Ancestral land (Πατρικά εδάφη)

Tune in every second day this week to see how we spent our family holiday in Central/Northern Greece. 

Evritania is the most mountainous region in Greece. It remains the least accessible for this reason, but at the same time, it also contains some of the most dramatic landscapes you will encounter in the country: tall peaks with sudden drops in altitude, dense forests with rivers gushing their waters even in summertime, alpine landscapes blessed with Mediterranean sunshine. It also possesses some of the least explored Greek countryside, given its difficult driving conditions. The weather is very changeable in this region, so that at many times, you might experience the four seasons all on the same day; if you don't know the roads of the region very well, you could end up rolling the car into a ditch and getting stuck for hours before anyone comes along to help.

While we were in the region, we decided that it wouldn't have been worthwhile if we didn't explore all those difficult-to-access places, because if we didn't make an effort to get to them now, just think how likely it would be for us to get to them at a later time, when we wouldn't be touring the same region and the austerity measures began to hit us hard.

"You're setting yourself a difficult task," Hrisida exclaimed when we told her we wanted to visit Limni Plastira (Plastiras Lake). "It looks like its directly north from Karpenisi, but there is no direct arterial route to get there. If you choose the road via Fourna village, you'll need at least two and a half hours to get to your final destination, and you'll be driving along very narrow windy unmarked roads, I wouldn't do it with two children in tow."

"Are you worried we will see ghosts like the time we visited Kremasta Lake?", I enquired sarcastically. Maybe she was trying to scare us into not going.

"Don't be silly," she laughed me off. "This lake doesn't have drowned villages lying on its bed. It's just got an airfield." Once Plastiras Lake was built in 1959, it turned the mountain villages into lakeside resorts.

"Sounds good to me," I said. "How long will it take us if we stick to the main roads instead?" This meant that we would be driving more kilometres, but the route was easier because we would be sticking to the national highways.

Lake Plastiras is not labelled on this map; view directly north from Karpenisi in the South.

"Oh, about two hours," she replied, "or so," she added as a mumbled afterthought. We figured it would take us the same amount of time any which road we took. So we decided to do the long and winding scenic road first and return via the easier route. Remember Cavafy when he tells you to pray that the journey to Ithaca is long, and full of adventure?

"OK," she waved us off, "have fun, it's a nice day for it," she cheered us on, "and take care on the road. Driving conditions are good until Fourna, and after that, just be careful: remember, we don't drive more than 50km/h on those roads." We thanked her and set off, lunches packed, and water bottles empty - there would be plenty of clean ice-cold water en route through this mountainous region sandwiched between Agrafa and Farsala, some of the most famous landmark villages of the area.

At the village of Timfristos, we realised we should have topped up our petrol tank, so we stopped at the main square to ask the old people gathered at a cafe there where the nearest service station was.

"Which direction are you driving in?" they all asked at once, showing great interest in the destination of strangers in their parts, with their out-of-town licence plates, maps in hand and cameras swinging from their necks.We stuck out like sore thumbs.

"We're heading towards Plastiras Lake," I replied.

"PLAS-TI-RAS?!" an old man cried. "You're going the wrong way!"

"When did you last go to Plastira, Cosma?" the other men in the parea groaned.

"Take the road to Redina," another one quipped.

"Don't go from there!" one more cried. No one had, as yet, told me where to fill up on petrol.

"Stop talking all at once," said a middle-aged woman dressed in tidy village garb, carrying a black handbag, who was sitting on a bench near the main square, looking as though she was waiting for the next bus to pass. This had an immediate effect on all of them: they shut up immediately.

I asked the group if the road to Kleitso was good enough for a small family car like ours. They all rolled their eyes.

"Oh, you don't want to go from Kleitso, dear," one man said. "You need to take the road to Redina." But I had studied the map quite well the night before. Going through Redina would mean taking a detour and the drive would take longer. I was sure there was a road going from Kleitso to Plastiras Lake. I didn't recall my friend mentioning the village of Redina, only Fourna.

"Why can't I go through Kleitso and then on to Neraida?" I asked, showing him the map.

"Kleitso!" he exclaimed in horror. "Don't even think about it!" he said. he waved his hand in the air. "I can't see that," he said, pointing to the map, "I haven't got my reading glasses with me. But I know that that road is full of nasty turns and bends, so it'll take a long time to get to the lake from there, and I can't recommend that it's in good condition." He looked at my car. "Don't think you'll get far with that out there," he chuckled. How strange, I thought, wouldn't my friend have told me that before I started out? I asked him once more where I should go to find a petrol station.

