Book quilt

Dear ______,

How are you? We hope you and You-know-who are both well and happy. At the moment, we are in the middle of our school exams. We know that this is a poor excuse to talk to you less often and we feel terrible about this, but we hope this letter makes up for the lost time(s). So far, we have been tested on Maths, Physics, Biology, Modern Greek, Composition, Ancient Greek, Religion, the Odyssey, the Iliad, English (we didn't have to study for that) and German. (Mum helped us to study for that, but she thinks it's not the most useful foreign language to learn. She wants us to learn Chinese during the summer.)

We also think it's time we presented you with a gift. You've given us so many, and all we say is 'Thank you.' It's time we gave you something more tangible, as a keepsake. Actually, Mum made this gift for you, and not for You-know-who, because she says that if she gave it to You-know-who, then You-know-who would probably flog it on e-Bay. That's why Mum made this quilt just for you, to settle the ownership issue. (If she made a bigger quilt for both of you, You-know-who might divide it into two, take one piece and flog that on e-Bay).



We watched Mum making this quilt over the last three weeks. She was working in the living room, while Dad was watching TV and we were studying. (We like studying in the living room, each of us taking up one sofa. Mum says she now wished she had bought us a desk for our rooms from a second hand shop, like her parents did, because it would have been cheaper, since we don't use our desks. But she remembers that when the bedrooms were being renovated, Hania didn't have second-hand shops. There are lots now.) The noise from the sewing machine drove Dad nuts, so she'd take her sewing machine into the kitchen and do her sewing there. We really didn't know what she was sewing at first. It simply looked to us as if she was cutting up fabric and sewing it back together, with totally unmatched colours. We didn't worry so much because we'd seen her doing this before. She's made quilts for all of us. When she started making them, it looked like she was going crazy, cutting up large pieces of material into smaller pieces and then putting them back together again. We could never really see the patterns in the fabric which she could see.


But as the quilts all grew, we began to see what she was making, and we all really liked them. Even the cat liked them. Since there isn't enough space anywhere to lay out a quilt, as she was making each one, she would spread it out on the floor in the living room. The cat would walk around the room slowly and then take a last step on one of the corners of the quilt and sit there. Then we'd go and pick it up off the quilt and put it on the rug, but the cat would go back to the same spot on the quilt. Eventually, it would get the message and leave the quilt alone. But it really did prefer the quilt. (Don't worry about the cat sitting on your quilt: Mum put the quilt in the washing machine when she finished it - it's fully washable. It won't smell of Mum's cooking, either, when she was working in the kitchen on it. Mum always laughs when she reads crafts sites selling 'pet-free, smoke-free' products. "The Western world thinks it can be so sterile," she says.)

We would really like to present you with the quilt ourselves, but travelling is getting a little difficult for us now. We don't want to leave yiayia alone at home. She's in her nineties now, and looks like she's on course to celebrate her 100th birthday. Now that it's not cold, she goes out into the garden and does some weeding, or she looks after her rose bushes. She always cooks for herself, and she washes and irons her own clothes too (by hand). She doesn't take any medications. She says that if she has to take medicines to keep her alive, she'd rather die. But even though she feels so strong for such an old person, we don't feel we can leave her alone on her own while we go away on holiday to see you. So that's why you'll have to come and pick up the quilt yourself. It's time you took a Cretan holiday yourself, come to think of it.

We told Mum that she can go on holiday by herself and take the quilt to you, but she said that the political and economic instability that Greece is going through right now doesn't give us the luxury of making holiday plans. We told her that if she books flights early, she will get a better price, but she said: "Booking flight tickets for a future date just might mean that our holiday plans may coincide with national elections, or the closing down of banks, or even the airports, if things get that bad." We know what an election is, and we heard about the banks in Cyprus not letting you take money out, but we don't know what she means by the airports closing down. She says it has happened before in Greece, in 1974, while she was holidaying in Greece with her parents (and Cyprus was involved in that episode too):

"After three and a half months, our holiday had finally come to an end: our return tickets to New Zealand stated 21 July 1974 as the departure date. On the eve of our departure, we woke up on a hot summer's day in Pireas. It was a local holiday in the neighbourhood, as the district church was celebrating its patron saint, the Prophet Elias. Our bags were packed and ready for our departure the next day. Peace and quiet is expected on holidays, and the neighbourhood was silent. My father's sister told us to get ready to go to church. She was about to prepare a picnic to eat near a park in the churchyard's garden. We turned on the radio to listen to some music. Every single radio station we tuned in to was playing the same pre-recorded message: "... state of war..., ... emergency... γενική επιστράτευση (mobilisation of military forces into combat)..." Now my aunt was worried. Turkey had invaded Northern Cyprus and the Greek airports closed down to all international flights. Overnight, from holidaymakers, we had officially become overstayers." (http://haniadailyphoto.blogspot.gr/2008/07/bad-timing.html)

It's difficult to believe that things like this have happened in our country. We don't feel this fear at all, but our parents tell us these stories about our country's past, and we try to relate these details to the present, but it doesn't always seem to fit in well. We think we have a lot of freedom here, and we can live pretty much how we want, just like you. Mum agrees with that. She says Greece is one of the most democratic countries in the world, and it is little wonder that democracy was invented in Greece. But she also says that too much democracy is not good. Even Dad agrees with her on that one.

