Sunday Lunch

Sunday lunch:  Sea bass, salad, fried peppers and fried zucchini accented by the seeds from the slice of lemon I squeezed  so generously over my fish. Yes, it was delicious. 

Alexandra's 4th Birthday & Name Day

Today is our little Alexandra's 4th birthday and Name Day.  We celebrated her birthday at home on Saturday  night, she had a wonderful time. 

Alexandra chose this cake. Originally, she wanted something with unicorns & monkeys...and grass on it. I'm really glad she took the time to look through the catalog and settle for the Dalmatians. 

When came time to blow out the candles she went for the challenge and tried to blow out the sparklers! 

What was on the table this year?

Tiropita

Spanikopita

Loukanopita

Olives

Melanzanosalata

Greek Potato Salad 

Tomato-Basil Bruschetta

Feta cheese squares...

Peanut butter & Jelly minis for the kids...

Sausage, crackers, Kalamata olive tampanade

and my favorite this year-tomato/basil/mozzarella  hor d'oeuvres. I couldn't stop eating these! 

We had a lot of leftovers so I didn't have to cook on Sunday which was fantastic since we were away all morning having coffee with very special visitors. 

It was a wonderful weekend full of celebration that we shared with our very special friends and family. 

Happy Birthday & Happy Name Day my sweet Alexandra! 

χρόνια πολλά!

Flamouri Harvest

Flamouri Flowers 

The flamouri (φλαμούρι) trees have blossomed and are passed their peak. For nearly two weeks we've enjoyed the sweet and  light floral fragrance breezing through the air. The scent of our trees was enjoyed throughout the property as well as inside our home, given that we've had our windows open for nearly a month now. I anticipate the blooming of these trees and this year they were just a little late due to cooler temperatures and a string of  rainy days.

 One day last week I was talking to myself, which is fairly normal. I mentioned that I didn't know when I would have time to harvest any given the horrible weather and our social commitments. Funny enough, Izabella was actually listening. When she came home from school the next day she went to outside to play with Foti and  a while later they came in and asked for two large bowls. I asked them what their intent was...how what they needed them for and they told me that I've been so busy that they would help me pick flamouri. I melted...just melted. Does this mean my children are finally old enough to really help me outside? And on their own? I see things getting a bit easier around the garden. 

So, they set out to pick the flowers. When I went out to show them how they should be picked I was pleasantly surprised that Izabella remembered from last year. See? They're getting so self sufficient! 

Izabella removes the larger leaves not used for making tea. 

Alexandra concentrates on her task. 

Foti presenting me with  his bowl of flowers & leaves. I was on the balcony lifted it up for me to see. Nice work! 

~

Flamouri tea is also known as Tilio ( Τίλιο )

in Greek and Linden in English.  Flamouri tea has many health benefits and has been used as an herbal remedy for centuries. 

Some of the common uses for flamouri tea include treating a cold or a cough and other related symptoms.  I find it helpful because it helps clear up my nasal passages whenever I have a stuffy nose and provides relief when I have a sore throat. The tea has a calming effect and it is often suggested that one should drink a cup to relieve any stress & anxiety that's affecting the body. 

The fragrance is so light and floral, it's also used in making soaps or used in skin care. Last weekend I gifted some of the tea to friends that were visiting from the U.S. and they were impressed by the fragrance that permeated the plastic bag I had packed it in. I'm sure the inside of their luggage probably smelled pleasant once they were home. 

I've been suffering from a sore throat for a few days and I boiled some of my already dried flamouri. It's always so comforting. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend  that you do and hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as I do. 

Dried flamouri, just about ready for storage. 