"Ai-yioryi," he replied. Short for Agios Georgios; it was on our map. That would involve a much smaller detour than the proposed route from Redina. I thanked him and got back into the car. Close by to Ai-yioryi, we came upon a road sign showing the distances to all the surrounding area. Kleitsos was mentioned; Redina wasn't. We took the road for Kleitsos.

*** *** ***

Driving through the mountainous regions of Evritania, we were quite surprised to find so many people on the road. We had been warned that the route we had chosen was considered remote, but that did not seem to be the case at all! Apart from simple cars like our own, there were pick-up trucks, whose drivers seemed to be local people getting their agricultural tasks done; then there were the service vehicles - DEH was quite busy today giving taxpayers their money's worth; the narrow winding roads, lined on both sides by dense forests, were also being used by large lorries. The road was tarmacked, with obvious signs of recent renovation; it felt quite safe, and the stream of traffic was a sign of development. The road was also a shortcut to the longer route used in former times before the road was renovated, a sign of progress and development, whose existence had not yet been disseminated very thoroughly. That is to the off-the-beaten-track traveller's advantage; being one of the few to know this is a triumphant feeling - we were not being harassed by too many other drivers on the road.

But there were a number of sights on that road that reminded me of its remoteness to the modern world, signs of former times when people were were cut off from each other and communication would have been hampered by the peaks and waterways that Euritania is so well known for, exactly that which gives her a feeling of inaccessibility. Just past the village of Fourna, we were reminded of the enemy with the presence of a rusty WW2 road roller, and a little further on, a wooden bridge. The Nazis wanted roadways running through Greece to make it easier to conquer the country, just like the modern German tourists who want good driving conditions during their holidays, so they bought their technology with them to accomplish the task. Who knows what the condition of the road at this point might have been, had the area not been given a head start in the 1940s?

Tiny villages with roughly built houses, functional buildings and flowering gardens, grape vines covering the yards with people sitting under their shade; these people looked more than pleased to be tucked away from the main drag on a remote patch of land. Despite the forests and hills that kept the locals of the area well separate - and well protected - from the perils of the rat race, it was clear that life was running through the veins of these sparsely populated areas. The public rubbish bins were being emptied as we passed through the area, a modern sign of people's mark in an area. These people must be doing something here that enables them to live far away from the urban world; a vegetable garden, some animals, cheese-making, some beans for the winter and corn for the summer were probably sustaining them, providing them them a reason not to leave their ancestral lands. Crisis? What crisis? If you have land, you have food; if you have food, you don't starve. The forests shade them from the heat in the summer, and provide them with firewood for the winter. What else is necessary? Contrary to what we are being led to believe, these people like the way they live.

Agia Anna, between Kleitso and Mavrologgo, Evritania

An hour into our journey, we had just passed the village of Kleitso, when we began to drive on what felt like a particularly long stretch of empty road. Up to that point, there had been the odd village or two emerging after every few minutes or so of driving, where human existence was visible. But at this point, out of nowhere, the road suddenly gave way to a clearing where a number of roads met up, with a children's playground situated across from a church, a spring and what looked like a house. Near the playground was a picnic area. There could not have been a more perfect place for us to rest our car and refresh ourselves with a picnic. Was this the middle of nowhere? It did not concern us - at that moment, it felt like the best place to be on earth.

A hunter's/climber's/walker's lodge is built here on the same spot that the famous hero of the Greek revolution George  Karaiskakis fought off the Turks in 1824. The spring is named after him. The church honours St Anna.

The sun's rays were beating down on us, but we did not feel the heat. A cool breeze was blowing, which made us return to the car to get our jackets. Unbeknownst to us at the time, we had reached 1200m above sea level, and the place where we had parked our car was a very significant historical site. Not that it would have meant much to us at that moment: we felt like we were the first to find it, since we were alone up here, all by ourselves, enjoying one of the most magnificent views. A packed lunch, ample supplies of refreshing spring water, the clear view and the clean mountain air made us feel like the luckiest people on earth. Who could afford such a view? Who could afford such a clean environment? How many people were in that fortunate position to be able to enjoy this moment at least once in their life? We felt utterly thrilled to have got this far. Hooray for our old car that never let us down, hooray for our good fortune to take this route, hooray to us, for there could not have been luckier people in the world enjoying a moment like this one than ourselves.