Mum says that you should not think of this quilt as a big present, because she made it entirely from scrap material (even the batting) that would have ended up in the wood-fired heater (ready to be used next winter) if she didn't look up the internet for ideas on how to use fabric scraps. "I could make a hundred book quilts if I wanted to, it won't cost me much at all," she said. She says the same things about the food she cooks, too.

We hope you enjoy the book quilt. Till you come to visit us, we will enjoy looking at it.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Quilting

About mid-March, I decided that it really was about time I started using my fabric stashes, mainly made up of cheap remnants and used clothing whose fabric I liked. A number of items could not be used for The Greek Collection, as they did not feel very Greek to me, even though most of my fabric stash has been collected here. This past winter, I started making things out of my fabric collection, with the internet as my guide, and I still can't believe how fast I am - in just 8 weeks' time, I have made 3 large quilts, and completed a number of smaller patchwork projects in between, recycling and upcycling various items lying around the house.

The arts of quilting and patchwork are not at all well known in modern-day Crete, although there are now quilting groups all over the country (mostly headed by non-Greeks!). Since I've never quilted before, I didn't expect my fabric projects to go so well and get finished so quickly. We usually procrastinate over such tasks. In the past, all I did was small patchwork projects, without any quilting. I've now discovered that quilting using a simple made-for-home-use sewing machine is not at all easy because it involves pushing very thick (and often wide) fabric through a limited amount of space between the machine motor and the needle. This made my arms and back ache. But it was worth it!

My first project was a small mat, as a way to get back into patchwork, after a long break from it. I had made a patchwork armchair cover many years ago, using cheap fabric remnants bought in Athens back in the drachma days from a store that sold sheet and curtain fabric. (Such stores are long gone now.) The cover was all hand-stitched. It had gotten rather tired looking, and was eventually replaced by a store-bought cover. But I didn't want to discard my old patchwork given the amount of time I had put into making it. So I cut a piece and used it as backing material for a quick patchwork denim mat, made from my kids' old jeans. The light padding all came from remnants I had picked up from a mattress maker in Hania when we bought new mattresses for our kids' beds. This whole project took me just one afternoon, thanks to the sewing machine stitching.
Cost: just the electricity I needed to machine-sew it.

I decided to get craftier and tried a more advanced patchwork pattern, again using fabric remnants. I made another small mat for the bathroom based on a design called 'fake cathedral windows', as it is known among patchwork circles. More old denim was recycled, and the 'windows' were made using fabric scraps that were very small and practically useless and would otherwise have been thrown out. Again, the cost was virtually zilch.

My children had been watching me working on my patchwork projects throughout the winter, and they liked the idea of a quilt of their own, made by their mother. They have never had a quilt, mainly because my own mother left me a lot of blankets (we use what we have!). Quilts feel almost like a luxury to us. Having never quilted before, I decided to do a sample quilt using plain fabric which was not patchworked. The first quilt I made was for my son. The whole family loved it!

The designer fabric is called Tournament by Jane Churchill, acquired at a garage sale in Brockley, London, on a balmy September day as I walked through the area last year. My son is a fencer, so I immediately imagined these knights gracing his bedroom in some way. The red fabric has a medieval look to it - it was bought at a fabric store in Athens (more drachma days) and I used to use it as a sofa cover while I lived in Athens. The blue-white floral fabric used for the binding came from an upholstery remnants store in Hania.
Cost: designer fabric - £5; red fabric 1000 drachma; binding €1.50; €20 euro for the batting, from a local mattress maker. 

Before moving to Greece, I had bought a cheap king size quilt made of Indian cotton at a Wellington shop called Narnia. (I don't know if it's still trading - it was one of my favorite stores.) I have been using this quilt since I bought it, but it's now feeling rather old and needs repairing/replacing. During our New Zealand holiday 11 years ago, I bought some NZ-based fabric designs which were found in the remnants stash at the well-known Nancy's Embroidery store. I remember Nancy from her time in James Smiths (mention of this name does age me - James Smiths closed just before I left NZ). I embarked on a rather ambitious project using the 'disappearing nine-patch' patchwork technique. I needed 25 square blocks for the finished quilt top.

 Close ups of the main fabric used in the NZ based quilt. I didn't let any material go wasted by making squares from off cuts. 

Since the NZ designs were not enough to make a king size quilt, I bought some more fabric which had a NZ look to it from ebay sellers, eg shells, pebbles, (green coloured) sea, among others. I also cut up a NZ tea towel with a map of NZ on it. The sashing and binding were made using remnants from the local upholstery store, some cheap fabric bought in Athens during the drachma days, a used clothing item from the street market in Hania, and a batik design gifted to me by an Indonesian student while I was studying in NZ. The mattress maker sold me some more ready-lined padding, which meant that I didn't have to do most of the quilting myself. This was a very big project, so that was quite helpful. Most quilters leave the quilting part to professionals who use long-arm sewing machines, while others have computerised machines which are programmed to create intricate designs. (Maybe my next model!)

Cost: 3 metres of ready to use wadding - €35; NZ fabric designs from NZ - approx. NZ$22; ebay fabrics - £20; remnants/used clothing - approx. €10, plus a thousand (or so) drachma; the batik was bought in Indonesian rupiah. This really was quite an international project. 

