Sunday Lunch

 

Mein host.

From a Google search -

'Mine Host' is archaic for 'my host' and is an annoyingly jocular way some people refer to the pub landlord, or to the person they're visiting for a meal - as if the head of the household is a mediaevil innkeeper providing tankards of ale and roast boar to his guests'

I don't know about the 'annoyingly'.  This so accurately describes my traditional husband when his friends are gathered.  His first priority is to make sure their tumblers are always filled with an excellent, by his standards, local wine and their plates piled with delicacies he himself has baked and boiled, sizzled and steamed.  It wasn't roast boar on the menu but could well have been.

There is a taverna down town where the owner and chief griller appears at every table to make sure his guests are eating and enjoying his fare.  He has a large belly, a red nose, a loud voice and a glass at every table.  'Mine host' describes him perfectly.

This Sunday the weather has turned cold and damp once again.  We lit our wood fire at 11am and K kept hot the dishes he had been creating all the morning.

Spetsofaï is one of his specialities (though I think mine is better).  It's a dish made with village sausages fried and then added to long red peppers which have been stewed in fresh tomato, with lots of olive oil and on a cold winters day with a red hot chilli in the mix.

The other dish he made was chicken and potatoes with lemon juice and oregano cooked in a sealed pot in  the wood oven, simmering slowly for 3 hours.

It's not so much about the food on a day like this.  It is the company, the conversation and the music, the memories from Navy and Army days, tales from all sides today of their time in Crete in the days before tourism and commercialism.  The meals we ate in tiny village tavernas with just a few tables, a woman with a frying pan, the fish reeled in from the lake below the tavern, the cheese  from the animals in the fields next to us, the tomatoes from the garden next to the house and pies whipped up in the kitchen with whatever had been gathered in the fields that morning. 

Good food on the table but there was too much talk to empty the plates

Sunday afternoons there is a good selection of traditional greek music on the TV.  An old song will bring tears to their eyes as they croon along with great emotion

Sausages and peppers, chicken and potatoes, cheese and olives

Our wood stove which keeps the house warm all through winter and cooks our meals 

Today is the first day of carnival. But for the third year in a row there will be no carnival. No dressing up, singing and dancing in the streets, colourful parades and revelling.