We ate slowly, but we got through it all: sandwiches, boiled eggs, graviera, tomato and cheese salad which we ate with the gritty corn bread (that was something new to us) and the soft white rolls we had bought from the bakery in Karpenisi that morning. The fresh crisp mountain air whets your apetite. We kept filling our water bottles with the refreshing icy cold water from the spring. And when the picnic was over, we began to pack up our bags, making sure that we left no rubbish behind. We wanted to treat our host with the respect that our host had shown to us.

It was at this moment that the old man appeared. I had just packed up the last of our picnic utensils and was shaking the crumbs out of the plastic bags onto the ground to make a worm's or bird's dinner. The children had gone to the swings to amuse themselves before we left the area. The man was walking very slowly towards us, emerging from the steep hill that we had driven up. He had a thin wiry body, probably from the amount of walking that he did in these remote parts of the mountains; this could not have been his first time up here on foot. He looked well kept for an old man: his clothes were clean and tidy, his face was shaved, and his boots seemed sturdy.  He was carrying something: an old sardine can, which was filled with what looked like a dry grassy weed. Before we had the chance to ask him what he was carrying, he walked in our direction and greeted us.

"Kalimera," he said, smiling, showing his toothless mouth, a sign of the bad dental health typical of this man's age group. It's usually a sign of the sacrifices these people have made to raise their families, not a sign of a lack of available care. The old man did not take a seat on the picnic bench, nor did he seem tired.

"Kalimera," we all replied, wary that we were strangers to his part of Greece and not wishing to make any wrong move that may offend.

"You're not from here, are you?" he guessed correctly. We told him we were Cretans taking our holidays here.

"Oh, Crete, it's nice down there, isn't it?"

"Have you ever visited?" my husband asked.

"No, no, I've just seen pictures on television." This old man looked as though he had never left the area. Now there was a split second of silence, like the moment when you want to ask a million questions but you don't know which one to ask first, the moment you want to start a long conversation but you know you don't have this luxury.

"Are you from the area?" my husband asked the man.

"Yes," he replied, "I live in the neighbouring village." He mentioned the name but we didn't catch it. It did not sound like one of the villages I could recall passing."Been here since I got married. I'm from another village, just further along this road," he said, pointing to one of the roads in the junction near the church, "You're just passing through, I suppose."

"Yes, we're on our way to the lake."

"Oh, the lake, I went there once, a long time ago, when it was first filled." He paused for a moment. "Lots of people go there on a trip."

"Yes," my husband nodded. But we were curious. "And er... what are you doing walking up here alone?" my husband asked him.

"Oh, I live here in the summer, near my sheep". He pointed to the road behind him. "I've got a small hut here where I rest and sleep. I usually stay here all the summer."

"Oh... it's beautiful up here."

"Yes," the man said slowly, in a neutral voice, neither agreeing or disagreeing. "It's good up here." He stopped and looked around the area, his eyes gazing at the mountain face covered in fir trees. "Life's dealing us hard blows these days," he continued. "I like to get away from it all up here, it feels better to be far away from the madness," he laughed, sounding quite youthful, despite his old-age croaky voice. "It's sometimes better to get away, but it's not an easy life wherever you are, and it doesn't seem to be getting easier, either way." The men discussed the economic crisis and its consequences on our lives. During this discussion, the old man revealed to us that his wife lived in the village and he had two sons, one living in the large urban area of Lamia, while the other was aborad (he didn't specify where). They were both married with families of their own. I wondered when the last time was that his grandchildren had seen him.

"What can they do?" he said. "There are no jobs here even if they wanted to stay. There's no life these days as a farmer here, what with the loneliness and when winter sets in. There's no money, either."

At this point, I felt saddened that we had eaten everything in our picnic, except the apples, and we could not offer the man anything, but then again, he wouldn't have been able to chew on the apples, what with no teeth. Then I remembered the biscuits we had left behind at the hotel room, which could be dunked in milk or water and softened enough to become easy to digest. I had been toying with the idea of taking them with us, and left them in the room at the last minute.

"Does it snow here in the winter?" one of my children asked the man.

"Oh, it snows a lot here," he replied, "all the trees get covered in snow in the winter, and the road is cut off until the snow plough comes along to clear it. It doesn't snow so much in Crete, does it?" he asked us.