The reverse side of the quilts did not need any fabric, thanks to the mattress maker. I took my quilt tops to him so that he could measure them and advise me on what I can use to pad them. In Hania, we have quite a few mattress makers, thanks to the tourist industry. A quick check on ebay confirmed that I would have paid roughly the same price for this wadding. (I'm not sure about how the quality compares - what I bought seems quite good).

The reverse side of the two quilts looks like this - the white cotton fabric was already sewn onto the wadding and I simply quilted the top side onto the ready-lined fabric.

My latest quilt project was for my daughter. It was made using fabrics I had bought on a whim while visiting Brighton on New Year's Day, walking through the Lanes (a bit like Hania's old town), where my eye caught a glimpse of some nifty floral fabric made into pyjamas which were displayed on clothes hangers. I decided to check out the store just because I liked the fabric, which turned out to be none other than a Cath Kidston fabric designer outlet. Rather overpriced of course (8 fat quarters for 25 pounds/30 euro), but I couldn't help myself.

On returning home, I decided that the fabrics looked a little too kitsch for my tastes. but my daughter loved them. I've used some of the CKs in my daughter's quilt - she chose the 'raggedy quilt' design. The CK fabrics were not enough for the quilt, so I had to add fabric obtained from all sorts of places: some skirts my daughter had grown out of, clothes bought from local second hand stores, 'old ladies' dresses (we call them 'robes') bought at the laiki, some fabric remnants that I had since my NZ days (off cuts from a dollmaker), as well as some cheap fabrics from my local suppliers. Some of the fabric that went into this quilt is over forty years old. With the use of so many different fabrics which can be traced to the very beginnings of my interest in patchwork, this quilt quite unexpectedly became a memory quilt.

Although the raggedy quilt design looked rather easy, it proved quite a challenge. It requires a lot of cutting and sewing, and trimming of threads. It becomes quite a heavy quilt to work with piece by piece, and gives you sore arms and backache. But I guess the end result was well worth it. I bound the quilt with fabric from a pink linen skirt in my wardrobe, last worn a decade ago.

When I buy clothes for patchwork, I always buy XL sizes and never pay more than 1-3 euro per item, at the street market and second hand stores (sometimes, the clothes are new, from previous seasons or store clearances). Upholstery remnants sell for all sorts of prices, but again, I go for the larger pieces, selling at 1.50-3.50 euros a piece. The bonus of the raggedy quilt design is that the padding for it could all be made from off-cuts from the mattress maker, so I didn't need to buy any. When I bought the padding for the other quilts, I was allowed to take all the off cuts that I could carry which were strewn around the workshop. Everything on the floor in the photo below went into the boot of my car.

Cost: second-hand clothes - 10 euro; upholstery remnants - 10 euro; Cath Kidston fabrics - 20 pounds; padding - free. 

During a recent window-shopping experience, I checked out the prices of  store-bought quilts. At the supermarket, you can get a simple king size quilt for 35-40€; similar prices can be found in the home stores. These quilts are padded, with one fabric on one side, another on the other side, simple binding and an elaborate machine-sewn design.  I can quite easily keep my quilt costs very low, but the real cost of home quilting is not based on the cost of the fabrics alone. Thank goodness for the invention of the sewing machine, which means that I can sew as fast as I can collect fabric that I like to work with. There are more quilt projects scheduled for the summer when I can work outdoors. These quilts will all be specially designed with certain people in mind. Watch this space.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

The Greek Collection: Greek fabric designs

I've been collecting fabrics of all kinds for many years now. My special interest fabrics are those that can convey a sense of identity, especially Greek, in a similar way to the clothing, accessories and upholstery designs associated with the UK and US: namely, their iconic cities - London and New York - which, along with Paris, are the only cities to feature in international designs, and their flags - the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes - which happen to be the only flags that feature in those same international designs.

The UK/US flag is also redesigned in many ways, using fabric ideas such as patchwork, 'shabby chic' and colour alterations, among others, especially for the purposes of patchwork and applique sewing techniques, and design in general. Patchwork is a common hobby among fabric enthusiasts all over the Anglo-Saxon world, and the actual designs of these two flags lend themselves well enough to such alterations. So does the design of the Greek flag, with its cross and many lines. But the international fashion market is dominated by the UK/US flags; ξενομανία (cf. ξένος - KSE-nos = 'stranger', and μανία - ma-NI-a = 'mania') has also ruled the Greek market to a great extent. So there is no such corresponding market in Greek fabrics or Greek flag designs, showcasing Greek identity in common everyday-use objects in this way.

My grandmother's patchwork rug:
it's all hand-sewn.

Patchwork is not really a homecrafts tradition in Greece, although rags and scraps of fabric were never thrown out in pre-industrial days: they were re-used, including patchwork-style, as part of the frugal lifestyle. I still have a patchwork rug, made by my grandmother in the log cabin style: some of the fabric has worn away, but some is definitely still distinct and can be traced as vintage early 20th century fabric. The Greek kourelou tradition also uses scrap rags woven to make a rug.

