STUFFED TOMATOES

One of the most popular Greek summer dishes is stuffed tomatoes and green peppers (capsicum).  

Here is my recipe - with photos.  Other popular vegetables to stuff are aubergines and zucchinis and the stuffing is rice,  onions and herbs and maybe a little minced meat as well.   They're delicious and light in the summer heat

The hollowed out tomatoes and topless green peppers ready for stuffing.  The tomatoes are easily emptied by cutting a small slice off the top and digging out the flesh with a teaspoon.  It doesn't matter if the tomato skin is torn a little or a hole made in the bottom by too enthusiastic 'digging'.  The stuffing sits in there just the same.

Method

I put the flesh from half of the tomatoes, the onion and herbs into this little mixer and turn them into a pulp.  

You don't have to precook the stuffing and I never did, for 40 years. But K one day  told me his traditional mother boiled the stuffing for a short time so now I simmer it all for 10 minutes

Here are the vegetables, each filled with the stuffing mixed, ready to be closed.

Closed up, surrounded by potatoes cut into small pieces which hold them all in one place so they don't move around or fall over while cooking.  My mother-in-law always sprinkled breadcrumbs over them all before putting them in the oven so of course I do that as well (for her son).  They have been drizzled with olive oil and salt.  The dish does not need any extra water because usually quite a lot of juice comes from the tomatoes.  You can add a little water or tomato juice towards the end if you think they need it, and olive oil

And behold, this is what they look like after an hour in a hot oven.  A little blackness on top just gives them extra flavour.

RECIPE

- half a dozen tomatoes

- three or four green peppers

(or how ever many you think your family will eat)

- one onion, chopped and put into the mixer

- one clove of garlic

- a small bunch of parsely

 - mint

- basil

- one dessert spoon of short grain rice for each vegetable

- olive oil

- salt and pepper

If you're using zuchinis and aubergines, cut off a small lid and hollow them out the same way with a teaspoon.  Use the flesh in the stuffing.  Put it in the mixer with the tomato and onion.  

- 2 potatoes, cut into small pieces and parboiled for 10 minutes

- a little sugar

- also nice is a small handful of raisins and pine nuts

Hollow out the tomatoes and cut a lid off the top of the peppers, removing the seeds.

Put half the tomato flesh into the blender with the onion, garlic, roughly chopped parsely, mint and basil.  Mix to a pulp.

Put into a pot and start to simmer the mixture

Add the rest of the contents of the tomatoes roughly  mashing up any lumps with your fingers.    Add a small glass of olive oil, the rice, salt and pepper.  That is your stuffing ready.

Put a small sprinkle of sugar in the bottom of each tomato.  This counteracts the acidity of the tomato.  Now fill up each shell and cover with its lid.

Wedge the potatoes in between the vegetables.  Drizzle olive oil over them all, sprinkle a little more salt and scatter some breadcrumbs over the top.

Check that you've filled all the vegetables.

Cook in a hot oven from 1 to 1 1/2 hours.  The potatoes should be soft and the tops of the tomatoes lightly blackened.

If you want to use a little minced meat to make it a heartier meal for your man, then brown the mince a little and add it to the raw  tomato and rice mix and simmer.  I would use a handful of mince for this amount of vegetables.

Any stuffing mix left over you can just add to the dish around the veges and potatoes and maybe a little water.  It will cook perfectly well there and you'll have a little more to put on the plate.  

Serve with bread and feta cheese

Even better cold the next day.

Kali Orexi

A Map and More

 A map on a wall...

We were sitting inside a cafe after one of the islands celebrations, drinking ouzo and wine and enjoying a selection of mezes (traditional Greek nibbles  when you drink alcohol) 

Elli pointed out this map hanging on the wall opposite.  It's obviously Australia down there in the Eastern Ocean but the country is call New Holland

I'd never heard that old name for Australia so I messaged my brother in Perth to ask if he'd heard it called that.  Isn't social media amazing, instant communication from the deep south of the world to the far north. 

New Holland, he said, was the name given to mainland Australia by Dutch explorer Abel  Tasmania in 1644

It was known by this name till the early 19th C

The whole of those Southern lands, including Antartica was known as Terra Australis Incognita, the large unknown land to the South

Part of an ancient column standing alongside a square with crowded cafeterias

How many controls do you need for goodness sake

I cleaned out a couple of drawers the other day.  Found these, all going in the rubbish or recycle.  And we've got even more being currently used for TVs and aircons

The building toy behind was at the back of a drawer too. Bought for our grandkids, over 20 years ago.  I put the pieces in the dishwasher and will try and find a wee babe who might play with them

Or maybe I should keep them for the great grandchildren???? 

Poppi says definitely for the great grandchildren.  I'm forbidden to give it away.  But great grandchildren?  It might be a while yet!

