Home Cooking in Greece

Up until now, most of what we have shared, food wise, has been what we've eaten in restaurants and cafes. We have actually eaten more meals in our very nicely equipped apartment than we have eaten out. Even so, cooking at home has had its own adventures starting with shopping.

There are fruit and vegetable vendors all over town, selling out of their trucks on the main street and cruising through the neighborhoods. Many of them have loudspeakers wired to the inside of their trucks. They ride around chanting....chanting....something! I'm not sure their chanting has anything to do with what they're selling but I really don't have a clue because they are speaking Greek or Bulgarian or something else other than anything that remotely resembles English.

There are other truck vendors too selling everything from T-shirts to used home appliances (I am not making this up) out of the back of their trucks/vans, etc. Or maybe they're buying some of those things...I certainly can't tell.

As much as we enjoy getting our produce off the trucks, we also have spent a good deal of time in the local supermarkets which are more like the old neighborhood corner stores some of us grew up with. After a few visits, the folks begin to recognize you which usually initiates a lot of hand waving and gestures and our feeble and inadequate attempts at speaking Greek. "Hmmmm...I think I just said, 'I'd like to buy a large elephant with 2 pieces of zucchini' or something like that. Let's just take whatever they give us!" This method of communication can produce a very unusual array of items in your shopping cart.

But I digress...

The supermarket we have used most frequently is "Arista", about two blocks from our place. I know the sign looks lke it says "Arieta" but, trust me, when you know Greek as proficiently as we do, you know it says "Arista". Everyone, as you can see to the below left, shops there. The folks have been very helpful and it is one of the larger supermarkets in town. The Manager and his son (above right). Or maybe he's the owner, I'm not sure...he may be the janitor. He told me what he did there but it sounded like he said he was a "Kyber Rifle". One of the beautiful and kind ladies who work throughout the store, including doing an excellent job at the extensively stocked (with cheese) Deli Counter is to the right.

Wandering up and down the aisles to find what you're looking for may seem like a no-brainer in a supermarket.....until you realize that all the labels are printed in a language you don't understand. We've found that with some careful study of the labels, close inspection of the pictures on the outside of the packages, and some guess-work, you can, occasionally, figure out what's inside. That is, once you get past the idea that they carry things that someone from the States would never expect to find in a supermarket, ie; a lot of octopus in many forms, fish in all configurations (many of them complete but, at least, not alive), a wide selection of Halvah (a sweet nougat-type candy), TONS of Feta and other cheeses, thousands of gallons of olive oil and some pretty strange looking lunch meats which I am unprepared and unwilling to guess the contents of.
Language barriers and alien foods notwithstanding, we have, more or less, learned how to wave, point, gesture, speak slowly and more loudly and generally abuse the Greek language enough to come home with things we originally (mostly) intended to purchase. Some of them were familiar, in many ways, but only by their packaging and photos.

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, here are some of the things we stocked our pantry with on a regular basis. On the familiar ones, look at the labels closely. You can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them:

All Bran cereal and 1.5% milk

Olive Oil (they put it on EVERYTHING) and Oregano (ditto)

Salt and Pepper

This label clearly says "Whole Wheat Bread"

Yep! All the way over here in Greece. Uncle Ben's Brown Rice

So, we make the trip, almost daily, to the markets. We bring our groceries home and make lunch and/or dinner, frequently eating out on our veranda. Kelly has become quite the Greek cook, making a mean Greek Salad (cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, Feta, olives, oregano and, of course, olive oil), great souvlaki (we would call shish-kabob), tyrosalata (a wild, mashed Feta and pepper 'salad') and other tasty dishes.

It all comes together for a great and healthy meal.

That's the Greek Salad in the big bowl, Tyropita (Feta in filo dough). brown rice and American-style fish sticks (we only got one package of those!). BON APPETIT!!

Seriously, we are coming home with a new outlook on how and what we eat. We've had so many fresh fruits and vegetables and found so many ways to make them simply and deliciously, we're convinced we can cut a significant amount of fried foods and red meats out of our diets without missing them. We've been eating like this for two months and not only is it less expensive but it's a lot more refreshing and healthy as well.

They have even identified this style of eating. They call it "The Mediterranean Diet". It's a light breakfast, big lunch around the middle of the day and easy dinner usually accompanied, if not consisting solely of, a Greek Salad.

We've had to be careful with the Feta. It's delicious but is absolutely loaded with salt! 1600 mg/per serving! We were both swelling up like Blowfish and couldn't figure out why, thinking it was the heat until we checked out what we were eating and found that Feta has over ten times the salt other foods have. It's just like everything else, moderation is the key.

In any event, the food has been grand and the lessons learned will be, we hope and pray, lasting.