While on a visit to New Zealand over a decade ago, I was intrigued to come across fabrics with designs associated with New Zealand. Such fabrics are very idiosyncratic, and would not be understood by anyone outside New Zealand without an explanation: flora such as kowhai, pohutukawa, the fern; fauna like the kiwi, the pukeko and the shell of the paua, and Maori artwork. They would not have a great appeal, apart from among New Zealand patchworkers, and perhaps the tourist trade. The fact that such fabrics exist is perhaps based on the idea of a collective national pride, things that New Zealanders, no matter their differences, share with each other. The same that I bought so many years ago are still being sold in New Zealand, and they remain particular to the country - you would only use them in a genuine Kiwi design, because they don't lend themselves well to be added elsewhere.

I have just started using these fabrics in a patchwork quilt. The quilt design I've chosen looks quite ambitious, but with a sewing machine, a rotary fabric cutter and some μεράκι, this kind of work doesn't take a long time to finish. 

Although patchwork, in the US/UK meaning, is not a tradition in Greece (I myself picked it up while living in New Zealand), there are now patchwork groups in Greece - this is not necessarily a post-crisis thing: foreigners living in Greece have introduced the locals to this fabric art. But the crisis has certainly helped make people more aware of patchwork, both as a hobby and as a way to re-use something frugally in a creative way, and there are now web-based Greek patchwork groups.

It's very hard to find Greek-based images on fabric, but I did manage to come across this gem - a Greek island motif - at the street market. 

The absence of Greek-based fabric designs is a tricky issue to interpret. I sometimes see it as a lack of interest in collective identity: Greeks tend to be τοπικιστές. The concept of nationality-based fabric designs is also an Anglo-Saxon one, extending to its colonies. Tourist shops sell clothing with Greek-based fabric designs. The meander is the most often-used design in tourist-related products, labelled 'Greek key'. But that is more closely associated with Ancient Greece, not the modern present-day country. It's also often used in American college designs with the Greek alphabet (try googling images for just the word 'Greek'). There are also many Greek fabric souvenirs (eg towels, kitchen gloves, tablecloths, etc) that bear summertime Greek motifs depicting island scenery, the sun, the olive, etc. But they also tend to have a big fat placename (eg Athens, Greece, Crete, etc) printed over them, which makes them clearly destined for the tourist market: this kind of fabric is not the same kind as that used in patchwork. The low quality fabric and its kitsch design value, as well as its mass production, hints that it is most likely all made in China.

This leads to the question of what kind of Greek iconic images would be used in the concept of Greek fabric design if (or more likely, when) they come onto the Greek market. We all have collective iconic images of Greece in the sub-conscious, but they may be different according to the individual: Tourists might mention things to do with summertime Greek island scenery and the Acropolis (google images for just the word 'Greece'). But what would a Greek person living in Greece first put in their mind? Maybe they would not have given it much thought in the first place: Greeks tend to take their surroundings for granted in this respect... Whatever these instantly recognisable iconic Greek timeless images are, they need to be separated from 'touristy Greece'.

From: http://www.123rf.com/photo_26198247_traditional-symbols-of-greece-in-the-form-of-heart-on-white-vector-illustration.html

If I could design such fabric myself, I would want to see things that remind me of the Greece I am living in now, modern Greece, not ancient Greece. Try googling the images for 'traditional Greek symbols': the icons that come up depict ancient Greece - and they are most often non-Greeks' ideas of what constitutes a Greek symbol.

©All Rights Reserved/Maria Verivaki/The Greek Collection/Organically Cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Bitter orange (Νεραντζάκι)

What does the Greek economic crisis taste of? One of the projects at the 2nd Symposium of Greek Gastronomy that greatly touched my heart was that of the bitter orange art project by Ino Varvariti and Persefoni Myrtsou. They harvested the well known bitter oranges in December 2012, January 2013 and March 2013 from the trees that line the roads of the largest cities of Greece, Athens and Thessaloniki, as a way to identify the taste of the crisis. Bitter orange trees are very hardy trees, and they make a spectacular sight throughout the period when the dark green foliage stands as a stunning background to the bright orange fruit that it is laden with.

Bitter orange trees in Syntagma Square

Bitter orange trees in an inner-city Athens street.

These bitter orange trees are used purely for decoration, as their fruit is too bitter to be eaten raw. They can survive in cold/low temperatures where sweet orange trees do not grow, even in highly urbanised settings. When they are in flower, they mask the polluted air of the city with the sweet smell of their blossom; when the oranges take on their bright colour, they look similar to a Christmas tree. Christmas is when they look their best.

"Their strength against harsh weather conditions and sicknesses, their fragrant flowers and their beautiful fruits, are some of the reasons why these trees are often planted in the urban centres of Greece in order to embellish the urban spaces. However, these 'urban' bitter oranges are rarely harvested by the citizens, due to the polluted environment of the cities and due to the fact that the origin of food is usually connected to its production in the rural space."

I thought that the historical centre's taste of bitter orange was a little more bitter than Syntagma's taste. By trying the different varieites, you are able to understand the effects of the crisis in each area through the bitterness of each variety. 

But the fruit of these trees, despite being too bitter to eat raw, can be used in a number of ways:

"After a certain procedure and with the addition of sugar, it is often used for the making of marmalades and sweets. Also, the leaves, the flowers and the skin, due to their fragrance are used for the making of confectioneries, in alcoholic beverages and in aromatology."

