THE RED FALLS. In Greek you say Kokkinopefti, and this very literal, symbolic description serves as one popular name for the day, Holy Thursday. The red comes down, washing what it may. In this case, eggs for Easter.

In Greece on Great Thursday—what some call Maundy Thursday in English (and which, when I was little, I heard as “Monday Thursday” and wondered how the adults could have gotten so confused)—Easter preparations get underway in earnest, before the mournful church bells start their incessant toll on Friday to proclaim the death of Jesus on the cross. Thursday is the day you do the traditional baking, making a loaf of sweet, festive Tsoureki (into which you may insert a bright, red egg), and perhaps you also whip up a batch or two of the Greek Easter cookies called Koulouria or Koulourakia.

Koulouria make me think of yiayia and papou, my maternal grandparents, no longer with us. I don’t think a visit ever went by that the aroma of these subtly perfumed biscuits didn’t greet me at her door. My grandfather loved them, made of them a ritual breakfast with coffee, and I know it wasn’t just at Easter. He had exactly the right idea, and I confess that this is how I’ll be greeting the days until my current cookie stash runs out. Koulouria are the ideal dunking cookie: in coffee, in tea, in milk. They also make me think of distant family in Messinia, Greece (in the Peloponnesus). Three years ago, my mother and I visited the town where my grandmother grew up, and we were welcomed with famous hospitality by her cousins. We went to Saturday night Easter services with them, broke the traditional fast at their house past midnight, and as we were leaving, the family matriarch pressed a large bag of Koulouria into my hands. I made them last the best I could, which wasn’t long.

The other ritual we shared with our Greek family was what’s known as Tsougrisma. Heard of it? No? Well, even if the Greek name (pronounced “TSOO-greez-mah,” and meaning “clinking together” or “clashing”) throws you, you may still be familiar with this game played with cooked, dyed Easter eggs.

Two players each take one boiled, red-dyed egg. Holding the eggs end to end, the first person uses his or her egg to tap the opponent’s egg and try to crack it. When one egg is cracked, the winner (the one with the egg still intact) uses the same side to tap the other end of the broken egg, collecting the losing egg to keep if it cracks a second time.

You’re supposed to tap gently, but it’s easy to get carried away. With a fierce sense of competition (usually friendly), some players devise all manner of strategies for ensuring that they’ve got the strongest egg. My son, nervous that he was going to lose the game we played a bit early this year, spent a long time contemplating our bowl of eggs to select a winner. As you can see, he did a good job of it.

Cracking the shells of both my husband’s egg and my own, my son emerged triumphant. According to custom, he can expect good luck during the rest of the year.

[An amusing aside: As he was left with the lone whole egg, he sang a victory song. Are you familiar with Beyoncé's track "All the Single Ladies"? If you are, then sing it to yourself now and you'll understand how my son could have confused the lyrics so easily, mistaking the song's repeated title for the words "I'm a single egg." He chanted this with an imp's grin on his face and—pardon the pun—cracked me up.]

The only other thing I’ll say about the eggs is that my son asked me why I wasn’t painting mine different colors, using the full range of hues supplied by PAAS. Ah, PAAS, that omnipresent kit that has only grown more flashy over the years. It now comes with egg wrappers and stickers—much more than the simple copper-wire dippers and basic color tablets of my own youth.

To children, more is always better: more color, more patterns, more eggs to dye. I was the same way when I was my son’s age. Now, though—maybe a telltale sign of growing older—I want less; I want simple. And I want pure symbols, uncluttered with the commercial paraphernalia of American holidays. In Greece, all the eggs are dyed red. The color represents the blood of Christ, and the egg itself stands for fertility and new life. Leave it to Greeks to stick to the drama, the Passion, the real and unadulterated story.

Simple, yet not. Which brings me back to Koulouria.

Koulouria/Koulourakia (Greek Easter Cookies)

Hard on the outside and slightly soft at their centers, these Greek Easter cookies make a perfect year-round snack. At once simple yet festive, they appeal to kids and grown-ups alike. They are sturdy enough for dunking in coffee, tea, milk, or cocoa. Their dense crumb and slightly rough texture put you in mind of a peasant’s cookie, yet they have a delicate side as well. Almost hidden is the subtle hint of anise—quite mild, considering the strength of the ouzo I put in them. Koulouria keep for quite a while (at least a week in an airtight container), but they’re so good they don’t last long. If you make them for Easter, offer them up with a joyous “Kalo Pasxa!”