This man had probably been born and lived within a radius of 20-25 kilometres all his life. He might have travelled as far as Athens, maybe even Thessaloniki, but not much farther. A feeling of loneliness crept upon me as I watched him, but at the same time, I knew that this man's whole world had always consisted of these mountains and a flock of sheep; he has known no other world. I thought about my mother in law who lives in the same building as us, and tried to put the thought out of my mind that this man could have an accident here and not be found until it was too late.

"Do you per chance have a cigarette?" he asked us.

"Oh, you got us there," my husband chuckled, "we are both non-smokers." At that moment, our souls were crushed, our hearts were broken and our minds were fraught with guilt. We had nothing to offer this man, not even a cigarette. The size of his pension was not a question: he could probably afford a cigarette, but there was nowhere to buy it here.

"Well, I'd better be off now, I suppose," he said. "It's been nice meeting you." He shook my husband's hand. "I hope you enjoy yourselves here. The lake shouldn't be too far away from here." As he walked off down the path he had indicated where his sheep were waiting for him, we got back into the car and drove away, feeling quite devastated. We had been given the opportunity to take in everything that the area offered to us, but we could not offer anything in return. By this chance encounter, we had caught a glimpse of life in the middle of nowhere, where you could feel nameless and your existence could be forgotten, even though you yourself would carry on living, without ever questioning if life was actually worth living. When all you have is a piece of ancestral land, you live off that. You don't expect much more to life, that's the farmer's lot. Your main hope is to go through the cycle of life without burdening anyone along the way.

*** *** ***

We continued on to Limni Plastira where we saw the dam that saved the whole region from serious drought, but throughout the journey, we were haunted by the image of the old man.

I wonder what he's doing now, a month after we came across him. It's probably cold up at St Anna's church, and the snow will soon start falling. Pretty soon, he will be leaving the area with his sheep (that is, if he has not already left), in search of warmer climes in the lower regions. Most likely he will be thinking about summertime, in the hope of returning to his hut. I think I'll buy a packet of cigarettes and leave it in the storage drawer of the car, just in case.

©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.

Fasting for Easter (Νηστεία)

Greek food is a seasonal affair. Greek people, whether they live in Greece or abroad, generally like to enjoy meals that represent the time of year. This may be in the form of the seasonal produce grown in the area where they live. But there is another way to enjoy the food of the season, and that is to eat according to the seasonal traditions dictated by the festival calendar. These are usually based on religious festivals. Among the many examples, the most well-known are salt cod on March 25 and Palm Sunday, lamb for Easter, pig for Christmas, xerotigana for (Cretan) weddings, and shellfish on Clean Monday. No one feels obliged to eat according to past traditions, but most Greeks like to do this because it keeps them close to their customs and homeland, especially when they don't live in Greece. For instance, you may not be able to go to a Greek Orthodox church on a festival day if you live abroad: it may be a working day there, and some religious festivals like Clean Monday are immovable, while others will be celebrated on the nearest Sunday before the actual festival. But when you leave work on the feast day, you may want to eat the traditional meal for that day with other fellow Greeks. I remember this feeling well when I was growing up in New Zealand.

Bean soups and stews are very popular right throughout the year in Greece, especially during fasting periods, when beans provide the main form of protein.

We're now approaching the middle of one of the most significant fasting periods in Greece, Great Lent, the 50 days preceding the Christian Orthodox Easter. This period is traditionally associated with Greek Orthodox fasting, νηστεία (nistia), ie abstaining from meat, eggs, milk, cheese and fish products (shellfish - including snails - excluded, because they are considered to be bloodless). Such strict fasting for 50 days sounds like a long time time to go completely vegan, especially when you aren't a vegan on principle, eating only lenten foods, which are called nistisima in Greek. Forget the idea of cooking and eating shellfish on a regular basis: it's expensive, and it may not be to everyone's liking. So how do Greek people keep the fast at this time?

Clean Monday 2011: The importance of maintaining Greek food traditions cannot be underestimated. Every year on Clean Monday, my blog receives TWICE the average number of hits on any other day; this does NOT happen on any other day for my blog, not even for Easter, which has a longer period of preparation than Clean Monday. This shows the importance of the culinary aspect of the Greek identity, especially for Greeks abroad.

