As children, every year at Easter we looked forward to the thought of the godfather and godmother bringing us Easter gifts, giant chocolate eggs with hidden surprises and cookies. The smells of Easter sweets are etched in our memory. Sweets that are associated with our childhood and flavors that remind us of our grandparents, the neighborhood we grew up in and our ancestral home where we all gathered together on Easter Sunday.

Red eggs, buns, stew and, of course, lamb or goat on a spit are the traditional Easter foods found in every region of Greece. Every place in our country has preserved its own customs that make this celebration different from place to place.

Easter in the Ionian Islands has a Venetian flavor. In Corfu, the Orthodox tradition is combined with the Venetian culture, making the specific island a place of approach for many visitors. During Holy Week, the patisseries have two distinct sweets, the fogatsa which resembles a bun with a special aroma, and the colombines which are a cake made of braided dough in the shape of a nest, with a red egg decorated with colorful feathers. After the night of the Resurrection, the people of Corfu eat a variation of gariritsa which is not soup but cooked food. For the Easter Sunday table, as a custom they have an egg-lemon soup with beef, lamb and rice and not the lamb skewer. This custom is also common in Zakynthos.

In Crete, in addition to buns and pastries, they also eat lambrokouloura, and kalitsouni which are fried pies with mizithra or the Cretan soft cheese malaka or tyromalama. Easter Sunday gives its due to the skewered lamb, but in the past it was customary to eat lamb or goat ofto, egg-lemon, boiled or braised, which was accompanied by twisted macaroni, calitsounia and chloro, a type of cheese.

In Epirus, on Easter Sunday they make cheese pies, milk pies and lamb in the shell with vegetables. Instead of cooking, they make the trimma, i.e. fill the lamb bolia with offal and greens and then cook it in the oven or in a pot with tomato sauce. This particular recipe is also made in Macedonia. In southern Greece, in Patras, lamb is cooked together with the belly and legs, while in Mani it is preferred with red sauce and is called "regali".

On the islands, they cook lamb or goat in countless delicious variations, but always in the oven. In Rhodes, Ikaria, Samos and Lesbos they fill it with coarse wheat, offal and raisins. In Andros it is preferred stuffed with rice and vegetables while in Sifnos it is baked in a clay pot with enough dill. In Naxos, it is called patoudo lamb and is cooked stuffed with offal, rice, vegetables and kefalotiri. In Karpathos, they prefer it stuffed with lamb liver, rice and oatmeal.

In Thessaly and Central Greece, however, the lamb, the goat and the spit-roasted chicken take the lead. Countless spits are set up in every neighborhood and square, and everyone participates in shooting the obelia accompanied by folk songs from early in the morning.

Times may pass, but traditions remain unchanged over time. The Easter of our childhood is reflected in the flavors we choose today.