In Winter Mode

What does one do on a greek island when the temperatures have gone right down to only 15o, when olives have been picked and you're full of coffee.  Be patient, carnival is just around the corner.   28th January is the start of the carnival, called apokries here.  It runs for three weeks and is really early this year because  Greek easter Sunday falls on April 8, almost a month earlier than last year.  

Watching movies is now something we do reguarly when we are bored with Masterchief gr no2, Money Drop, old episodes of Jamie and Nigella or long boring greek made programmes about Greece. 

 The english, americans and french make greek history come alive, or at least interesting with sharp historians and brilliant high tech reconstruction.  The greeks on the other hand turn their history into long, boring hours of dry documentaries often with very little dialogue and far away shots of heaven-knows-what, and get awards for it. 

Back to the movies.  K naturally wants action whereas I want comedy and light entertainment,  We rarely agree on a film and have taken to watching old Bud Spencer, Terrence Hill movies.  They pass the time and are preferable to Bruce Willis or Clint Eastwood in some predictable 80's drama.

We also play a greek version of Trivial Pursuit.  There are only a couple of hundred questions and after a few games it is a question of who has the best memory and can recall the answers.  Our authentic Trivial is in greek and must be about 40 years old.  A lot of the questions are ancient.  Which film won the most Oscars in 1976?  A Clint Eastwood probably.

Our days are taken up with cooking, hauling wood and finding ways to pass the time.  I write blog posts, read blog posts, read books, knit and generally enjoy myself in a number of pleasureable pastimes.  Traditional greeks need company and verbal stimulation and spend long hours on the phone trying to arrange just that or annoying their family with improbable scenarios involving whole roast pigs or trips to far off rustic eating establishments.

Fortunately for mental stability there is a regular mid week male gathering  with long hours of discussion and wine tasting.  Then there are the weekly soccer matches between Olympiakos and some loser team.  

We buy fresh fish from the fishing boats, when weather permits them to go out and fish.  Fresh fish are much cheaper at this time of the year when most of the tavernas are closed and there is not a big demand for the catch.  We buy a kilo of fish for around 5  euros.  A big bag of greens costs around 4 euros and we have a couple of cheap meals which will make any greek happy.

We eat a lot of lentils, dried beans and chickpeas as well.  Classic greek brown lentil soup (fakes), bean soup with carrots and celery (fassolatha) or boiled chickpeas (revithia) with lemon juice are on the menu a couple of times a week. 

  I have to remember to add some baking soda to the chickpeas when I put them to soak overnight or they can end up like bullets (so I'm told).  Chickpeas should be soft and almost mushy if cooked properly.

In the evenings now as the sun goes down we can hear shotguns going off.  Hunting is forbidden on the island but that doesn't stop them.  When we first came to live up here 9 years ago the fields around us were full of pheasant and partridge.  We would see them on the road, or admire their beauty as they took off into the sky.  They all seem to have disappeared.  Hunters at dusk are often aiming at small birds hardly bigger than a sparrow.  By the time they've been de-feathered there is not much left but a few bones.  

I enjoy these long winter days.  As long as our wood burner is sending out heat I am happy.