Roll Out the Barrel

 A month or so ago s-in-law Yiannis arranged for this year's wine delivery.  2 x 20 litre cartons of white wine and 20 litres of red wine from a vineyard in nearby Korinth. 

It was undrinkable. Plonk

Son-in-law Yiannis had given us the wine and brought quite a few litres for himself.  Both he and K agreed it was unacceptable.  A disgrace. 

K  was very happy when Yiannis told him he was returning it all .

The plonk was returned and another variety acquired from a different winery. 

Life is too short to drink bad wine. 

Fine-r wine delivery

Yiannis with his daughters 

Poppi and Nels 

In K's 'cellar' 

That Poppi tasting the wares

Pinky in the air

And what has this promising young wine critic got to say about the new delivery?

'Quite nice. But a bit strong for my liking'.

She's a water drinker.

Greek Gods

 Climbing Mount Olympos

Last October my son-in-law Yiannis and a group of his friends climbed to the top of Olympos, Greece's highest mountain.

 Home of Zeus and the Greek Gods of Mythology

Here's Yianni at the top of Mytikas, the highest peak,  

almost 3,000 metres.

He spent a couple of months training and trying to lose a few kilos in preparation. He ran, and rode a bike up into the Poros hills.

The throne of Zeus

You can see the huge curved back and there's the seat part (level rock) in front .

The throne of a giant

Trekking over barren mountain face 

The boys celebrating their ascent

The last part of the climb before the summit is a rock face. The climbers are roped and ascend hand by hand, careful not to kick rocks onto the climber below. 

The descent is by another route. Not any easier so Yiannis said.  Descending has other hazards. 

Sunrise

From 'The Greek Reporter' -

Many believe that Mount Olympos, like Atlantis, is a myth and does not exist.

However, it is not simply a mountain from Greek mythology. It has inspired stories, movies and television series. It's a mountain with challenging climbs and is scaled by around 10,000 climbers every year.

It is a National Park with a rich array of rare flora and fauna. 

It's lower slopes have steep gorges, caves and waterfalls.

From his home in the misty peaks *Zeus shaped the destiny of the mortals below and hurled his thunderbolts at anyone foolish enough to challenge his power.  Lesser Gods and spirits lived in caves below. 

Nowadays Olympos is known for its extreme sports, trekking, paragliding, rafting, mountain biking and jeep Safari.

*Zeus

Known as Dias

Δίας 

In greek

His name means 

'Sky Father'

Torta di Sant'Antonio

 

An apple red wine tart, flavoured with cinnamon.

Made in the Italian alpine village of Oulx to honour the town's patron Sant' Antonio.

- Recipe for the Pastry

2 cups of flour 

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp baking powder 

6 tbsps cold butter cut into pieces

1/2 cup milk

2 egg yolks 

Rub butter into the flour till it looks like breadcrumbs. Add1 tbsp sugar and baking powder. 

Whisk eggs and milk. Mix into the flour. 

Knead into a smooth ball. Chill 1 hour. 

- Recipe for the Filling mixture

1 1/4 cups of red wine

1 tsp cinnamon

5 tbsp sugar 

4 apples thinly sliced

Zest 1 orange

In a pot simmer -

Apple slices

Sugar

Orange zest/cinnamon

Wine

For about half an hour till the wine has turned to a syrup.

Leave to cool.

Roll out the pastry and place in the baking dish . Let the dough hang over the sides. Trim. Fill with the apple mixture and fold over sides of dough.

Cover the bottom with baking paper, or grease the dish.

Sprinkle with sugar.

Bake 180oC for about half an hour.

If you're artistic form leaves and flowers with the dough trimmings and decorate the tart before baking.

Good luck and Bon Appetit 

Antoni

 17th January

The feast day of St Antoni.

He's an Italian Saint from Padua, a Franciscan monk, protector of the poor. In Italy and Portugal he's the finder of lost property.  

Somewhere I have a recipe for an apple pie with red wine that is made in an Italian village on this day.

One of our local churches is dedicated to this Saint.

The little church down a narrow dirt road which in one part was flooded from recent rain.

We arrived at the end of the service but lit our candles and picked up a few pieces of scrummy sweet bread and a small bag of funeral wheat.

One of the housewives must have made it in remembrance of one of her menfolk named Antoni. Or it could have been a female family member, Antonia.

When we arrived the Priest had gone off with a candle bearer to a nearby house. Probably to bless someone who was ill or to give communion.

I hope my dear brother Tony had a happy name day. Not that he knew the Greek Orthodox church was celebrating the saint he's named after. 

Winter's Pleasures

 

What to do with the gingerbread house now that christmas is well and truly over?

A tasty pleasure

First break your gingerbread house into pieces

Then eat it.

And eat it we did.  Quite a lot of it.  The rest of it is in the biscuit tin.

It was a bit soft but not enough to put us off.  K decided he loved it and he's the one now finishing it all. I ate my share and thoroughly enjoyed every gingery, peppery bite.