In Crete, the juice of the bitter orange can be used to flavour dishes or to marinate meat and fish, in the same way as lemons. Bitter orange juice is also used as a curing treatment and preservation for olives. The peel of the fruit can be dried and candied, to be used as dried fruit in sweets, pies, savouries and salads. But most of the time, the peel is turned into a typical Greek dessert known as the γλυκό του κουταλιού, the spoon sweet, where an array of bitter or under-ripe fruits are turned into a syrupy dessert.

Bitter orange spoon sweet is typically served in Greece as a refreshment with a glass of water, sometimes together with black coffee. This is considered a special treat for guests to one's home. Therefore, it serves as a medium for discussion

The harvest points of Persefoni's and Ino's bitter orange spoon sweet were some well known spots in central streets running through Athens. Most of these areas carry some emotional weight in the minds of all Greeks:

"The selected urban areas (around Syntagma Square, the historical centre and Kypseli in Athens; Agiou Mina, Vassileos Irakleiou, Proxenou Koromila and Mitropoleos streets, as well as the “Upper” town in Thessaloniki) are spaces registered in the personal and collective subconscious as agents of historical memory, but they also remain alive parts of the cities in the present. Now the marks of the economic crisis are visible in these spaces."

So Ino's and Persefoni's bitter orange, harvested from the urban areas of Greece most heavily bruised by the economic crisis, takes on a symbolic social character:

"The spoon-sweet still maintains this [hospitality] attribute, and thus becomes the point of departure for the creation of new associations and construction of new meanings. Furthermore, it enables an open dialogue and exchange of ideas in relation to the crisis in Greece."

By turning the urban bitter orange into spoon sweet and serving it in the village of Amari, Persefoni and Ino brought the taste of the crisis to the Symposium and to the village of Amari. It had also previsouly travelled to Berlin, as part of the exhibition “Domestic crisis” at the Institut für alles Mögliche. There, the audience, being predominantly German, had to be shown how to eat the bitter orange spoon sweet, because, being German, they were not familiar with this tradition, unlike at Amari, where the bitter orange was more well known to the participants and the subtle differences in taste among the different areas where the fruit was harvested (they were all prepared separately) could be appreciated.

The bitter orange spoon sweet project was directly associated with the economic crisis, as was my own presentation (Greek food, Greek identity and the economic crisis). If I lived in the middle of the crisis-ridden neighbourhoods where the bitter oranges were harvested, I would probably be the first to use them. Therefore, I can relate to Persefoni's and Ino's urban bitter orange spoon sweet - it's all part of the frugal food lifestyle that the crisis has forced us to adopt.

All the photos (except the first two) come from the artists' personal archive. The photos of the bitter orange trees in urban Athens have been taken from the blogs credited to them below each photo. The italicised paragraphs come from Persefoni's and Ino's exhibition work.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Blue and white

A middle-aged neighbour saw me using my camera this morning. I hesitate to say that he saw me taking photos of the roadside flowers, because I doubt that he realised what I was doing. I explained exactly what I was doing which was just that: photographing roadside flowers.

My favorite flowers at this season - Daucus carotta and Chicorium - growing right outside my house. The chicorium flowers close as the sun becomes stronger, so it's only feasible to take the photos early in the morning.

"Oh, those useless things! What can you possibly find fascinating about them?" 

Daucus carotta and Chicorium are both edible species - wild carrot and chicory

I knew he was going to say this. It's an automatic fear reaction to the unknown, the strange, the odd, the peculiar; it's scary watching a sole minority doing what the ramining majortiy would never do.  

Wild chicory can be quite tough and fibrous, so it's only good for eating when it is at an early growth stage

Taking pleasure in simple things was probably a favorite Greek past time in the pre-EU days, sadly replaced quite quickly once excess cash settled into the locals' pockets.

If you know your chicorium species well, you will instantly recognise this one as Chicorium spinosum, the well known Cretan horta species commonly called stamnagathi, due to its thorns that were once used to cover terracotta urns to prevent crawling creatures from entering them. This is not a wild species - it was growing on the other side of the fence, which constitutes my neighbour's garden. Although Chicorium spinaosum grows wildly, it does not do so at low altitude - this was grown from seed or transplanted from wild plants.

Some people are finding it very hard to return to valuing the simple things in life, but at least they can recall them. The problem is that their offspring were never taught to value them - so what is left for them? Life always looks greener on the other side, especially when you can't see the foliage on your own side.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Knitting (Πλέξιμο)

It had been about seven years since I last knitted anything, as there didn't seem to be any need to knit anything. New Zealand, like the UK and the US, is knitter's paradise; people love showing off their craftwork and complementing others for it. I used to knit a lot when I was living there, but I noticed how unnecessary most of my works were in Greece, because it is simply too hot for woollen clothing. I've kept a good number of my woollen creations, mainly because of the great amount of work I had put in them; it didn't feel right to give them to a charity shop or leave them in a bag outside a church, because these kinds of items are not appreciated by locals. They aren't really useful, and they are generally not worn these days.

Mittens made with 4-ply pure wool, and a scarf being made with Greek BONSAI yarn

Now that my children are becoming more fashion conscious, they are asking for accessories like scarves and gloves. In my time, I've knitted countless pairs of the latter. Among the material possessions I transported from NZ to Greece were a few of my favorite knitting patterns and my knitting needles; I'm really glad now that I did because equipping yourself for hobby purposes can be quite a costly outlay. In my youth, I knew them almost off by heart; when you knit a pattern very often, it's like a recipe that you don't need to consult a cookbook to make. Nevertheless, patterns for making just about anything are now available not just on websites, but even on youtube videos, to guide you through the whole process.

