Soko-late

 Dubai chocolate.......

What the hell is this new fad

A chocolate bar made from milk chocolate filled with a sweet cream made from pistachios, finely chopped katayfi pastry and tahini.

Dreamt up by a chocolatier in Dubai in 2021.

Thanks to TikTok everyone's suddenly talking about it.  So I had to google, didn't I!!

Now I want to eat it

This is the Greek brand of Dubai chocolate. Now available in every supermarket and small grocery.

There is a catch. Other chocolate bars this size cost around 2 euro. This one sells for over 4 euros.

How long can I last without buying it and eating it?

Hopefully the price will stop me from reaching out to grab it from the shelf!

I've just found out that granddaughter Nels has made this chocolate!! She'll be back this weekend for the big Lenten celebration. 

She will be making some for us... Or else. 

Wait for the next episode..... 

 

Meat, Meat. Lots of Meat

 A Winter's Bbq..Thursday last

Tsiknopempti. Smokey Thursday.

Round 1.........

One of the most important days of the Greek carnival season. It's the 2nd to last Thursday before Lent. The tradition is to eat mounds of lamb chops, grilled or roasted, pork pancetta, sausage and chicken pieces. 

With Greek salad, Pitta bread and bowls of tzatziki.  And litres of wine, fine and not-so fine.

After the food and wine there may be singing and dancing.

Our Chief Bbq-er 

Me and Jan enjoying the finer wine

Beside a roaring fire

It was a freezing day. Around 7oC

Far too cold for greek island dwellers

K with a wee dram of the 'other' wine

This is 'meat eating week'.

 Next week it will be cheese, dairy and eggs. And then along comes the 6 week fast.

Round 2

In the evening family, a couple of grandchildren, came for more meat. Lots of meat. Far too much. 

They took home a baking dish piled high. We are still finishing off our share. 

It's the tradition says the traditional part of the family. 

And granddaughter Luli made a big dish of what the Greeks call 'mosaiko', chocolate and crushed biscuits.

Boy was it good. I ate a big piece. And I shouldn't have. Especially after all that meat

Meanwhile back in Athens... 

The rest of the grandchildren were grilling out on their balcony

Tall grandson is the one in the middle

I Saw the Light

 I had my eyes lasered. 2 minutes of brightly coloured lights directed at my eyeballs and I had perfect eyesight again.

It was an amazing difference. Suddenly everything was bright and clear. 

What I hadn't realised was how much my eyesight had deteriorated.  It had been getting worse for months. Everything was blurry but I could still see. 

Then the light returned and I suddenly saw the world as it really is. 

I can see my fingernails. They need a manicure. I can see my toenails. They need a trim. 

I can probably see that chin hair as well.

I looked in the mirror and realised I badly needed to put some colour in. My hair is dark grey with streaks of silver and blonde ends from the last dye job. That must have been months ago.

I thought I had an elegant white mane. No!

That was the first shock. 

Colours are suddenly so bright. I've had to turn down the brightness on my phone. It was dazzling me.

But this morning I got the biggest shock when I saw how filthy my house is.

There's a layer of crumbs under the table. Door handles, appliances are grimy and greasy.  I couldn't see any of this a few days ago. Obviously it has been building up over the months.

The rugs need beating and deep cleaning. Furniture is covered in dust. Floors just plain mucky. Thank goodness we have a dishwasher so I know plates and cutlery are clean. 

It appalls me and it's overwhelming to see what needs to be done.

I'm never over enthusiastic about cleaning but this makes me want to cry.

But let's be positive. I have perfect eyesight. I can see clearly without glasses. I can read small print with my reading glasses. It's wonderful.

Head Honcho

 Mid winter is pruning time. Roses and grapevines .

Poppi has been chief pruner for at least 5 years now.  In the beginning it was 'the blind leading the blind'. I showed her where to cut, having watched our next door neighbour doing it once. 

The roses and vines grew back strong and healthy. 

It needs someone young with strong hands to do the work.

A champion rower perhaps.

 Some of the vines are thick and gnarled and growing over walls and fences. The roses are old fashioned varieties covered in fierce  thorns.

And there's Poppi

Climbing, secateurs in hand trimming all the vines down to stumps.

The wee Elf-who-helps .

Her Mum collected all the vines, branches, pruned them down to a usable size and gave them to her father to use later on the BBQ

Poppi found a frog in the nasturtiums. 

It was remarkably tame and sat on her hand till she put it back in the green tangle

A Popp-y

And a

2 colour bougainvillia 

White and purple 

This white and purple one doesn't bloom till late September . I'll prune it myself when the flowers drop.

The stumpz

Report-age

This week in Greece.

- Ex Prince Nikolas of the long deposed Greek royal family was married in Athens, to the daughter of a ship-owner. Wealth and titles go together.

The family name was Glucksberg. Doesn't sound very Greek.  They are related to the Danish, Spanish and English royal families. None of the 'greek' royals were ethnically Greek. 