~

References:  About.com: Greek Food - Linden Tea

Health Benefits of Linden Flowers and Linden Flower Tea 

Thanksgiving

Since we've been in Greece, a lot of my readers that celebrate Thanksgiving often ask how we spend our holiday abroad. Given that Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday, it lands on a busy weekday. The kids still have to attend school and Kosta has to work. My expat friends are just as busy as we are and it's difficult for us to get together. Although, we are in constant communication throughout the day, comparing our progress in the kitchen and laughing about and unforeseen setbacks. This year, we had exceptional communication given that we're all connected through our favorite social networking websites. A few weeks ago we started sharing our adventures in shopping for turkeys, giving price updates and other finds.

The only challenge that I faced was getting everything prepared in between taking kids to and from school as well as running some errands. It would have been much easier if I wouldn't have had to leave the house. But, we didn't eat until after 6pm, so I had plenty of time.

Here are some photos from our day...

A photo before dinner..and yes, even Gigi gets a little turkey. Although it's a nice photo we could've moved the napkin holder!

We have THE BEST neighbors.  Early in the morning our neighbor, Mr. George, dropped off his homemade wine to enjoy with our dinner. I'm so grateful that we have caring and generous neighbors. I never know how to thank them enough for all of the wonderful things that they do for us. This wine was perfect!

When Izabella came home from school she helped bake an apple pie. I was actually making the dough for a lemon meringue pie when she requested an apple pie, so we made this spontaneously.

I always let my children get dirty in the kitchen. I believe that letting them try everything is essential to their learning .

 Izabella's apple pie straight from the oven. It may not look perfect but it definitely tasted perfect!

The turkey. You may notice that there are a lot of drumsticks here. Well, that's because I procrastinated long enough before Thanksgiving to land myself without a fresh whole turkey. Sure, there were frozen ones available, but I couldn't have had one thawed out in time. So, I improvised and bought fresh drumsticks and baked them on a bed of stuffing. My question is this: If I could find fresh drumsticks, what happened to the rest of the fresh turkeys attached to the drumsticks?  Nevertheless, it was delicious and more than enough for us as we have leftovers for today.

I did run  into one setback. My hand mixer doesn't work! I plugged it in to whip the meringue for the lemon pie and NADA. It didn't work. So, I  had to whip the meringue by hand and I couldn't make it light and fluffy like it should be so my pie looked a little flat. It tasted fantastic though!

I had to mash the potatoes by hand as well. They were a little lumpy, but again, delicious.

Here's a list of what I made for our Thanksgiving dinner:

Turkey drumsticks

Stuffing

Mashed potatoes

Corn

  Gravy

Apple pie

Lemon meringue pie

I kept our choices minimal since it was just the five of us. Again, it was more than enough. Everyone loved the dinner and I'm thankful for that!

I hope that everyone observing Thanksgiving had an enjoyable day.

Related Links:

Thessaloniki, turkey & tree

The Turkey Hunt

Strawberries & Cherries

Over the last few weeks we've been enjoying fresh strawberries and cherries, two of my favorite fruits. Our neighbors have a sizable strawberry patch and when they're in town on weekends they're always willing to share. For me, there's nothing sweeter than a fresh picked strawberry. We'll venture to the strawberry patch with the children, pick strawberries, wash them and later, set them on the table in order to enjoy with coffee and fruitful conversation. No pun intended...

We've tried planting strawberries of our own, but they didn't produce much and half of the plants didn't survive their transplantation. Also, I just don't have the time that I need to spend in the garden so I think they may have needed a bit more care. I'll try again next year.

We've been gifted cherries by extended family and friends. I'm grateful for that because our cherry tree died over the winter. Last year, we enjoyed about one big bowl of cherries from our tree because we realized that they were ripe after the birds had already devoured their share. We'll definitely have to plant another one because cherries are my absolute favorite fruit, hands down.

Alexandra enjoying her share of strawberries

And below, we have a photo of Izabella modeling her cherry earrings. I suppose when you've had enough to eat, you can always wear them.

Pagotinia

I got the cracked one in the middle since the kids felt it was defective. No complaints from me.