Keyhole scarf made with eyelash yarn

My kids' interest gave me a chance to survery the yarn market in Hania. There are only two shops in Hania selling various yarns, which may say something about the popularity of yarn crafts. At the same time, it should be mentioned that local radio is now advertising knitting lessons, no doubt one of the side effects of the economic crisis. These kinds of novelties followed on from sewing lessons which teach ot just how to sew your own clothes, but how to give your old clothes a makeover.

Although beautiful soft non-scratch woollen yarns exist, they are not so popular here because they are more expensive, but the yarn market has also grown in the last decade due to advances in technology. Polyamide yarn mixes, available in a wide variety of forms, are now very popular all over the world. Although they cannot be described as very cheap, you usually need only one ball of wool to make a fashionable scarf or a pair of gloves, for instance. In terms of prices, Hania is not much more expensive than a small town in Holland, for example, where I picked up some interesting yarns while holidaying there, but I notice that similar yarns are also sold in Hania at similar prices.

Ruffled scarf yarn, thanks to technological advances

Knitting has similar therapeutic qualities as reading a book that isn't very demanding, like chick lit. As I waited for my daughter's basketball session to finish, I sat in the small gymnasium knitting a very colourful scarf in simple garter stitch (for the uninitiated, knitting doesn't get any easier than that). The stares I got were enough to make me move to a more isolated spot away from the team's eyes, which were more often centred on the scarf rather than the game - I don't know what intrigued people more: the yarn or the knitting process.

Once you know the basic stitches, knitting requires patience and a determination to finish a project; both virtues are highly essential in a society that is trying to rebuild itself after suffering a fast-paced domino-like path of destruction. Athens and New York share a similar plight, in the sense that they need to rebuild something that took decades to construct and only a very short time to annihilate. But they don't share the same theory on how to resolve these problems, as the following paragraph, written in Greek in the original, shows:

Anti-capitalists may be pleased to see the hub of capitalism being hit so hard by something it could not control. I am happy for what I saw happening for another reason: I saw a city and its citizens learning from past events, I saw the wider state infrastructure in the face of a black president who took action despite the pre-election period, I saw people knowing how to judge which channels, which photos, which blogs they should believe. I saw homeless people being removed from the area of danger, shops being protected, neighbours helping others, I saw firemen and police officers in their posts, people accepting humour at their expense, even directing sarcastic comments at themselves, with the self-confidence that you can only have from the security of the knowledge that you can rebuild what is being destroyed. I saw a city that works, one which we don't want to be like.

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Fashion Diva - and the giveaway continues!

STMMMS91901

More creative activities - scrapbooking my daughter's fashion projects. MyMemories.com digital scrapbooking software relieves you of the burden of having to design templates to place your photos. This set of photos was created using the Princess Diva template found in the basic software. Unlike my other scrapbooking projects where I created the templates (check out my recipe cards and the summer garden), this album uses a ready template.

MyMemories.com has given me a copy of MyMemories Suite 3 to give away to one lucky reader, with a special offer to all readers and followers of this blog - with the following code: STMMMS91901 you can get a $10 discount off the purchase price of the My Memories Suite Scrapbook software and a $10 coupon for the MyMemories.com store, which gives you access to a wider range of templates and scrapbooking tools. That's a saving of $20 for each reader. 

To be in for the draw, visit www.MyMemories.com and choose your favorite digital paper pack or layout, then leave a comment on my blog (on this post) about which ones you chose. My recipe cards were made using the features included in the downloaded software, together with some additional free material, directly downloadable from the MyMemories site, whose software rates No 1 on Amazon. 

The winner will be announced on 31 July - enter as many times as you wish before then.  



STMMMS91901
 
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Dregs (Kατακάθια)

One thing I'm pleased about these days is that the kids are becoming more independent. They make their own dakos meals these days. As I watch them, I get the idea that they feel they are preparing a sumptuous meal.

If you could ever get yourself to overdo it with the olive oil, and you find a thick film covering the plate after you ate your dakos salad, don't despair - just mop it up with some bread and enjoy it. If you aren't hungry at that particular moment, put it in the fridge for the next day. 

It's still a little difficult to teach them not to over-do it when pouring olive oil over the paximathi (rusk). Phrases like 'go easy with' and 'olive oil' do not collate well in Crete.

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What day is it today? (Tί μέρα είναι σήμερα;)

Titika rises and goes into her kitchen. It is still dark, but she cannot sleep any longer. She never sleeps past this hour. She is used to getting up at so early. She moves towards the kitchen, the warmest part of the house, where the wood-fire may still be burning, if she is lucky, and indeed, today she is. The embers are visible through the glass pane on the oven door. There is still a little life left in them.

She makes her way to the calendar on the wall, a present from her grandson. When he stays with her at the weekends, he likes to peel the pages off for her. She lets him read the day's story on the back of each page. But today is a weekday, and he's at school in the town where he lives. She carefully lifts yesterday's page to reveal the new date, laying the old page on the table.