Son in law Kyriakos proudly wearing the tshirt his Secret Santa gave him

'Duck you

You Ducking Duck' 

I wonder who gave him that??? 

My genteel mother would have been horrified

Stormy skies from winter passed

Not Quite Sussed

 All the family is working, long hours in summer heat.  We cook for them now and again. Just simple, traditional Greek summer food.  Dishes we know most of the family will eat.  Everyone has their likes and dislikes naturally enough

Stuffed tomatoes and peppers.

I try and leave a happy face on those one-use containers. A little of Mother's love

Macaroni 'pie' 

Sort of greek lasagne called Pastitsio

When it's hot it just collapses

Looks a mess after I transferred it for delivery 

Papou's famous meatballs, kefthethes

Full of garlic, parsley and mint

The aroma is irresistible

He fried 50 of them. I ate 1, he ate 3 so that left about 7 each for the rest of the family .  

 

Pastitsio and meatballs

Yum, yum eat 'em up

Now and again we make moussaka.  

That's it for the menu.  We do the prep the night before and put it all together next day.  K fries meatballs and I make bechamel for the pastitsio or moussaka. 

Delivery is to Danae' s workplace down on the waterfront. Driving through backstreet neighbourhoods to Ellis house is no longer an option. It's chaos up there.  Last time we went  Ks composure disappeared completely and he was yelling at a neighbour who wanted him to back up around a corner instead of backing up himself.  Quad bikes and motorbikes were squeezing past and it was almost impossible to manoeuvre so we could turn around and leave. This on a narrow road deserted during 10 months of the year

I was cooking in a large baking dish pan and then transferring the food to Tupperware bowls or smaller oven dishes for delivery

One-use baking trays

I finally sussed it out.  Tomorrow I'll be using these disposable baking dishes, one for each family.  I won't be scrambling to find one of my own dishes to use and they won't have a pile of them in their kitchens waiting for return

Well, it sounded like a good idea.  I've got 2 trays of stuffed vegetables in the oven now.  The timer went off after half an hour and I went to turn them around. Our oven is hotter on one side than the other.   I like to dunk the potatoes under the sauce too so they get a bit more taste.  Those aluminium containers were so heavy  they buckled and started to fold up into themselves.  There was boiling hot juice all over the oven door and a burnt finger for me.

I pushed them quickly to the back of the oven and cleaned up the mess .  When they're ready I'll open the oven door and let them cool off before I try and get the trays out.

And I'll go back to the big old non stick baking dish I was using before

Those flimsy aluminium things may be ok for brownies or biscuits but not for family meals

  Back to the drawing board

On the Home Front

 Midsummer has come and gone and days are getting shorter.  How does this happen when we still have the 2 hottest months to come

Preparing the greens K picked this morning. Called Vlita in Greek

They'll be boiled, dressed with olive oil and vinegar. A clove of garlic on the side. 

They're usually an accompaniment to fish or simply fried potatoes 

Greens and zucchini, tomatoes and one melon from our garden.  The melon was sweet and delicious. Alas there was only one

So far the summer is mild without any heatwaves, unlike the rest of Europe.  We had a quick rain shower yesterday and the temperature has dropped a little.

It does finally feel like summer.  The TV is outside for our evening viewing.  It has a waterproof cover during the day to protect it from the searing sun and any rain showers.  The big umbrella is up in the front yard giving us a little extra shade in the morning and protecting the garden from all day sun.  

I water daily.  Some plants like the basil, mint, thyme and hydrangea get water in the morning and the evening.

Poros roads are teeming with cars, motorbikes, motorised scooters, ebikes and pedestrians.  We go shopping very early in the morning, coffee first, then the supermarket  and home again.  If we go to the Navy beach canteen it's from Monday to Thursday, in the evening. Even then it gets too crowded and noisy.

We haven't started swimming yet.  It's too much of a hassle. 

Get changed, drive down in a hot car, haul our gear along the track and hopefully find a space to sit in the shade under the small shade tree on the water's edge, then back into the hot car, home, shower, change again.

  We'll be staying for 2 weeks at the Navy resort in September.  There's nothing else to do there but swim so we'll get our dose of ozone and swimming in the sea.

Our rural road has been blocked off because of the fire risk.  There is a big No Entry sign up at the crossroads.  We are very happy about that because tourists on quad bikes were screaming up and down our cul de sac disturbing our siesta hoping the road would lead to the sea.  No, it doesn't!

There are no ants in the house this year.  Even the huge outside ants are few and far between.  We are very happy those annoying house ants have disappeared.  We couldn't leave any food item out on the bench, it would be covered in a swarm of ants in seconds.  But what has happened to them?  We haven't sprayed or fumigated.  

There are no flies and fewer wasps.  Mosquitoes are still around and it's the year of the spider, huge great things.

