually, the fast is kept more ardently by the older ones. That was the case in my family. My grandmother who lived with us in Brooklyn, fasted strictly for the entire 40 days of lent. However, I with my four brothers and two sisters, were the recipients of my mother's ingenuity to keep us meatless.

This was the time when food that certainly seemed strange to an eight year-old appeared. I can remember suppers of sandwiches with peanut butter, jelly, sliced bananas, and apples; another combination, was cream cheese and cucumbers on rye bread. I never knew there were that many different kinds of beans in the world until Lent. They were used in the various soups, salads, and side dishes that were constantly on the table.

One dish that stands out in my memory because my older brother John just couldn't stand it was spinach and rice (Spanakorizo in Greek}. Now, John was considered by all to be a good boy. I believed this was so for one reason only, and that was that he was very quiet.

At one particular Lenten Supper, spinach and rice was the main course. My mother, knowing of John's intense dislike for what was being served, offered him an incentive. If he would eat a plate full of spinach and rice, she would give him Greek butter cookies covered with confectionary sugar (Kourabiethes in Greek) as a treat. If he didn't finish the spinach and rice, he would get no cookies. Mom was known to say what she meant.

We lived in a railroad flat of six very small rooms over a Laundromat and the IRT subway line on Nostrand Avenue. This should say a lot about the financial and social condition of our family of seven children, two parents, and my mother's mother (Yiayia Eleni). An elderly Italian couple, the Santella's occupied the one apartment above us.

Mr. Santella as far as I could tell, didn't have a first name. He was Mr. Santella to one and all. Another thing was I doubted if I would live to see the day that he would be without an unlit stub of a cigar clenched in his yellow teeth. In summer he wore sleeveless T-shirts which exposed faded tattoos on both his arms. Night and day he would shuffle around in slippers. In the cold months, Mr. Santella would keep the coal burner going.

The delivery of coal was a wondrous event for me. A dark truck would park near the cellar opening. A huge dusty man wearing a leathery apron would open a chute on the side of the truck into a big barrel where the shinny coal would spill with loud clunks. Then he would roll the barrel by using hand-over-hand to the cellar. It would be tipped into a metal chute that ran the length of the stairs into another barrel at the bottom. Mr. Santella would be behind that barrel to steady it. The sound of that coal streaming down was the same as bacon sizzling in a pan.

Summer or winter, Mr. Santella was always in and out of that cellar. My father said that he hid his money there. My mother would chuckle and say, "No, that's where he banks the coal at night." All I know for sure was that it was Mr. Santella who had the only key to those heavy metal doors. Now, back to that fateful day when mom gave John the spinach and rice to eat.

Our dining room, which was used as my sister's bedroom at night, was right off the kitchen. My father and yiayia were never in time for supper. My father would still be working in the restaurant, and my yiayia would be hanging out with her friends who had lost their hot-dog stands when the Brooklyn Dodgers had left the year before. That was okay, because the table wasn't big enough for everyone at once. When mom served supper she was usually scurrying back and forth, and she depended on "the eyes in the back of her head," that she said she had, to know if we were getting out of hand.

I can still see the glow in my mother's eyes because she was so pleased that John's plate was clean. I still remember that she gave John three Kourabiethes when she only gave me two. Just as she finished making sure that everyone was served cookies, there was loud knocking on the door.

The door was in the kitchen, and when my mother opened it, I could see Mr. Santella standing there with his bald head covered with a greenish mash, but with his cigar still in his mouth. My mother's name was Panagiota in Greek, Bertha in English. To Mr. Santella then, it was, "Hey Bertina, looka what happened to me."

My mother had a very infectious nervous laugh, similar to that of Lou Costello of the Abbott and Costello comedy team. Also, once she starts it takes a long time for her to stop. At that point, we all abandoned the dining room and gathered around our mother giggling uncontrollably. The seven of us with the widest eyes possible turned back and forth between mom and Mr. Santella to see what would happen next.

My spunky mother managed to straighten up and waved her arms over her seven "ducklings" by her side and through tears of merriment exclaimed! "Hey Mr. Santella, looka what happened to me."

Mr. Santella, to his everlasting credit, threw up his hands and started to laugh too, and, without losing his cigar, he turned and started up the stairs to his apartment. My mother didn't stop giggling until she went back to the dining room and put the kourabiethes that she had given John back into the metal container. For you see, it was quiet John who was seated next to the open window directly over the cellar below.

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