Thanks to the girls in the office who made it for me. The best gingerbread I've ever eaten

A nightly pleasure

A glass of red wine.  The wine is from the area not far from us called Nemea, known for it's vines and wines.  

We used to buy grape juice in bulk and K then fermented it and made it into wine.  Uusually white wine.

This wine is 2 years old, from a variety of grapes called Agioritiko. It's usually mixed with cabernet sauvignon but this is not. I gave Jan a litre and she found it 'unusual'. Herby. It's described in Wikipedia as being spicy with notes of plum. OK. If they say so. 

Whatever it tastes like we will drink it. We have drunk a lot worse.  40 years ago there was only one wine, served in a metal jug, in every cafe and taverna.  That was a white wine called retsina. Every barrel of wine was flavoured with a lump of pine resin, to kill off any germs. The first glass was a bit rough but the more you drank the easier it slipped down. 

It's out of fashion now and hard to find. 

Simple Sunday pleasure 

For K

A Sunday afternoon ouzo with a friend

Just exactly how K loves to spend his Sundays. A glass or 3 of something with a good friend and a meze.  We had spicy sausage and in the photo is a bowl of rocket from my garden and slices of avgotaraho, salted and pressed fish roe. The spicy sausage was fried and he fried bread in the sausage fat. 

Fishy pleasures 

Kalamari or calamari

Or squid

Tis the season I discovered.  They both told fishy tales about giant squid caught in days gone by.  

We eat them in the summer, frozen. Fried  by Sofia and eaten at her taverna by the sea. Fresh are too expensive

Chestnuts on the wood stove.

I don't like them but K snacks on a couple in the evening

Today's Highlight

 Surprise visitor.

She made our day 

Athletic granddaughter Nels running in the hills.

It's 8ks from her house in Neorion to our house. Uphill all the way.

 She popped in to see her Nana and Papou, for a swallow of water and a wee chocolate mint for energy. 

The last 8ks home, doing the round trip, are at least all downhill. 

Bravo Nels Moy

It was a beautiful day, after so many cold rainy ones.

She inspired me to go for a walk too.

Only about 3ks. 1  1/2 each way for me

The sky was blue and the sea was calm when it finally came into view.

From Above

 One sunny day. Which is Not today. My granddaughters walked up to the Old Mill at the top of the hill. Beside the abandoned mill there is a little church too. And a wonderful view of the harbour and across to the mainland mountains.

Poros. On a sunnier winter's day

Today it's pouring 'chair legs',  thunder and lightening rumbling all around.

Great day for ducks 🦆🦆🦆

And olive trees

No gnomes today

My gnomes have gone away

......they shall return 

G'day Maties

Classic Eats

 

I made moussaka' for the family.

Layers of fried

Melitzanes (eggplant or aubergine )

Kolokythakia ( zucchini or courgettes )

And potato

Topped with ground beef in a tomato sauce, finished with a layer of cheese sauce 

Quite a bit of work . I cook the meat and fry the vegetables the previous day. Then put it all together and make the bechamel/cheese sauce.

Moussaka and Greek salad are the two most well known greek dishes . However neither of them are considered the national dish.

That's fassolatha, bean soup.

I baked it early in the morning but then had to deliver it down to their houses in town.

On the worst day of winter.

As they say here

'ti na kanoume'.

And a shrug.

What could I do. We had to take the food down while it was still warm. 

The rain had been coming down like kareklopodara (ha, try saying that!), chair legs, or cats and dogs .

 We did it. Dragging s-in-law Kyriakos out of his house to grab the oven tray, covered in foil and a plastic bag, and run back up the slippery marble steps.  I got drenched in a minute and so did he.

The football field which is at sea level had turned into a swimming pool . The road round the back of the island called Turkodromos, Turkish road, was closed because of rock falls. The harbour road was flooded and water rushed down the stone steps like a series of waterfalls cascading down to the sea .

Dear granddaughter Luli loves moussaka. The 'stage coach' battled the blizzard and delivered the 'mail'. 

Meantime in Athens granddaughter Nels made a big baking pan of pastitsio, Greece's other favourite. Something to stick to the ribs and warm you up in the winter....or summer.

It's a layer of thick tubed macaroni with a tomato and ground beef sauce topped with lots of cheesy bechamel.

What a Beautiful Pussy You Are

 12 days ago

It was a quiet, enjoyable day. Without fuss. Without bother. I dressed up a little.

New Year's Day 

Not at our house!

Some of us went to eat at the slightly more classy restaurant we discovered only 10 minutes across the water, and straight down the road

Photo - 

Elli and Luli 

Enjoying a first course.

 Boiled vegetables with a little olive oil

Cheese pies 

And a huge pile of  fried potatoes, eaten, gone

Jamie  with his new look

And Papous looking on

This eating place is a little above your normal taverna.  The food is excellent, the wine very drinkable, quick service.

Low music. No loud voices.

Extremely reasonable prices. Full of Poros people, friends and acquaintances enjoying, like us, good company and good food. 

It's cheaper than a Poros taverna even after paying return tickets for 2 cars on the ferry.

Fresh little cakes served afterwards were offered 'on the house'. 

