Greek life in photos

Every good greek housewife hangs the bedding out to air every morning.  I do too....sometimes.  Once when we lived in an apartment building in Crete one of the pillows fell three storeys into a puddle of fresh tar. Nasty. My mother-in-law hung the washing out in her yard every sunny day of the year, brought it in at midday , folded it all and made the bed just before retiring for the night.

This is the way we grate our tomatoes.  Most housewives still prefer to grate them this way instead of whizzing them in the mixer.  The skin goes into the compost.  You get  more lumpy, au naturel tomato instead of a puree.

Wind turbines on the hills opposite on the mainland Peloponese.

Unfortunately they have defiled the outline of our 'sleeping lady'.  The turbines are down her tummy and up her knees.  I have cut her head off to the right of the photo.  She is lying on her back with her knees bent.

The carob tree.  The carob looks like a big green bean and the carob tree is a large leafy shade tree. 

  The carob dries out and can be made into flour or a chocolate substitute.  Here they are mostly used to feed the goats.  

Our front entrance.  I had a collection of plates which were slowly getting broken.  Our master builder scooped out a hole  and plastered the last two into the wall he was finishing off.  

These are shell fish called 'porthira' which the kids dive for at our local beach.  K breaks open the shell and then boils them.  They need quite a long boiling until they are tender  but are worth it he says.  This is an ideal meze for ouzo, doused with a little olive oil and lemon juice.

A tortoise hiding from the children.  We have quite a lot of wild life around here, besides field mice and frogs in the garden there are pheasants, quails, hawks, tortoises in the summer and quite a few snakes.  Fortunately we usually find these squashed on the road.  K puts sulphur around our boundary wall to discourage them.  The snakes on the island are not poisonous but they are not welcome.