Spider in the shower

It's about the size of the palm of my hand.  I didn't manage to catch it so it's still lurking somewhere in the bathroom. 

The cicadas started their screeching much later in the season and their noise level is not deafening as it is most years.  Strange the way nature differs each year.

Last year the nuisances were ants and grasshoppers.  The grasshoppers are still around, eating the leaves of my roses but nowhere near in such great numbers as the previous summer.

Summer birthdays and name days come one after another

This is the service at the Church of the Holy Belt, down at the bottom of our mountain road.  The church was whitewashed, the area cleaned up and the Council put on a full scale fiesta.  40 kilos of bbqed pork was dished out, free wine and cold drinks and live music with everyone dancing well into the evening

Temperatures are rising tomorrow. Up to 39o in some areas.  Not a heatwave though 

Poros Excursions - Methana and the Volcano

50ks from Athens by road, in sight of Poros, is a dormant volcano.  The last known explosion was in 258 BC.

An eruption was suspected but not confirmed in 1922. That's odd. Suspected.  Volcano explosions you'd think would be very obvious. An ash cloud, a rumbling.  No explanation that I can find

Under the volcano

Megalohori, the big village, surrounded by tiny hamlets with picturesque names (to us) like  Mouskes and Kounoupitsa, Kameni Hora (the burnt village) and Vathi (the deep harbour) 

Megalohori, on the side of the mountain, is the village under the volcano where K's mother was born. The village has one narrow road which winds through old village houses, a big church at one end and the cemetery at the other end

The old thermal spa and baths, resulting from volcanic activity

When I arrived in 1976 the spa was in it's heyday.  In July and August the over-60s made a beeline for the sulphuric bathes which specialised in treating arthritis and rheumatism

There were rows and rows of basic boarding houses.  You got a room with a bed and a bathroom down the hall.  The stay and treatment was subsidised by the government.  My inlaws got a summer bonus for 'bathing' whether at a spa or on holiday at the seaside. It was believed, and still is by the elderly, that if you went dipping in the sea at least 20 times over the summer you'd be free of winter flu and seasonal ailments.  So my m-in-law would tell me, though she didn't go 'bathing' .  Water was for drinking only

The old boarding houses have been boarded up, abandoned and are falling down.  

 Modern Methana is a popular destination, easy to get to by road from Athens, with lines of waterfront cafeterias and eating places beside the sea.  There are modern hotels and the usual plethora of Airbnbs

The Spa closed down many years ago.  I imagine it needs millions to upgrade it.  The sulphuric water from the spa flows into the sea across the road and many people swim there in summer and winter.  The sea is a milky blue from the sulphuric gases.  I've always wanted to have a swim there too but my chauffeur whizzes quickly past.  The area around the spa smells of rotten eggs, that healthy sulphur smell that the NZ town of Rotorua is famous for

Back to the volcano.  There is a hiking path up to the crater.  Another place I've never been but children and grandchildren have climbed up there.  It's a popular trek

The Methana volcano is still considered to be active.  Just because the volcano has been quiet for thousands of years doesn't mean it's safe.  New studies show the volcano is steadily accumulating huge amounts of magma deep below the surface.   Experts that are observing the volcano say there doesn't seem to be imminent danger of an eruption but the volcano is not extinct

Methana is only 45 minutes from Poros and we have visited many times.  The beaches look inviting from afar but are mainly covered with sharp volcanic stone.  We visit of course to sit beside the sea at a taverna and enjoy a summer breeze, some fresh seafood and a glass of local wine.

Methana, like all Greek towns and villages is steeped in history with an abundance of ruins.  

The Castle of Faviero, the remains of an Acropolis, the Chapel of the Virgin Mary built with wine and mud and perched on a rock above the sea.  Many years ago we went to this little chapel for the baptism of the daughter of K's cousin.  We all went on a fishing kaïki carrying the wee babe, baptismal font and the Priest with us. 

There are numerous walking tracks and small settlements to visit

    

Poros Pics

 

Neighbours sit out in the evening in their private, back street, square to gossip the evening away under the bougainvillia

Nadia's Place

    There are curious little places to stay all around these backstreets

Wonderful for first time visitors who want a true taste of greek living

Love to all???? 

No red lantern hanging over the door

The police have parking problems in these narrow back streets

Steep dirty steps going up to the Police Station offices.  At least they've put in a rail to grab hold of

At Home

 

A bunch of oregano hanging out to dry

Morning coffee 

Orpheus the gentle giant

He goes walkabout now and again when his master is at work

He's named after Orpheus, in ancient Greece a poet and musician whose lyre could charm trees and animals

Our guardian of the gate

The last rug hanging out to dry

It didn't take long in this summer heat

Now rolled up and stored in plastic till November

My solar summer fountain

Framed by geraniums and a wild grape vine which grows bigger and stronger every summer.  No grapes yet though