The simple answer is that they generally don't. Fasting isn't kept in absolute terms by all people in Greece; it never was. Fasting for Easter (and Christmas, which involves a 40-day fast in the Christian Orthodox calendar) was a useful way to help people ration food during periods of food shortages. The rule was created by a religious authority, which used to exert a greater amount of power over people's subconscious in the past. What started off as a rule for the purposes of food management is seen in a different light in modern times: fasting is good for you because it helps you to maintain a nutritional balance. This is the modern meaning of fasting, a form of detox, if you prefer.

During summer, I am inundated with zucchini, so I turn them into different kinds of food that don't resemble each other, to relieve the boredom of appearing to be eating the same food on a daily basis. This meal can be considered to be quite a filling vegan dinner (excluding the muffins, which contain eggs). From top anti-clockwise: horta, kolokithokeftedes (zucchini patties),  zucchini dip, chocolate zucchini muffins.

Greeks may not follow the strict rule of a 50-day fast* from Clean Monday until Easter Sunday, but it is highly unlikely that they won't be attempting some sort of fast during that time. There are a number of ways to do this, as attested by this list of fasting tips, which show you how to fast during Great Lent without actually fasting the whole period:

1. By not eating meat during the entire fasting period, with no restrictions on dairy produce; this is not so hard to do, especially nowadays when eating meat isn't as fashionable as it once was for health reasons.
2. By fasting according to the strict religious rules in the first week of Lent (ie immediately after Clean Monday), and/or the last week of Lent (ie Holy Week, the seven days preceding Easter Sunday); most people like to follow this rule.
3. Wednesdays and Fridays are regarded as significant fasting days throughout the Orthodox calendar year, so many people fast according to the religious rules on those days alone throughout the fasting period (Wednesday in remembrance of the betrayal of Christ, and Friday in remembrance of the crucifixion), with no restrictions on other days in the fasting period; many people like to follow this rule too. Monks also fast in this way on Mondays, a day dedicated to the Angels.

What all this amounts to is that fasting is seen as important, without impeding on the getting-on with one's daily life in an ever-changing world. There are still people who will choose to fast throughout the 50-day period (eg monks, nuns, older people - women in particular, people who have 'promised' an offering to God through prayers as a way to ask for a favour by vowing to fast), but this is not the general rule. Souvlaki shops don't close down during this period, for instance; at the same time, all tavernas offer 'nistisima' meals all year round in deference to those who wish to fast, not necessarily during a religious fasting period but also for personal reasons. (It isn't always polite to ask people about their reasons for doing this.)

Greek lenten meals are so colourful and nutritionally balanced that it's highly unlikely you'll feel as though you are eating with constraints: Cretan snail stew, spanakorizo (spinach rice) and lettuce salad.

The golden rule is that, whichever way you choose to fast, never make it sound like a big deal:
«Και όταν νηστεύετε, μη γίνεστε όπως οι υποκριτές σκυθρωποί, γιατί αφήνουν άπλυτα τα πρόσωπά τους, για να φανούν στους ανθρώπους πως νηστεύουν.» (From the New Testament: Matthew, 6:18).
(And when you fast, do not become sullen like the hypocrites, because they leave their faces unwashed to appear to others that they are fasting.)

In our house, most of the weekdays in the year are meatless ones; the meals cooked are usually vegan, supplemented by a dairy product: eg horta served with boiled eggs, beans served with cheese. We don't eat much meat during the week, but with no restrictions on milk and cheese. Weekends are when we have more time to cook, and Sundays are generally regarded as the day we will enjoy a home-cooked meat dish. This is our way to achieve a nutritional balance. It may look like we are 'fasting' for half the year by doing this, but this should not come as any surprise: if you add up the number of fasting days within the Greek Orthodox church calendar, there are about 180; that's half a calendar year!

Summer vegetables (bell peppers, eggplant and zucchini flowers) stuffed with herbed rice: my favorite Greek vegan - lenten - meal.

At any rate, it's impossible not to find something nutritiously satisfying and tasty within the range of Greek cuisine; with so many vegetarian - and often vegan - options, there's something for everyone. After all, Greek cuisine is based primarily on vegetarian cuisine, a point which a Greek newspaper completely missed when it published a report on the impact of a vegetarian diet on an adopted child.