Yield: Approximately 3 dozen

Ingredients:

1/2 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
3 large eggs, beaten well
1/4 cup milk
4 cups (or more) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon ouzo, or 1 teaspoon anise extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon grated orange zest
1/4 cup milk mixed with 1/4 teaspoon sugar, for glazing (or use 1 egg yolk)
1/4 cup sesame seeds

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350F.

In a large bowl, using handheld electric beaters, cream the butter thoroughly, about 3 minutes. Mix in the sugar. Add beaten eggs and the milk, mixing well.

Into the same bowl, gradually sift together 4 cups flour along with the baking powder and salt. Use the beaters as long as possible, then switch to a wooden spoon. Incorporate well. You should have a rather firm dough. Add the ouzo or anise extract, the vanilla, and the orange zest and mix well. If the dough is very sticky, you may add a little more flour, although 4 cups was enough for me. The dough is ready when you can roll a piece of it in the palm of your hand and it forms a ball without sticking to your palms.

Pinching off pieces of dough a bit bigger than a walnut, roll them into strands about 6-8 inches in length, then fold them in the middle and wrap the ends around each other to form a twist. Place Koulouria twists on an ungreased baking sheet, about an inch apart.

Combine milk and sugar to form a glaze, or beat an egg yolk together with a Tablespoon of water if desired. Brush the glaze lightly over the Koulouria, then sprinkle sesame seeds over the tops.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until cookies are nicely browned on top. Cool a few minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer to wire racks.

TIME IS A TEASE. It leads you on in a rush—whoosh! Another year, gone?—yet once it slows down it seems it will never deliver the thing you’re waiting for. You’re always waiting for something, aren’t you? You are if you’re anything like me, head in the future a bit too much.

My days usually start like that, in a blur of activity, eating a cup of yogurt while standing in the kitchen, juggling the morning routine and planning the rest of my day. Too much going on. When I do have more time for breakfast, sometimes I boil an egg, and then of course I hover over the pot, scowling. I can hear someone (mother? grandmother?) reminding me: “A watched pot never boils.”

This year I’ve decided to shake up my sense of time, of its passing and its worth. The main catalyst for my decision was an email I received from the Village Zendo (a Buddhist meditation center) that I used to frequent but then drifted away from, due to the usual excuse: not enough time. Ha! The email announced a course called 365, based on a book by Stephen Levine called A Year to Live. The course meets twelve times—monthly, for a year—and its premise is what you can imagine: You have 365 days left to live. That is all. What does this mean to you? What does this change and what would you change? It’s a bit of a false question to answer, and yet—who knows? Most of us, as Levine points out in his book, cannot “afford to put this [inquiry] off any longer, because almost no one knows the day on which the last year begins.”

For me, the first day of the “last” year (hopefully I have at least a year left!) began the morning after the introductory meeting at the zendo. I pledged to make it begin the right way, with a meal at which I was fully present and aware. Forget the mindless shoveling of cereal into my gullet while multitasking. The beginning of Levine’s book (all of Zen, for that matter) focuses on staying present as an act of affirmation, being fully alive and conscious in the here-and-now, the one dimension of time that matters.

It was time to cook quinoa with savory condiments for breakfast.

One of my favorite cookbooks is called Three Bowls: Vegetarian Recipes from an American Zen Buddhist Monastery. (The monastery in question is Dai Bosatsu Zendo, in the Catskills; follow the link to their site, store, and books section for the cookbook.) I am not a vegetarian, nor am I Buddhist, despite my sometimes-practice of meditation, but this cookbook speaks to me in an important way. In addition to being a book with wonderful recipes, it’s also a gentle guide to matters of spirit. It’s the book I go to whenever I sense the need to slow things down in my cooking—”slow” being more of an attitude adjustment than anything related to the time it takes to make a dish. In the book’s foreword, Abbot Eido T. Shimano Roshi lists the three important minds a cook should have: Joyful Mind, Great Mind, and Mature Mind (from Instructions to a Tenzo, by 13th-century Zen master, Dogen Zenji). Roshi writes that cooking “is not only the preparation of food but a practice of spirituality. A practice of spirituality means not wasting even the stem of a vegetable. It involves economy of movement, punctuality, and beauty of presentation.” It’s a tall order, cooking that way.

One of the breakfast recipes in the book is for “Cream of Quinoa.” There’s no cream or milk in it, just the super-nutritious quinoa grains cooked with water until thick; a hearty porridge substitute for wheat or oats. As with a bowl of oatmeal, there is great flexibility in how you can season the quinoa. For breakfast, many people will prefer a drizzle of maple syrup or a sprinkling of cinnamon, a topping of raisins or other fruit. I decided to really “go Zen” with my breakfast bowl—that is, to select an assortment of savory condiments more in the style of a traditional Japanese meal. And to remind myself of the qualities of joy, greatness, and maturity, I decided to prepare: a boiled egg, sliced scallions, and a mixture of sesame seeds, salt, and nori.

