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Tuna on a tile. 

You've seen a similar photo before

Tuna cooked in the oven on a roof tile.

This one is well seasoned.  It has roasted a lot of tuna

Clean the tuna, let the blood drain out.  Stuff the belly and head cavity with lemon slices, garlic and oregano

Bake 40 minutes

Let it cool a bit.  Remove the flesh from the back bone and generously douse with a lemon and olive oil dressing.

Dressing.

  Juice from a couple of lemons, double that amount of olive oil, a little salt, a sprinkle of oregano, a squirt of mustard. 

Put that all in a screw jar and shake well.

Eat.  With a green salad, bread and wine

Spinach pie

spanakopita

Filling ... 

Spinach chopped and sweated, lots of chopped dill and fresh spring onions

One egg

Pepper

Lots of grated or crumbled feta cheese. 

Mix well

Homemade pastry.......

400-450 grams all purpose flour

200 grams water

70 grams olive oil

1 tsp baking powder

3 tbsps vinegar

salt

Mix well and knead till soft and elastic

Let it rest 20 minutes and then divide in half.  Roll out each piece for top and bottom of the pie

What the hell

Something has turned my cauliflower and broccoli leaves into lace work.

Gotcha

Half a dozen caterpillars.  White cabbage butterflies?

Boy can they chomp through these plants.

But not any more.

Dogs and Drugs

 To continue on from the last post.....

If you don't own a dog or are more of a cat person, like me, then big barking dogs are fearsome beasts. 

Years ago when we lived in town I used to walk around the smaller  island in the morning.  On the back road there was a small herd of sheep guarded by two dogs.  The sheep were usually found down a small bank near the sea and could only be heard but not seen.  Somewhere nearby were the dogs.  Every damn time I walked that road they would suddenly leap out at me barking and snarling.  

I knew more or less where they were but their appearance was  so sudden and so menacing that I almost had a heart attack.  I was so angry at being frightened that I would shriek at them and run passed.    In the end I stopped walking that way altogether.  It was too much for my nerves.

A few of our neighbours have hunting dogs but they are kept under control and are well fenced in.  Hunters are not keen on losing a good hound.  There's a sweet little white dog called Snoopy who runs free.  He barks like mad protecting the house and grounds but will actually wag his tail when approached.  He's the epitome of  'his bark is worse than his bite'.

Then there are the other dogs. Big and noisy. Behind fences but free. They follow me along the fence line barking and growling.

Unfortunately there are some on almost every route I take.

My girls both have dogs and I am quite happy to dog-sit them on occasion, and give them back again.  They are dogs I know and trust.  Unlike the 'strange' dogs I meet or hear on my daily ramblings.

Now for sneakers on  powerlines.

This appears to be a worldwide phenomenon.

They've appeared in Beijing, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Spain, Lebanon and now Poros. Australia apparently is a 'hotbed of errant show throwing'.

Wikipedia calls it 'folk sport' and there's a site called 'Shoefiti' that apparently tracks hanging shoes.

Does it mean

-that this is a place for drug deals

-or is it a commemoration of a wedding or the end of the school year. 

Scratching of head..??? Ehhhh?

-that someone was just bored and had nothing else to do with their old trainers.

-its simply a prank

-a young guy who lives nearby lost his virginity

-its a form of art

Heavens to mergatroyd, what else will I hear.

The only young boy who lives anywhere near is 10 years old and his idea of fun is doing wheelies on his bike so I'm crossing that off the list.

It's not the end of the school year and no one around here has got married recently.

A place for drug deals?

Beside the rubbish bins way out in the wop-wops? 

 It's out in the middle of nowhere but cars and bikes pass now and again and there are local farmers in their olive groves, herding sheep or cutting wood. Two shady characters hanging around under dangling shoes would stick out like a sore thumb.

There are drug dealers and users on the island but I doubt anyone would wind 5 kms up the mountain to get their dose. However whether it's true or it's an urban myth it's known even by my young granddaughter, who does Not buy drugs or use them.

As for it being a work of art.

No way! Naaa, not these ones.

I'm still voting for a stupid joke by the rubbish men who found an old pair of trainers in the bin, climbed up on top of the truck and tied them there.

I got bored googling the damn things. 

Walking

Do you ever look up when you're outside?

A pair of athletic shoes hanging from the wires. 

They haven't just been slung up there from below . The laces look as though they are tied on.

Who?  Why ....well, why not?

How?

From the top of the rubbish truck I'd say, by bored council workers.

It doesn't matter where I walk up here, I have to pass barking dogs.

These two seemed really dangerous, loud barks and big teeth.  K had a talk with their owner and he said they'd retreat if you shooed them away.

One was outside the other day and I told him to shut up (nicely of course) and he did lower the tone and backed up.  

When I took this photo I had to get closer, closer to the big fence. And they did retreat. 

Every time I took a step forward they took a step back.

All the other dogs are also behind tall fences and I hope they stay there.

Their barking is loud and insistent.

I have my trekking poles but they're all only for waving around. 

Once, a few years ago, I came upon a pack of dogs. 3 or 4 of them and they didn't look friendly. I retreated slowly and thank goodness they didn't follow .

They must have escaped from one of the rural parcels of land up here. Guardians of olive groves and rustic sheds.

Most of these are large dogs on the end of big chains.

 Thank goodness I've never seen them since.