UPDATE: It's always good to have empirical data to back up whatever you say. You can ask people if they do or don't fast, but you always have to be wary of their answers (ie how truthful they are). I was amused when I was asked if I was fasting recently, just after I picked up a language teacher's handout before a 5-hour training session (where snacks were going to be served). "No," I replied, and the secretary noted it on the list of names, which consisted of 26 people (all women - it's a characteristic feature of language teachers). On the day of the training session, I found out that only 3 people had the word 'NAI' (YES) next to their name, while 2 more had ΟΧΙ ΚΡΕΑΣ (ΝΟ ΜΕΑΤ); all the others were not fasting. Demographic variables like age and sex have played a large role in predicting who fasts, but even this is now slowly waning (my 87-year-old mother-in-law surprised me this year:not even she is fasting like she used to).

* The fasting period of Great Lent is wrongly assumed to be 40 days in length, from the (misleading) Greek word σαρακοστή (sarakosti), meaning '40 days'. A lot of people, including Greeks in Greece, get confused with the number of fasting days too. It helps to have a Kira Sarakosti hanging in your kitchen (more information in this article).

©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.

Expiry dates (Hμερομηνίες λήξης)

Disclaimer: don't try this at home, as the saying goes.

In western countries, a lot of food is binned once it passes its expiry date. To some, this is considered wasteful, while others think of the potential health risks involved, because that is the point of expiry dates - unless one considers the notion that the manufacturers of mass-produced industrialised food use the expiry dates on purpose, to get the consumer to consume (or simply buy) more. The problem is more acute in our own times, because of the countless issues consumers face concerning food safety, the most recent one being the high levels of dioxin found in eggs in Germany.

I decided to make a lasagne recently, something the children ask for when they have seen a Garfield film on TV. There was a box of pasta sheets lurking in a dark corner of the pantry which meant that I didn't need to go out in the cold damp weather we have been experiencing recently to buy some. The packet had a 'best before' date, showing that it was good to use up until nine months before I used it. After that date, it was supposed to be not so good to use it. I opened the box and looked at the pasta. No odour, no discolouring, no texture defect: the pasta sheets looked as good as they did the last time I had made lasagne, which, judging from my food photo collection, must have been about two years ago.

So I got out some mince from the deep freeze to defrost on the kitchen counter. I don't recall when I bought it; mince is nearly always bought fresh in Crete (unless one buys mince from LIDL, as I have yet to see frozen pre-packed mince elsewhere in Hania) and is freshly prepared from the cut the customer singles out. To the mince, I added a small can of mushrooms (the date on the can stated that they had 'expired' last month), two garden peppers (picked three weeks ago in early winter, the last of the crop - they were still firm and shiny), some onion and garlic (they never seem to be sold in Greece with expiry dates), our home-grown olive oil (which lasts about a year in our large plastic storage containers), salt and pepper (do you ever look at the expiry dates of such long-life products when they are used daily?), and my home-made tomato sauce, made in summertime. The jars were all topped with olive oil and a piece of plastic sheeting, before being tightly sealed. As I open them to use, I do the 'senses' test: listen to the pop of the lid, look at the sauce, and sniff it, but I dont usually taste it - the sauce is always heated/cooked with other ingredients for at least an hour, before eating.

When assembling the lasagne, I used whatever cheeses I had in the fridge, all of which were locally bought soft white cheeses. Although local cheeses are sold in plastic bags, without an expiry date, well, the truth is that they do take on a rancid appearance (and a sour taste) when they go off, which is why I make sure to use them up as quickly as I buy them. I have never asked (or heard someone else ask) about the expiry dates of such cheeses; I have simply learnt to use them by experience. Cream sold in tetrapaks seems to always have a long shelf-life in the fridge; it lasts for ages. The pack I used was still within the expiry date, but I will be honest and tell you that I have used tetrapak cream past its expiry date (Greek yoghurt behaves in a similar manner). Lasagne sheets and tetrapak cream are often victims of under-use in our house - I rarely use them, unless I'm cooking creatively (ie not within the Cretan-Greek recipe genre).

One thing I remember from my schooldays is a phrase that was pumped into us by our teachers when instructing us about health and safety: "Heat kills germs", they'd tell us, and to this day, I remember the face of the teacher who told this to us the first time, a matriarchal figure who had grown up on a New Zealand farm before she came to live and work in the capital. The lasagne is cooked twice in a sense; the meat is cooked first in a pot, then it is assembled into a baking dish and cooked for another hour in the oven. It got a lot of heat before it entered our stomachs. The final verdict rests in the taste.