Since I've been extremely busy, I've decided to do a quick post to let all of you in on why I haven't posted in a while. It was my second week home and I'm back into the swing of things.
Here's a little of what's been going on around here.





We began our week with Kosta appearing TV early Sunday morning. It was a lot of fun to watch, his sense of humor is amazing. I did record it, however, not all of it. I missed the last half of the interview because I ran out of tape. Yes, I have an analog video camera so I'm still doing things the old fashioned way. You can hear Gigi barking and the kids whispering, it's classic.





As soon as he returned home that morning, we set off for a picnic. The weather was gorgeous, the kids played games and we enjoyed live music. Beautiful day.







Within the week, we explored in our yard. The weather has been so beautiful, we've already started to eat outside.









We celebrated Foti's fifth birthday. He brought his favorite lemon cake to school to share with friends and we had another waiting for him at home. I love that he wanted me to bake his cake!

I've noticed that the figs have already started to grow.

Our lilacs are in full bloom.

Asproula is happy here. We are keeping her. Kosta was out shopping one day and he came home with a collar. She's ours. She loves it here and we love her. The nicest part of this whole story is that she chose us. We're lucky.

The kithonia(quince) trees have blossomed. Out of all of the fruit trees that we have, these are my favorite blossoms.

We've had a few visitors and have seen a lot of our neighbors, especially since the weather has been so nice. We've been lucky enough to receive a lot of gifts this week. What gifts?

Well, when you live here it's typical to give and receive on a regular basis. For instance, if a neighbor has extra eggs from their chickens, they usually share them. I like to give my lemons to the neighbors and friends since none of them have their own lemon trees. In Milwaukee I have excellent neighbors that share as well, it's just that none on them have chickens! I'm so thankful for all of the generosity that we're surrounded with. Here's what we've received this week...

4 loaves of tsoureki

30 eggs

5 heads of marouli (romaine lettuce)

tangerines in syrup

a bottle of homemade white wine

How's that for genorosity? All of this came from 5 different families.

Since tomorrow is Easter, my in-laws are going to be arriving with even more goodies. I'm sure that there's another tsoureki on its way and hopefully, a karythopita!

Have a fantastic weekend and KALO PASCHA!!

Moving on...

"Barbouni"

Kataifi...yum!

One thing that I love about eating out at a taverna is that dessert is always included.  Recently,  Kataifi and vanilla  ice cream were a perfect way to end a fantastic meal. 

It's been over a week since my last post! I usually don't like to have that much time lapse between postings but I've been very busy. Kosta was in Wisconsin for the whole month of October and there's a lot of work to catch up on. Also, the first week that he was back I was very sick so he had to step in and help. I have perfect timing, don't I?

That weekend he left to visit his family and later in the week he had to travel to Athens to finally have the emissions tested on our car that we imported over a year ago. So, he was gone for another three days so I've been on my own a lot.

Of the more important things that needed to be done last week were having our diesel delivered so that we could finally have real heat in the house and we had to have the property tilled(freza) since it rained most of the month of September and it didn't get done then. So, here are some photos from last week...

Freshly tilled soil-I always love how the earth looks just after this is done.

Gigi really enjoys the fluffy soil after it's been tilled. She rolls in it! (drives me over the edge!) But, it makes her happy. Dirty dog! :)

The man that was tilling our soil made an amazing discovery in the olive trees...a beehive! The bees must work very fast because I was just back in the trees picking olives about one month ago and this wasn't there. It's impressive isn't it? The best part is that now we have our own honey!

Here's a closer look at the beehive. I didn't want to get too close as I'm sure that most of you understand!

Our neighbor has the experience and equipment to handle bees so he said that he would help us remove this hive. We're probably going to set up our own boxes(is that what they're called?) so that we don't destroy the colony. Bees are disappearing rapidly and we'd like to do our little part in keeping them around. This beehive is just amazing and it's a great experience for the kids to see them at work, priceless experience.