The egg, for some reason, turned out to be the best boiled egg I ever made. I’m not kidding. Why was this? Was it because I made myself practice more patience than usual? Because I waited until the water had begun to boil to lower my from-the-fridge egg into the pot, instead of just putting it in at the start (and therefore being imprecise with the amount of time it actually cooked)? Perhaps it was because I did not decide that ten minutes on the timer was enough for me to run to my desk and get involved in something else, only to later forget the value of punctuality and let the timer scream until it burned itself out and I had completed my whatever-it-was-that-couldn’t-wait. No, this time, I stayed in the kitchen, protective of my breakfast, the first in a year of “lasts.” Whatever the reason (probably a combination), the end result was a tight and springy orbit of white around a fully cooked yet moist, perfectly colored yolk (no gray-green ring from negligent overcooking). The shell peeled away easily, and in my hand was a single perfect thing, warm and comforting. I crumbled it with my fingers instead of chopping it with a knife. Joy!

Scallions were to be my greatness. In a sense this was true, if you count the fact that I paid a great deal of attention to slicing my one scallion on a sharp diagonal, and at regular intervals. I was mindful—but forget economy of movement. What I realized while slicing was that my knife was way too dull, despite the fact that I had just sharpened it. Instead of a clean slice, I had to saw the ends a bit. Note to self: learn to properly sharpen the kitchen knives! I might have to review this post at Tea and Cookies (”The Joy of a Sharp Knife”).

As for Mature Mind, I think it will take a lot more meditation for me to understand how to apply this to my kitchen work, what is truly meant by that. But I did think about maturity in the sense of age and depth of character—or, in this case, flavor. To represent this quality, I chose to add a sesame-and-salt condiment called “gomasio,” plus some toasted nori flakes, to my breakfast bowl. The mysterious deep-sea taste, mixed with salt and earthy seeds . . . well, it was a hearty pleasure, mature or not.

For beauty of presentation, I’ll let you be the judge. What I will say in my defense is that I actually took the time to arrange the condiments on a plate instead of piling them up in a heap on the counter and then dumping them without ceremony on top of the completed dish. I always take extreme care with pastry, but usually not so much in a dish like this one. Maybe an A for effort?

I am not fooling myself into thinking that I will be able to prepare a breakfast like this for myself every day—or even if I were able, that I would always follow through on that ability. But bringing my entire attention to bear on this very simple breakfast made the meal taste so much better. It felt great to be focused only on the very instant unfolding. Stirring was only the movement of a spoon; slicing, that of a knife. The cooking process seemed magical again to me, in a way it often doesn’t (when I’m rushing or running through a mental list of errands at the same time), and with the morning sunlight and the finished breakfast bowl came a moment of authentic joy at what lay before me—not just on the table, but in my next and “last” 364 days. For me, that’s a worthy start.

Quinoa Breakfast Bowl

Inspired by “Cream of Quinoa” in the book Three Bowls, from Dai Bosatsu Zendo

Yield: 1-2 Servings

Ingredients:

1/2 cup quinoa, rinsed well and drained

2 cups water

1 generous pinch sea salt

1 boiled egg, crumbled by hand

1 scallion, thinly sliced on a sharp diagonal

1 Tablespoon toasted sesame seeds or “gomasio” condiment

1 teaspoon nori granules or flakes

Method:

In a saucepan, bring the water, quinoa, and salt to a boil. Reduce the heat to very low, cover, and cook until thickened, about 30 minutes.

While the quinoa is cooking, prepare the boiled egg and sliced scallion; measure out the sesame seeds and nori. Do everything with deliberation. If you have prepared condiments in advance, use the cooking time to sit quietly if you can; think about the transformative nature of kitchen work, its benefits for the body and soul.

When ready to serve, take time to arrange the condiments nicely on individual dishes, in bowls, or on a single tray. Do this for yourself, even if there’s no one else around. Pause in a moment of gratitude that you have enough to eat, and then enjoy the rewards of your morning’s effort: dig in (chopsticks optional).

A Note on Condiments:

If the condiments listed here don’t entice you, invent your own—salty or sweet—to suit your taste. Some ideas include: soy sauce, cooked greens, shiitake mushrooms, umeboshi plums, kimchee for salt and spice; for a touch of sweet, try maple syrup, honey, cinnamon, dried fruit, chopped nuts, toasted wheat germ, toasted coconut.