egg avgo ei oeuf

truly incredible and edible. i love an egg. yia-yia vera ate one every day, preferably dikroko (twin yolk) from the chicken farmer down the street and up the hill in retziki. (sometimes, she would send us to him to get eggs. we would tell him they were for kiria vera, and he always showered us with twin yolks!) we weren't going to go play and roam around retziki in our neighborhood child pack if we didn't eat our boiled egg, nou-nou milk and crusty bread with butter and honey every morning. yia-yia made a mountain of quince preserves every summer for us. she spread it on our thick morning slices of bread and filled homemade pastaflora cakes with it. i want to try quince preserves again soon. i cannot remember what it tastes like, and i don't understand why it's memory is unavailable to me.
yia-yia boiled her sheep's milk, poured it into a clear water glass and allowed it to cool until a skin had formed. as a child, i was revolted by the milk skin. now i crave it, seek it out. sheep's milk, an egg, and forever lots of salt. the sheep herder lived up the hill behind yia-yia's house. we visited him, too. it was at the end of a day, they were milking the sheep, he and his son. pouring it into the classic aluminum container. alexia was maybe 6 years old. she drank it straight out of the trough, foamy, creamy, unpasteurized hot milk. can you smell it? summer's intensity enveloped in this special nectar, grass, sun, Greek heat.

yia yia told mama once that there are people who are analati, without salt. they need more than the average salt-eating person. i believe i'm one of those analati, i really do enjoy salt. perhaps not to the extent yia-yia did. she would pour it in waves onto her eggs. her meals were an entire morning and part of the afternoon in the making, every one of them divine, a gift from the universe. every one a story. i digress. more to so much more soon.