She must be ready at the first light. What time does the sun rise today? she wonders. Although she is used to moving around in the dark conditions of the three rooms of her village home, she turns on the electric light to read the sunrise time written on the calendar: 7.39. Dawn will be coming in an hour, she thinks, as she goes back to the switch and turns off the light. The sheep need to be milked before being taken out to graze.

The pot of μαλοτίρα had been left on the wood-fired stove from the previous evening, so that it will be warm to drink as soon as she wakes up. As she pours out the tea through a strainer, she cups her hands around the glass, warming them up in the icy chill of the early morning. Her throat welcomes the warm liquid, comforting her as it flows through her body.

She stokes the previous night's fire to keep it going and pushes the early morning ashes close to the centre so that they will pass through the grate and not choke the flames. Then she adds another log and watches it through the glass as the brittle splinters flicker alight and the log slowly catches fire, starting from the middle outwards. 

According to the calendar, the moon is still in the last quarter, so there is plenty of time left to till the land lying fallow, now that it would be at its most frothy. As she drinks her tea, she hopes it will not start to rain, as this would mar her plans after milking the sheep. There is still a lot of tilling to do to get the land ready for the next sowing cycle. 

Although she knows it is Tuesday, she checks the calendar once again to verify this. The letters are large and she does not need the light on to see them. The country GP will be coming today. He comes to the village every Tuesday. She needs to get a prescription filled for her osteoporosis tablets, so she will have to spend an hour or two at the former school building to get this done. Doctors are busy people - they can never be prompt. But this queuing gives her a chance to while her time away with the other villagers, the few that are left; despite the problems that the world finds itself in today, not many people care to return to this one.  Tuesday is a time when her sparsely scattered neighbours come together to find out what everyone else is up to. They will talk about their children and grandchildren, the weather, the olive harvest, the price of olive oil and the general state of the economy. Everyone will add their bit to the conversation, and even after each person leaves the queue and takes their turn with the country GP, they will still linger until everyone has finished their work here, just to make sure that they have all seen each other and missed no one. Even the kafeneio will be open today. Although Titika will not order anything there, she will take a seat with the other village women just to catch up with each other's lives.


She looks up at the calendar. TUESDAY... 17... January... She mulls over the 17. It reminds her of something. She looks below the number: "Antonia". Antonia? Yes! It's her sister's nameday! She thinks quickly: It's morning here... so it's evening there. This is her way of remembering time differences between continents. She knows that this formula works for morning and evening, but she isn't sure about the middle of the day (the middle of the night is insignificant as she herself is bound to be sleeping). But it's still dark here too, which makes her hesitate. Talking on the telephone so early in the morning still feels unnatural to her, even though she knows her sister will not be sleeping at that hour. She may even be waiting for her call. At this moment, she also reminds herself that it's not a day of fast, so she can cook what she likes. As it's her sister's nameday, she knows this information off by heart and does not need to check it on the calendar page.

She dunks a piece of stale bread into the tea and lets it soak just enough to soften it. She then drains it over the cup before lowering her head to take a bite, taking care not to move the rusk away from the teacup; it was still dripping randomly. She watches the flames leaping and listens to the wood crackling away, as she looks at the empty pot next to the oven.

Dawn is breaking. A beam of light streams in through the window at the point where the curtains are drawn but do not meet. Every time she looks at that gap, she remembers the day she stitched them. When she hung them up, she could see at once that they needed to be amended slightly - she had sewn the hem about half a centimetre too inwards on one of them. But she never did take them down. The curtains have been there for a long time, and they will not be coming down soon. The colour of the room now lightens, as it fills with the first light of the new day.

What shall I fill that pot with today? she wonders. Even though she is a widow and lives alone, she never fails to eat a cooked meal every day. She remembers the leftover braised cauliflower in the fridge which she left for the chickens. They need to be fed too, but she will do that after lunch. The days are still too short, so that all the chores are crammed in tightly. She begins to organise her day's work in her head.

By now, there is enough light to read yesterday's calendar page. This year, instead of the calendar she was used to getting with a μαντινάδα written on the back of each page, her daughter-in-law had bought her a calendar with a recipe for each day. She thought it was quite a novel idea. At any rate, she had tired of the μαντινάδες. Ever since her husband had died, she found it difficult to laugh by herself, all alone in her house, even though she might have found something that she was reading or watching on TV to be very funny.

She picks up yesterday's page and turns it over: Σπλήνα γεμιστή. Filled spleen! Where would she find an animal's spleen at this time of the year, she wondered, smiling. At that moment, she did actually want to laugh, but the image of her husband came into her mind, and sadness overcame her. Were he still alive, if she expressed an interest in cooking spleen that day, he would have gone to all lengths to find it for her.

She has finished drinking her tea, and now there is enough light in the house for her to move about her kitchen with ease. It's now or never, she thinks. Titika makes her way to the phone. The address book sits under it on a small round table in the corner of the hallway. She flicks through it to find her sister's phone number. It's complicated to remember it, so many zeros at the beginning, so many numbers to dial. It looks strange, in the same way that the name of the country her sister lives in sounds strange: Ne-a Zi-la-thia.

She dials the numbers slowly, pressing each one deliberately and listening to the beep that each one makes as she dials it. She waits to hear the ring tone, which sounds different from the one she is used to hearing at her end.