After our meal we found a handy place for smokers outside on the porch. 

Elli noticed all the smokers were female. A big change from days gone by when it was almost exclusively males who smoked. 

Gossip time!

 

Back to Elli's house to cut the New Year's cake. Vassilopita

With a cup of coffee

The lucky coin

Not wrapped up in a five pound note* but a bit of silver foil. 

We missed you D

The owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

In a beautiful pea-green boat

They took some honey and plenty of money

*Wrapped up in a five pound note 

The owl looked up to the stars above

And sang to a small guitar

'Oh lovely Pussy, oh Pussy, my love

What a beautiful Pussy you are

You are

You are

What a beautiful Pussy you are'. 

- Edward Lear

That's a few too many 'pussys' to be politically correct these days

Gn-omes

 My daughter sends  a 'good morning' to me and my other daughter every morning, via WhatsApp, along with a daily gnome. 

I like gnomes. I have a few in the garden. I've knitted a few too, Christmas gnomes. They're more popular than elves or reindeer these Xmases past. Called 'tomte' in Swedish, they help around the home and are rewarded with porridge. 

Anyway

Why does the English language have so many  oddities?

Gn is a digraph. That's from Greek of course, meaning double writing.

In English a digraph is 2 letters that make one sound.

Take gn

At the beginner of a word

Gnome

Gnash

Gnaw

It is pronounced as N.

At the end of a word 

Reign

Sign 

It is pronounced as N

However in the middle of a word

Recognise

Signal

Each letter is pronounced separately N G

This is just the tip of a slippery iceberg, the opening of a deep and convoluted  rabbit hole. 

All I can say is 'thank goodness ' I was born in an English speaking country and didn't have to learn it as a foreign language 

This fine gnome means something more to my long suffering family.

When I was going through my 'new-age stage' I used to chant at them

I am fine 

And my mind is fine

I am fine 

And my body is fine

I am fine

All around is fine

And drove them round the bend. It had a few more 'I am fines' and I had it on tape too.

Now I can laugh at myself. 

Clever Elli for finding this 'gnome of remembrance'. 

Light and Water

-  6th January. 

The end of the Christmas and New Year festivities. 

A public holiday here. Another 3 day weekend. And a very important Orthodox celebration. 

January 6th is................ 

- 12th Night

Depends . Elsewhere it could be January 5, the eve of Epiphany, or January 6

- Time to Dismantle the Xmas Tree

You'd better get your Xmas decorations down before the night of the 6th. It is said to bring bad luck and all the baggage from the previous year if you don't .My father used to say a wicked witch would come and cause havoc.

- Epiphany 

Commemorates the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River.

- Three Kings

Celebrating the visit of the 3 Kings to Bethlehem 

- Blessing of the waters. 

In Greece, on Poros, after the inevitable church service the Priests and bigwigs board a small boat and move out into the strait. A cross is thrown into the sea 3 times and the third time a group of hardy young people, mainly male, dive into the freezing waters to be the first to retrieve the cross. The lucky one is blessed by the Priest and is guaranteed a year of good luck. From what I remember he, or she, also gets a reward from the Mayor

- Also known as the 'Festival of Lights' or Theophania. 

- Name day for those named Fotis (male), Fotini (female) or Jordan

-Tomorrow

January 7  is the Feast of St John.

Name day for Yiannis or Yianna. John, Joan, Jan and Joanne. That's half of Greece. 

As they say here 'a house without a John is not a real home'. 

And the next day, the 8th, schools reopen. 

Grandson Jamie took the last hydro foil to Athens tonight to continue his studies. Along with a tupperware bowl of his Nanas meat pies and sweet bread filled with Nutella. The latter from the bakery.

New Year Pressies

 Neighbours have been popping in with homemade Xmas biscuits and bottles of this and that. All very welcome, more so by K.

2 x one and a half litre bottles Fousa wine. From a friend's small vineyard just down the road. Fousa is the name of the area.

Plus

5 litres of red wine from somewhere close by. That's for me because I enjoy red wine. When I'm drinking, which isn't often now.

Plus

*Raki 1 1/2 litres

Plus

1 litre of  raki made from 'moura' which I think are mulberries.

I tried a few drops of the mulberry raki. Usually can't stand the stuff. It's firewater. And the mulberry was firewater too. I won't be drinking anymore of that!!

*Raki

Distilled from the pips and skins leftover from the grape harvest.

It's antibacterial properties are thought to be good for digestion and gut health. I can imagine it killing 99.9% of all known germs and a good percentage of its drinkers. In the end.

Called raki in Crete.

Elsewhere known as either tsipoura or tsikoudia.

Plus

A bottle of ouzo 

Plus

3 bottles of wine from son in law. 

We shall be 'slow drinking' 

Drinking in moderation while enjoying good company , good food and conversation.

Says me

Oh hell! I just remembered the 60 litres of boxed wine that's outside in the K-shed. 

Have we got a certain reputation....... or what? 

I hope there will still be plenty for summer visitors. The real Greek experience. 

PS a few bottles of olive oil would have been nice too