On May 4, 2019, at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church of Augusta, GA., the CSRA of Augusta fellowshipped with the church to celebrate the 2019 Spring Greek Mini Festival.
The 2019 Greek Food Festival is an event that highlights Greek culture from their tortilla wrapped gyros, Greek salad, Greek desserts, vendors, and Greek traditional music alongside Byzantine music. Augusta’s traditional Greek festival does not only call its attention to Greek culture but to celebrate 29 years located in the downtown district of Augusta.
The church members of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church prepared the desserts from scratch for the consumers’ eyes to see. The Greek desserts that served at the festival were Diples, Baklava, Kataifi, Flogeres, Finikia, and Kourambiedes. One of the Greek chefs, Irene Haldezos, deep frying the Greek doughnuts under a tent gave instructions on how to create these Greek doughballs.
“We make the dough overnight and let it sit until it rises. The next day we fry it and make the honey syrup and dip the dough balls in the honey and the nuts. The dough balls are called Loukoumades,” said Irene Haldezos.
While people are enjoying the unique taste of Greek food, the community of Augusta is entertained by Greek music where one of the musicians are playing a Greek instrument known as the Bouzouki. The Greek Bouzouki is an instrument that is a part of the lute family that was made known to Greece in the 1900s by immigrants of the Asia Minor. The Bouzouki is now considered the foundation of the rebetika genre in Greek music.
Greek food and musical entertainment are not all that makes Greek culture interesting. Ancient culture and history are embedded in American culture. For instance, Greek philosopher, Aristotle is also known as “Father of Western Philosophy” is present in today’s education and college curriculum. Aristotle’s influential imprint are cemented in many teachings that involve physics, biology, poetry, metaphysics, logical reasoning, theatre, politics, and government, according to Stanford University’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
For more information regarding the history of Greek culture and the upcoming events surrounding Greek history, check out the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church website at http://holytrinityaugusta.org.