Accessing My Inner Yia Yia

When I was in college, I dated a guy who was Greek-Filipino (yes, not the most intuitive combination); his Greek grandparents lived with his family, and Yia Yia was the standard cook, as far as I could tell. After meeting me for the first time, she apparently told my boyfriend "very pretty...too skinny" (it is possible she was having vision issues), so all of a sudden food started being sent over to my house with Alex (it is also possible I greased the wheels of this gravy train by sending her kokkina avga), my favorite of which was spanakopita. Yia Yia was a kick ass cook, let me say that here.

Tonight I took it into my head to make the spanakopita out of the Moosewood Cookbook, and I'd like to point out that phyllo dough is some tricksy stuff. How the hell do yias yias do this on a regular basis? I mean, except for the fact they had been handling the stuff since childhood and could do it in their sleep. I mean, damn. It looks right, but it's currently baking, and we'll see if it turns out edible or a big pile of crunchy bark. Hindsight being 20/20, I sure am glad I was super polite to Yia Yia every time I visited.

Update: We are snarfing spanakopita like there is a run on spinach shares. For something coming from a hippie crunch cookbook, it tastes like 10 lbs of salty, cheesy decadence. My inner Yia Yia pats my head.

you could say you'd learned a divine secret of the Yia Yia sisterhood.

(ducks to avoid brickbats)
(que narrowly mist)