A Movable Feast? My Big Fat Greek Wedding? or eating across Greece!

Yummy eggplant salsa  (Jane J. pic.)

    No foodie am I...I actually like McDonald's...but did we eat.  Anna is a foodie and as proprietor of the world famous Gardens of Salonica Restaurant in SE Minneapolis she saw that we were well fed. We'd find ourselves in some Greek location and agree on a time to meet for dinner...often after 8:00 p.m....and, at the appointed time, she'd lead us off to place to eat, usually where we'd eat outside and very often a place familiar to her.
    Meals were family style.  Anna would do the ordering, in Greek of course, with much discussion of the method of preparation.  As we sipped our wine, beer, or gin and tonics the appetizers would appear...bread, fried cheese, olives, egg plant,  etc., soon more plates came, three orders of everything to share between the nine of us, often salads.
    After eating about five or six wonderful foods, and, just as I was thinking "what a wonderful  meal" more food would come...such as goat, lamb, beef, chicken, fish, lobster, or sausage...or more than one of these.
   What did I learn?  That Greek food is wonderful, even eggplant, Greek ripe olives are terrific and that it's fun to have someone else do the ordering.  Sharing it all with others, both long term and new friends, made it taste even better.
    Jane J. author of the blog jwkjohnson3.wordpress.com took pictures of most of the food and she gives great descriptions which I cannot replicate.

Warm,fresh goat cheese.

Greek salad. (Jane J. pic.)

Lobster anyone?  (Jane J> pic.)

(Jane J. pic speaks for itself.)

What A Group!

      Anna C.  is the proprietor of Gardens of Salonica, a Greek restaurant in SE Minneapolis.  Spring and fall she leads small group tours to Greece.  What Anna doesn't know about Greece is probably not worth knowing.  She' married to a Greek, her daughter and family lives in Athens, she speaks and teaches Greek, she's Greek Orthodox and seems to know people wherever we traveled in Greece.

   Jane J. in her amazing blog jwkjohnson3.wordpress.com said this about the trip....
"This type of trip is different from the other great adventures we’ve taken–it’s sort of a vagabond trek through Greece. Though Anna knows where she’s leading us and feeding us and has everything arranged, we have no specifically detailed itinerary–just a vague list of dates and places we’ll stay. So each day is an adventure for us. A monastery? A winery? A historical site? A beach? She leads and we follow. Sometimes we’re on time; other times we might be somewhere around the targeted hour. The tempo is slow and easy,"

    There were eight travelers plus Anna in the group.  Way back in my 'sensitivity training' days in the '70s we were told that nine was an ideal size group.  Perhaps that was correct because the group was definitely a high light for me.  There were two sisters, two female traveling companions who left husbands at home, my ministry partner from Iowa and his wife, plus, the curmudgeonette and me...the Traveling Curmudgeon.
    We laughed, ate, talked, ate, swam, ate, visited wineries (6), ate, rode bus, ferry, airplanes, ate, milked goats, ate, learned about Greece, ate, visited antiquities, ate, went to a farm, ate, some shopped, ate......... A high point for me were the meals together.  Anna would order food for our family style meal.  After four or five dishes arrive I'd think "wow! that was a great meal" only to discover that we were only half finished as dishes continued to pour from the kitchen.   A wonderful way to bond as we shared stories from our day and from our lives.
    This was my first experience of group travel and certainly has advantages...step off the plane or ferry and someone is waiting for you, our own private bus, no concern about logistics, a guide who took us to places I'd not find on my own, and companions with which to share the experiences.  Having someone else order the food was also fun.  The camaraderie of great companions was wonderful.

Shopping in Athens

Dinner on Santorini

Stuffed egg plant with tomatoes and cheese (Jane J. pic.)

Fennel encrout with sauce (Jane J. pic.)

Rooster and potatoes  (Jane J. pic.)

Olive Trees

    (If you want to read an extremely good narrative account of our Greece trip, Jane J., one of our travel companions, kept a blog at jwkjohnson3.wordpress.com  She has wonderful food pics which I do not have.  I will cross reference her blog with mine.  My blog, like me, will  be very random.)

   "I think I shall never see, a poem as beautiful as a tree" wrote Joyce Kilmer, whom I was surprised to learn, was a man,   Greece is swathed in Olive trees from valleys and high up mountain sides. There are many orange groves and vineyards as well, but, they are not nearly as ubiquitous as olive trees.
   Every olive tree in Greece has an owner and ownership is hereditary.  In fact we visited one winery on Crete, Manouskis,  owned by a wealthy entrepreneur who made his money in America and returned to his childhood home to found a business to aid the local economy.  On his property was an olive tree that was between 1300 and 1500 years old.  originally given to a priest, which the vineyard owner did not own.  Jane took a good pic of this tree. (see below) (Cross reference with Day 10, of Jane. J's blog.) It's a bit like mineral rights in America which are separate from land surface rights.
    Olives like light and air.  Therefore, olive tress are pruned to enhance olives reaching light and air.  The trunk is severed about six feet above ground and the branches curve upward from the remaining stump so the trees are shaped a bit like an inverted umbrella and are not very tall...perhaps fifteen feet.
   At the city of Messolongi (Jane's blog Day 5) we were hosted by a family who grow olives and who also operate an olive extraction business.  One of my first learnings was that it is hot in the sunshine in in olive grove when it's 113 degrees...about the top end of my comfort zone.  The Curmudgeonette discovered olives she liked for the first time ever.

The 1300-1500 year old olive tree.  (Jane J. picture)

In the olive grove...these trees are 200 years old.  Kleopatra, dressed in white, was our hostess for the study of olives.

Olives on the tree. (Jane J. picture)

Containers for olives.

Products for sale at the olive pressers place.

An antique olive press which was powered by a donkey.   Now olives are pressed  in modern stainless steel equipment with hydraulic pressure.

Olive trees fill the valley floor..picture taken from Delphi.

Blogging Resumption: re Greece (and other things)

   On our Greece trek I only carried a smart phone which is no way to blog.  Therefore, I suspended blogging until now that I'm back at my desktop.  So I will be blogging in my typical, random fashion about our Greek experiences.

I found this in today's Writer's Almanac so, with it's connection to Greece thought I'd reprint it.

Today is the beginning of the Dog Days of summer, 40 days of especially hot and humid weather with little rainfall, according to the Farmers' Almanac. The name came from the ancient Greeks. They believed that Sirius, the "dog star," which rose with the sun at that time, was adding to the sun's heat. They also believed that the weather made dogs go mad. The Romans tried to appease Sirius by sacrificing a brown dog at the start of the Dog Days. For the Egyptians, the arrival of Dog Days marked the beginning of the Nile's flooding season, as well as their New Year celebrations.

"Dog Days" has been adopted by the stock market, because the markets tend to be slow and sluggish; it's also come to mean any period of stagnation or inactivity.

The Corinth Canal begun by Nero with 6000 Jewish slaves and completed by the French at the end of the 19th century.  It connects the Ionian and Aegean Seas  through the Corinth Isthmus.  Cut  through solid rock 4 miles long, 30 yards wide and the sides are 10 yards high.