November Activities

November 
 a quote from Santa -
Calm down you little bastards
It's only November

But Santa, it's almost December!!


November has been different this year.  It is usually filled with olives, young wine, and a much slower pace of life.  There are few olives being picked this year.  The olive trees produce every two years and last year was a bumper crop.  Olives on most trees now are small and sparse.  Even elderly neighbour Vaso is not picking this year, except to preserve a few kilos for her table, and ours.



Preserved olives in vinegar and brine

Vaso lives simply.  She doesn't often wear her dentures either.  Fresh food is easy to gather, prepare and to eat.  She often says if she has nothing else then a dry rusk dipped in wine, a handful of olives and an onion will be fine for tea. There are plenty of greens out in the fields, especially now that it has rained heavily. The lemon and orange trees are shedding fruit faster than she can gather them and there's always, olives in the jar.

Some have opened their wine barrels.  Our son-in-law went to pick up his allowance from the family vine yards but it hasn't been tasted yet.  Vaso hasn't even sniffed the pungent aroma from her  barrels.  It won't be long,  though there is a saying that wine should not be tasted till after St Nikolas on December 6th and red should be left for New Year. Most dedicated wine makers and drinkers around here don't take much notice of that old wives' tale.


Tourists were around for much later this season but streets are finally freer of cars and bikes and favourite tables at cafeterias are normally free.  



Apples are really plentiful but not grown much around here.  The best come from further north, the city of Tripoli (greek Tripoli, not the capital of Libya) and the area called Zagori.

We buy our apples and other produce from the back of a truck which comes in once a week from Tripoli.  Apples red, apples green, apples big and small.

I have baked apple cake, apple pudding, apple pie and made apple sauce.   We're just about appled out.  A real treat was the one lonely pear which had fallen into our bag of apples last week.  I think it will be pears from now on.