Easter is to Greeks what Thanksgiving is to Americans: a glorious family feast with dishes that make the most of the young season’s early produce. Unlike Thanksgiving though, Easter (April 19 this year) is a four-day celebration, the religious reconstitution of ancient pagan rituals that celebrate the return of the spring: the feeling of the sun’s warmth, the renewal of the earth, the blossoming of plants after the dark and cold winter. Like all big Orthodox festivities, a forty-day period of Lent precedes Easter. 
Throughout the Middle East, the green almonds of early spring are nibbled raw, added to salads, or cooked together with lamb in a lemony sauce. In Greece they are preserved in heavy syrup, as yet another spoon-sweet, like karydaki (green unripe walnut), or melitzanaki (tiny eggplants, the most exotic of our spoon-sweets). 
“Meat every Sunday and ground meat on Thursdays”—this was the rule around which my mother, and most Greek women, planned meals when I was growing up. 
Epiphany (January 6), or Day of the Light –ton Photon in Greek— is an important religious and cultural celebration that marks the end of the holiday season. Up until the 4th century A.D. Epiphany was considered the first day of the year, observed as a three-day commemoration of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River.
There is a Greek word that characterizes the slow, uninteresting, overweight and spineless young men, particularly the brainless, spoiled sons of wealthy families: voutyropaida—butter-boys. Butter-boys are the antithesis of the slender, fast, clever and street-smart young men who typify Greek youth.
Historically, Christmas was never a major celebration in Greece. Easter is our biggest feast, and besides parading form house to house on Christmas and New Year’s Eve to sing kalanda – the Greek version of carols — collecting money or sweets, there was little else traditionally observed.
For me and, I guess, for people like me who use quite a few foreign words in their texts, it was immediately obvious that the US English spellchecker transformed the ‘aubergine’ -the British word for eggplant— into ‘aborigin’. 
My mother used to keep a couple of juiced lemon halves by the sink, and she would rub her hands often with the lemons “to keep [her hands] soft and white.” Even at the age of ninety-three, after a lifetime of cooking and cleaning, her hands are still silky and beautiful.
We keep an overused, slightly rusted, wood-handled Opinel knife in the glove compartment of our car. It is there because we never know if and when we will spot some gorgeous edible greens during our rides around the island. Greeks probably foraged for horta…
“How lucky you are, to be able to leave the hectic life behind and spend your days by the sea,” friends often tell us. It doesn’t occur to them that, especially during the summer, Costas and I are constantly juggling gardening, work around the house, and writing.
I still have a bagful in the freezer of the remaining large shelled favas from last year. They have a tough, slightly bitter outer skin that would need to be removed, if we decided to follow the sophisticated Italian ways–but here nobody ever peels the fresh favas.
You can use the appropriate tool, but I prefer the other method: I place a handful of olives in a plastic bag and flatten them with a meat mallet or a pestle. 
In a large bowl stir together the dry ingredients. In another bowl beat together the olive oil and orange juice. Add the liquid to the flour mixture and knead briefly to make a soft dough.
As you read my favorite 
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.
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.
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. 
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. 
A new and exciting workshop will take place in Kea next June (21 to 26): our ceramist friend 
“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 
Even using the leftover decorative pumpkins, following my recipe for 
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.
Green 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..
Greek Books
Out of print
Copyright Aglaia Kremezi 2008 | Interface Design by Defrost Design | web development by ds-creative.gr
Greek Books
Out of print
Copyright Aglaia Kremezi 2008 | Interface Design by Defrost Design | web development by ds-creative.gr