They were exiled in 1974 and  stripped of Greek citizenship in 1994.  

To regain their Greek citizenship they recently renounced their titles and changed the name to De Grèce, of the Greeks.  Very clever. It sounds grand, Nikolas De Grèce, but he's just an ordinary Greek citizen. 

-  Politics

The usual. Party differences.

Strikes, protest marches

It's been a while since  there's been rioting, Molotov cocktails, the ripping up and throwing of marble paving stones. Maybe the anarchists are waiting for spring. 

- Turkish threats.  Dear old Erdogan, President of Turkey, has been redefining his borders once again. This time he's including Greece's northern capital of Thessaloniki.

Erdogan is dreaming of a 2nd Ottoman Empire which he calls the Blue Homeland.  He fantasizes a great and powerful  Turkey stretching from Crimea to Samarkand (a city now  in Uzbekistan). With him as all powerful Sultan.  In your dreams mate 

- A month ago churches in the Cycladic islands were holding liturgies for some rain. Now they're holding services for the end to the still constant earthquakes.

'Experts' are monitoring the quakes. The ones I listen to on YouTube are waiting to see what happens during the full moon on Wednesday.

A full moon supposedly puts more stress on the earth's crust and could cause the shift of tectonic plates. 

The other night when I couldn't sleep I started listening to a live stream covering a 7.5 earthquake around Honduras and the Cayman islands. They were sending out warnings about a tsunami.

The next morning there was no mention of earthquakes or tsunamis down there.  I haven't googled but I presume there was no tsunami, not much damage and no deaths. No drama so no news.

🎶....my boomerang won't come back.

Don't worry, we've got 5 more of them. 

Thank you nephew Panayioti. He's captain of a merchant navy ship, lately in Australian waters. He didn't forget his foreign aunt. Thanks Pano! 

The first sign of spring up at the ancient ruins. An almond  tree in blossom

An Anemone

A meeting of the

Local-kiwi-alien

Fan Club 

Welcome Ada, my latest follower. Here flanked by no. 1 fans Elli and Danae. 

Poppi is in Athens.  More about her later. 

Cold Winter Days

 Baby it's cold outside.

7oC and an icy wind.

We went out for the first time this week to go shopping and have a coffee in a warm café.

K was getting cabin fever. He needed urgently to see a few  different faces and exchange some frivolous banter.

Not me but I did need some frivolous shopping 

It certainly made for a cheap week. We should stay at home more often.

Meanwhile, back at the homestead-s

Junior was cuddled up on the couch next to Elli and Luli

And Rusty was curled up on his couch next to Danae's wood stove

Back at our homestead there was baking going on

Yesterday it was apple pies

Today it was meat pies

And tomorrow it will be spanakopita (spinach and feta cheese pie).

I made the the apple and meat pies myself and cooked them on the wood stove.

Enough. Tomorrow's pie was  made and flash frozen by Mr Kanaki.

It will enjoyed by another Mr K while watching his favourite football team . With a few glasses of wine.  The more goals, the more wine!

Checking on those pies

Piles of wood all over the place. 

Cataracts....Again

 2 years ago I had the cataracts in both eyes repaired. The operations were a success and for the first time in 60 years I could see without glasses.

How happy I was. I bought sunglasses at a fraction of the price of prescription ones. The only glasses I needed were for reading and very close-up work, like threading a needle. I was slightly annoyed about that. I had prided myself on my close sight.  This is normal so I can't complain 

In the last few months I've noticed my eye sight deteriorating. It began with a blur around the edges as though my lens were dirty. Now it's a mist and it's spreading. 

Threading a needle? Forget it, even with glasses. Never mind removing chin hairs. They're rampaging happily in the stratosphere.

I finally had my eyes tested and it seems I have secondary cataracts. Not serious said the doc. Easily fixed. You sit in front of machine.  There's a series of clicks. And 'Bob's your Uncle '. 

You walk out with perfect eyesight again.

It's all to do with the plastic case that goes over the eye for cataracts. In 50% of cases it starts to break up after 2-5 years 

All very well. First find out which hospital has this machine, called YAK. Then get an appointment.

The rural hospital where I originally had the op is very busy and I couldn't get an appointment till the end of June. Que c'era c'era.

But even after phoning all over the hospital K, who is telephone central, couldn't discover whether they had the YAK.

We have 4 rural hospitals within a 2 hour distance. Neither of us wanted to go into Athens. 

Eventually he phoned the hospital in Tripoli (Greek Tripoli), the one furthest away. They couldn't have been nicer.

You're coming from Poros?

We'll fit you in as soon as possible!

So I have an appointment for next Friday. It's late morning so we have plenty of time to get there , find parking, pick up the entrance papers and find the 6th floor.

Only thing we need is a covid test. No problem there. Though it did surprise me. No one asks for those anymore.

I'll be very happy to see the world clearly again