©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.

Longevity (Μακροζωία)

A bit of food for thought, before I draw a winner for my previous post for a $35 voucher* from Cookware.com* - don't forget to leave a comment there!

The following text has been taken from Wikipedia: "The word longevity is sometimes used as a synonym for 'life expectancy' in demography, or to connote 'long life'. Reflections on longevity have usually gone beyond acknowledging the brevity of human life and have included thinking about methods to extend life. Longevity has been a topic not only for the scientific community but also for writers of travel, science fiction, and utopian novels.

"A remarkable statement mentioned by Diogenes Laertius (c. 250 AD) is the earliest (or at least one of the earliest) references about plausible centenarian longevity given by a scientist, the astronomer Hipparchus of Nicea (c. 185 – c. 120 BC), who, according to the doxographer, was assured that the philosopher Democritus of Abdera (c. 470/460 – c. 370/360 BC) lived 109 years. All other accounts given by the ancients about the age of Democritus appear, without giving any specific age, to agree that the philosopher lived over 100 years. This possibility is likely, given that many ancient Greek philosophers are thought to have lived over the age of 90 (e.g., Xenophanes of Colophon, c. 570/565 – c. 475/470 BC, Pyrrho of Ellis, c. 360 – c. 270 BC, Eratosthenes of Cirene, c. 285 – c. 190 BC, etc.). The case of Democritus is different from the case of, for example, Epimenides of Crete (7th, 6th centuries BC), who is said to have lived 154, 157 or 290 years, as has been said about countless elders even during the last centuries as well as in the present time. These cases are not verifiable by modern means.

"Various factors contribute to an individual's longevity. Significant factors in life expectancy include gender, genetics, access to health care, hygiene, diet and nutrition, exercise, lifestyle, and crime rates. Men often have a lower life expectancy than women, while some countries fare better than others in longevity rates. Population longevities can be seen as increasing due to increases in life expectancies around the world.

"Recent increases in the rates of lifestyle diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, may drastically slow or reverse this trend toward increasing life expectancy in the developed world. Since 1840, record life expectancy has risen linearly for men and women, albeit more slowly for men. For women the increase has been almost three months per year. In light of steady increase, without any sign of limitation, the suggestion that life expectancy will top out must be treated with caution.

"Scientists observe that experts who assert that 'life expectancy is approaching a ceiling ... have repeatedly been proven wrong.' It is thought that life expectancy for women has increased more dramatically due to the considerable advances in medicine related to childbirth. Some argue that molecular nanotechnology will greatly extend human life spans. If the rate of increase of life span can be raised with these technologies to a level of twelve months increase per year, this is defined as effective biological immortality and is the goal of radical life extension."

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The average Greek enjoys a long life expectancy, close to 79 years on average. Women are more likely to live longer than men by up to 5 years. This makes our old people highly visible in society. You see old men congregated in kafeneia, just sitting in probably their favorite seat, sipping on a Greek coffee (the cheapest one available in a kafeneio). Banks are another popular hangout for old people (they used to come in from the cold and warm themselves up in the large lobby, until the double doors with security locks put a stop to this practice). Women wearing their traditional black widows' garb, carrying a functional black leatherette handbag, their gray hair cut short or piled high in a bun, wait patiently for their turn to take their pension. Doctors' surgeries (both public and private offices) are often teeming with old people waiting to get a prescription filled or have their blood pressure checked.

How visible are old people where you live?

Their clothes, their voices, their position at the table, their special chair in a living room all point to old people's seniority and their unique position in the family. Our old people often live in the same house as their children, maybe in a small self-contained unit in the same building. Old people's homes are not the norm in Crete; besides, they are too expensive for the average Greek and may require a certain financial commitment before being accepted into one. This is not a sign of an undeveloped nation; Greece shares this situation with very influential ones.

When old people can't be cared for directly by their family (eg they live in a village and prefer not to leave the area where they lived all their lives), they are often looked after by live-in carers who are paid out of the pension of the old person or by the person's family.

The Mediterranean diet, a high reliance on olive oil and a generally more relaxed lifestyle are all said to contribute to the longevity of Cretan people. But new factors, such as a higher incidence of cancer (blamed on pollutants), a rise in coronary disease (blamed on the shift from the traditional diet to globalised food trends) and a more sedentary lifestyle coupled with road traffic accidents is threatening this tradition of longevity.

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