"Bring-bring... bring-bring... bring-bring..." It's ringing. "Bring-bring... bring-bring... bring-bring..." But no one is answering. She lets the phone ring a little while longer, and imagines what her sister's family may be doing now. Perhaps they are out. It's summer, and they may be returning from the beach. Antonia has told her that they live near the sea. The weather will be sunny and pleasant. Perhaps they may have decided to stay out at a nice taverna for an outdoor meal. Maybe--

"Hello?" Someone is home.

"Ποιός είναι;" She feels it is only right to ask who it is that answered the phone (and in the only language she knows), as she only speaks to her sister. Only her sister will understand her, as no one else speaks Greek in her sister's house.

"Ma," she hears a girl's voice saying, along with some other words she does not understand. The scuffling sound is heard of the phone changing hands.

"Τιτίκα!" Her sister's voice booms over the line. She was expecting her to call.

"Αντωνία μου!" Titkika sheds a tear as she utters her sister's name, trying to keep her voice smooth. This happens every time she phones her for her nameday; she phones her only on this day. "Χρόνια πολλά, αδελφούλα μου!" Now Titika is crying. She has not seen Antonia for thirty years, and Titika has never made a return trip to the village since she left. The sisters have a twenty-year age difference, but this has not waned Antonia's affection for her youngest sibling. She was more like her daughter than her sister as their mother had died in childbirth, and Titika raised Antonia amidst her own two children who were older than her own sister. She can never forget the day Antonia left the family home after falling in love with a tourist. She wrote letters for the first five or six years, but the letters lessened over time. Now Titika looked forward to receiving a Christmas card at the end of each year. When she received it, she felt relieved, as it allowed her to believe that all was well with Antonia, her baby.

The sisters made some small talk for a few minutes, asking each other questions about everyday life in their respective homes: what time is it there, how old's your grandson/daughter now, how are my brothers/your husband?

"What's the weather like there now, Antonia? It's very very cold here," Titika said.

"Oh, it's cold here too!" Antonia replied.

"But it's summer over there!"

"Oh, Titika, it's never that hot here. Now it's very windy and the sun is hidden in the clouds."

"Oh." Titika found all conversations concerning the weather in Nea Zilathia very confusing. 

"Well, I don't want the clock to run up too many units, so I won't keep you any longer." Five minutes. It seemed to pass very quickly. But it was only five minutes. Titika could see the kitchen clock from where the phone was. Antonia always had her mind on the time.

"Νά 'σαι καλά αδελφούλα μου!" Titika spoke exuberantly. She was happy to hear her sister's voice once again, and for a moment, she forgot her sadness about knowing that she would not hear it for another year. She sounds happy, Titika thought. It never crossed her mind that Antonia could be unhappy. She had a husband, a daughter and a home. The ξενιτειά has done her good. Although she felt it was a cruel blow to her when Antonia left the family home, she knew it had to happen for Antonia's good, and she was happy for that. It saddened her that she could not communicate with Titika's daughter or husband; it never occurred to her that they did not want to communicate with her. Antonia was well. And now, Titika will have something to tell the other villagers at the school as she waits for her turn to see the country doctor.

Satisfied with herself that she had completed her first task of the day, she began to bundle herself up for the cold outdoors, as the first rays of the sun began to appear. In the short days of winter, the day would pass quickly. Before night falls, she will be sitting on the sofa by the wood fire again, watching television until she nods off to sleep. What a pity the calendar contained only bible readings and not the TV guide!

*** *** ***

Of course, Titika did not have a spleen on standby to cook with that day, as the recipe stated on the back of the page for Monday 16 January, but even people living in villages desire to eat something different from the routine Greek meals. I imagine that her spirits may have lifted after speaking with her sister that day, and she might have used this recipe as a base for something more creative in her kitchen. I've translated the recipe as I read it on the page, but my photos show how I changed it to suit the ingredients I had at home.

You need:
2 beef spleens, opened from one side (if Titika had cauliflower growing in her garden, no doubt she would have had some cabbage too, so I used cabbage leaves)

Titika's meal is a frugal cheap and Greek one. To some people, it may look poor because it uses very cheap ingredients. But I doubt that many people living in an urban area can enjoy a recipe like this one, because the ingredients and the cooking method that they will use will not be as fresh or natural as Titika's. It's hard for me to describe in words how tastythis meal was. But it smelt heavenly, and it tasted delicious. I would liken it to meat stuffing of the highest quality.

For the filling, you need: 
1 cup of feta, crumbled (if Titika is Cretan, no doubt she would use her own production of mizithra)
2 cloves of garlic
1 cup of soft breadcrumbs from stale bread
1/2 cup of butter (if Titika is Cretan, she'd use olive oil)
some finely chopped parsley
pepper

For the sauce, you need:
1/2 cup olive oil
1 glass of red wine
1/2 cup of tomato juice (I used fresh pureed tomato)
1 cup of stock or water ( I used the latter)
a bay leaf
some thyme
salt

Clean and open the spleens from one side (if using cabbage leaves, boil a few large ones till soft and pliable). Mix together the ingredients for the filling. Fill the spleens (or cabbage leaves) and sew them up (if using cabbage leaves, just make them into a parcel). Place them on a baking dish, and pour over the oil and seasonings.

Heat up the wine with the tomato juice and water or stock. Pour over the parcels and cook for one and a half hours at 175C (or less if using cabbage leaves - the stuffing doesn't need a long time to cook).

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.