Here's a photo of Gigi basking in the dirt, like a little piggy.

It rained a few days later and Gigi decided to really act like a little piggy and she almost turned black. She had more burs on her than normal on this day also. So, we've decided that Gigi isn't allowed outside without a leash this winter. I can't bathe her everyday. I don't like it and she definitely doesn't like it so we'll see how this works out.

I'll leave you with a photo of a beautiful sunrise that I captured. Have a great week!

Olives

We've been picking olives for curing this week...hence my absence from the blogosphere.

I hope that everyone has a great weekend!

Alexandra's Birthday

Well, our baby is now 2 years old and I can't believe it. Her birthday and name day landed on a Saturday this year so we had a party that evening. The weather wasn't bad. It was still hot but there was a very comfortable wind. It was definitely a wind, not a breeze. But anyway I had expected around thirty people to show up and only four did. A few weddings, an illness, a very pregnant woman and a couple on vacation were all very legitimate reasons for missing Alexandra's celebration. We had a great time nevertheless.

We had a great variety of foods. Here's the a picture of the table. I took it after we started to eat so things got a little messy.
I used my last can of gandules that I brought with me from home for this very special day. No celebration in my family would be complete without arroz con gandules-or as we refer to it as "the rice". It's missing a few key ingredients that I don't have available right now but it was still acceptable. I'm missing fresh cilantro and alcaparrado. Here's the pot of rice...

I need my husband to buy me new a caldero...the best Puerto Rican rice is always cooked in a caldero. I remember the calderos that belonged to all of my female relatives were always on the stove top...never taken from their position for family gatherings. The rice is in the kitchen...you know where to get it. Always. To this day, I can visit an aunt of mine and she doesn't serve us, she just says "there are plates on the counter and you know where the food is". I really miss that and I really miss my mom's rice-the rice of all rice. I never mentioned it, but last year my mom sent some of her rice home with Kosta and we were able to enjoy it here. She made it the night before he left and filled a gallon sized Ziploc bag...(double bagged) and we ate rice for two days. (Kosta traveled in the winter so heat wasn't an issue-the rice was safe)The kids were so excited and so was I.

Back to the party-

I also made guacamole...

This was the hit of the night! Everyone had their fair share and if I would have made more it would have been devoured. Even MIL loved it. We've turned her on to Mexican food so she's had this before and really enjoys it. This recipe was inspired by our trip to Puerto Vallarta when I was just 6 weeks pregnant with Izabella. The waiter at a local restaurant made the guacamole fresh at the table so I watched carefully as he assembled our order. Here's the recipe for Saturday's guacamole. (I change the recipe all of the time).

Saturday's guacamole

4 large ripe avocados

1 small onion-diced

1 small tomato-diced

1 lime

1 tsp dried cilantro

Salt to taste

Mash the avocados in a bowl using a fork. After you have a smooth/lumpy consistency add the onions and tomato. Mix to combine the ingredients. Cut the lime in half and squeeze the juice of the lime into the mixture. Add the salt. Add the cilantro. Mix and let stand for at least ten minutes.

That's it-it's that simple. But again, a handful of fresh cilantro(chopped) is preferred so if you have it use that instead of dried cilantro. It makes a world of difference.

After we ate there was an evening walk in our "woods". With nothing more than a flashlight and the light of my video camera we took a dark, almost scary walk through our olive trees. The kids loved it! I had fun too, I just didn't like pulling all of the burs from my skirt afterward. So, after our walk we cut the cake. As I was scooping ice cream onto a plate with the cake my koubara's daughter asked, " we get ice cream with our cake?" I said, " of course you do, it wouldn't be a birthday without ice cream & cake served on a plate together". In Greece, typically, ice cream is only eaten in the summer(which it technically is) and on its own. So, little Irene was thrilled to have both ice cream and cake on her plate. Her brother, Nick, was so thrilled he ate 2 servings of ice cream. Everyone had so much fun.