YES, we celebrated and dared to have a good time, despite the mounting fiscal problems of our country and the doom scenarios hovering over Greece’s economy. In case you haven’t heard, our small country single-handedly managed to de-stabilize the whole European Union!

Anniversaries, Celebrations, and a baby!

But life goes on, and I am sure the visitors who will come to Greece this year will have THE best time ever, and probably much more value for the money spent… But let’s start from the beginning...

HortaDescribing Kea's winter produce in my previous post, I left out the most important of all delicacies: horta, wild leafy greens. Greeks started to forage for horta because they had little else to eat.

RadishesGreen is the color of our winter; not gray-brown, nor white, as in most parts of Europe and the US. Every few years we may see snow for a day or two..

For two months the kitchen was a pile of stones, concrete, and dismantled doors and windows. Dusty and noisy, emptied of everything that could be moved, the space looked destitute, as if it could never be a welcoming kitchen again.

Even using the leftover decorative pumpkins, following my recipe for kolokytha rossoli, the easiest of the spoon sweets, you can prepare jars of home-made edible presents to offer to your friends… View photos

READ MORE (at The Atlantic)

“Thank you for an exceptional week and for welcoming us into your home and community. I was so immersed that I forgot about our life at home—-a true sign of a successful vacation.” Comments like this, coming from our guests across continents, are our greatest reward at the end of yet another successful Kea Artisanal year. In 2009, once more we had the chance to meet several wonderful people who became our new friends…

A new and exciting workshop will take place in Kea next June (21 to 26): our ceramist friend Vicki Snyder from Santa Fe, who set up Terra Kea, her Greek studio on the island, together with the famous San Francisco ceramist Christa Assad will give pottery classes in a joint seminar with Kea Artisanal.

I know that for most of you fall, if not winter (was that a snowstorm in Boston last weekend??), is advancing rapidly, and your local, fresh vine-ripened tomatoes flower and plump in the memory alone.

In our corner of the world, though, we still enjoy warm days and only somewhat chilly nights, so our tomato plants continue to produce fruit.

The select group of people who take part at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery expect to be intellectually stimulated, educated, and inspired, listening to lectures and taking part in discussions that dissect all sorts of food-related subjects according to each year’s theme.

Ironically, however, they hardly expect to have a memorable gastronomic experience.

Last month, though, for the first time in its 30-year history, the record number of about 265 participants at the Symposium…

Despite the fact that we have old, semi-wild fig trees in our garden, it does not guarantee that we will savor wonderfully ripe fruit come August.

We need to be on the alert, prudently waiting for the ‘decisive moment’ when the fig bows ever so slightly, where its stem bends from the bough of the bole.

Last week my hairdresser, Vagia, asked I if had a good recipe for fanouropita. I had known about St. Fanourios since childhood and his feast day, August 27, the day specially baked cakes were brought to the church. I thought the tradition was ago forgotten.
“Oh. You cannot believe how many cakes were brought to the church last year.” Vagia said, filled with pride for her own special fanouropita. She then leaned over and whispered that she did cheat sightly by using real butter instead of olive oil which the tradition called for. The tradition also mandated that the fenouropita be made with either seven or nine ingredients.

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