A Trip to the Market

One of my favorite things about living in Greece is that open markets are a part of everyday life, unlike my other neighborhood in Milwaukee, where we have to wait for summer and warmer weather before an open or "green" market becomes available on a regular basis. Although, I have to admit that I shop at the open market aka "laiki" more often in  the spring and summer months since it always seems to rain on the day of our local laiki during the winter. 

The kids also love the experience of the market, especially since they always leave with wonderful treats. The photos I've posted are from recent visits. 

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 Foti & Alexandra posing at the market. 

Alexandra has a small bag of assorted candy in her grasp, she chose her favorites, of course.

My favorite olives, stuffed with red peppers. I use these when I make arroz con gandules. Although, I have to say it's arroz SIN gandules since I have run out of them a few months ago. Now I use red beans/frijoles rojos instead. 

It's also cherry season. I absolutely have to go to the market for these every week until they're gone. My girls love to taste a few before we buy any. 

Leaving the market with treats in hand. 

Notice how the kids are paying close attention to their surroundings. They enjoy going to the market not only to absorb the sights and smells; but also because now that we are regulars, many of the vendors take special care of them and often treat them with candy and smiles. That alone takes the monotony out of shopping for fruits and veggies. 

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Green

There's a lot of green in my files...

Green olives

Praying mantis

Green chairs

Green lemons

Foti wearing a green shirt holding a strange green bug.

Green bottle

And finally, a gratuitous shot of Gigi with the green praying mantis.

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!