This and That

Now and again the sea rises and gushes through flood channels onto the road.  There is no tide here to cause  a surge of sea water and it isn't excessive rainfall, causing the sea level to rise.

The sea water forms a lake  for almost a kilometre along the harbour

All that salt water can do damage to your car but these kids are having loads of fun

Ladies who lunch

I'm front left

At the end of summer, as days cooled down, I suddenly became a social butterfly, Poros style.

As well as going to the cinema three times in one month/year/summer I also got to wine and dine with English friends .

We coffee-ed and lunched, chatted in a language I savvy and didn't have to interpret. My glass ran-eth over.

Grandson, who lives in the city, taking their kitten, Diego for a walk. Coffee and catnip?

Peppers and a Pumpkin

A little bit of nothing

Our troll guarding the last green squash

One pumpkin/squash out of so many that we spied in the garden.

The goats came and ate all the leaves. They left this tubby little specimen hanging on the gate, still attached to it's vine. We had rain, we had sunshine and there it hung, going nowhere, doing nothing. So I cut it off and will wait for it to go yellow.

Red hot peppers

Our best crop this year. 

They come up by themselves and grow with no help from me.

That's probably why they do so well.

I'll harvest them and dry them but we still haven't used last year's or those from the year before.

They're very spicy. A little goes a long way.

Photos From Our Home

 

Smerna (roll the 'r'), the mediterranean moray eel

Not 1 but 3 

This type of moray eel is dangerous. These ones were almost a metre long and 2 or 3 kilos each.  Their bite can be very nasty and fishermen aren't happy to see them in their catch.  They give them to K for nothing because he takes them off their hands.

Not many people eat them but they are a good fish to eat.  They have firm white flesh, with a few big bones.

K discards the head, chops them into steaks and fries them, in olive oil of course.

Now you can see why they are dangerous.

Their jaws are wide and those long sharp teeth tear and crush their prey.

We have a reputation as 'collectors'.  To put it politely.

The council truck stopped outside our gate last week and the two guys yelled for K.  Treasures, delivered straight to the door.  What fun.  For someone.  I don't know whether he asked for these or someone thought our house was the perfect dumping place.  He's not admitting anything.

One of the big pieces of  shelving was 'gifted' on to a friend who says it will come in handy.

So K is not the only keeper of treasures on the island.

And we have the other shelving unit taking up precious  space inside the house.  It's empty now but I know it will soon be full.

None of that....... 'if something comes into the house, then something must go out'..... rule here.

Hear All About It

 Hear the news that is not on  the front page. 

- Greek drama - 

Over the summer 2 turkish tourists were apprehended  for flying a drone over the Navy Base here on Poros.  They ended up in court but it was finally decided that they were indeed ordinary tourists who just happened to come from Turkey and who liked flying drones, not international spies.

There  was a bit of a brouhaha but it was over quickly.  There's nothing to spy on in Poros.  

The central building at the Navy Base is a fine example of  neo-classical architecture but there are no submarines hiding in the shallows, no torpedo boats on stand-by.

- Corfu -

Up over there on the island of Corfu, one of the popular holiday spots for partying Brits, there were some real shenanigans going on.  Kavos, in the south of Corfu, consists of endless bars full of 17-30 years olds drinking and revelling till dawn.  'The Kavos strip' is the place to be after dark.  You had better watch what you're drinking if you're partying there but most party goers probably don't care and any drink is fine as long as it's alcohol.

7 bars were shut down for reselling dregs and unfinished drinks from customers glasses.  The leftover beverages were collected in a barrel and served as shots.  The bars were shut down for 48 hours and fined.  

They were also fined for selling illegal and possibly adulterated alcohol.   

28 places were closed, temporarily, for tax evasion.

They lost a few thousand euros and were open again after two days raking the money back in.

- Sheep on a high -

from 'Greek Reporter'

A herd of sheep in the semi-flooded plain of Thessaly 'invaded' a glasshouse that cultivated medicinal cannabis and ate around 100 kilos of the stuff.  The sheep developed strange behaviour and the shepherd realised they had eaten a large part of the cannabis crop....reports say

The owner of the greenhouse  said ' I don't know whether to laugh or cry.  We had the heatwave and we lost a lot of the crop, we had the floods and we lost almost everything.  Now this.  The herd of sheep ate what was left'.

There was no clarification of 'their strange behaviour' but they didn't suffer any serious damage to their health.

- To burn or not to burn? -

Floating round the web on  blogs and youtube channels I follow is the theory that carnivores, those eating an animal based diet, like me, don't get sunburnt.

Some think it's a myth, some think that people on an animal based diet are less likely to burn and others that they heal faster.

I didn't go swimming till mid-August this year and my legs from the knees up, arms from the elbows up were lilly white.  That goes for my shoulders too.  I spend as little time as I can in the sun.  It's too hot and I hate sunbathing.   I'd rather sit in the shade and read a book.

I didn't get sunburnt  swimming on Poros exposing milk white limbs. However when I was on holiday at the Navy resort I sat in the sun rather a lot. It was late September and I needed to warm up after each swim. I didn't use any sunscreen and my knees got a bit red. The rest of me got tanned .

The sun is strong in summer, and probably if you overdo the exposure you're going to suffer whatever you eat.

November 3rd and it's still hot. No-one sits in the sun. It still burns.