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slyaspie

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  1. Home-grown (an heirloom variety) tomatoes lightly salted. 3 of them. And they were huge and so fragrant and juicy.
  2. Yes. Stewed until very rich with tomatoes and onions.
  3. In Cyprus, carob syrup (the trees are everywhere) on thick tangy yogurt or on bread. Also honey on yogurt. The carob syrup is also popularly used on anari cheese a very tender fresh goat cheese (but it doesn't smush!). The name for carob syrup is teratsomello which basically translates as carob honey. Other foods at breakfast are bread dipped in olive oil. Bread and olives and halloumi. Bread with olives, green onions, leeks, cilantro and parsley baked into it, ripped into chunks. A more leisurely type breakfast (perhaps you have guests) might include some fried halloumi and loukaniko a local sausage marinated in wine for days on end and then smoked. Always a squeeze of lemon on the fried halloumi. And of course the tiny cups of thick Greek coffee, always a necessity.
  4. Fruit (all types but cherries esp.) Cheese Pie (sweet and savoury)
  5. I like ketchup on certain things. For fries though I'm adamant that they be hot, crispy and salty with absolutely no ketchup or any other condiment for that matter. The hot saltiness is its own condiment when it comes to fries. Ketchup ruins what is a supremely simple yet perfect food. It's heresy. On the other hand I love ketchup on two things that most people are totally horrified by: eggs (scrambled or omelette) and hotdogs. It's also essential on burgers, and these really yummy fried grated zuchinni, rice and cheese "meatballs" that I adore. I dip half of them in the red stuff and the other half in a couple of different mustards. But the weirdest thing I love to eat ketchup with are these Calbee brand shrimp chips that are shaped sort of like crinkle fries only they are thicker with curving uniform ridges. I MUST have ketchup with them or it's not a true experience, and believe me, I can finish the whole bag in one sitting dipping my hand from the bag into a mound of ketcup I've squirted onto a plate. My friends think this combination is horrifying. Oh well...that way they won't ask me for any.
  6. Utah Giant cherries, hands down. They are truly sensational, but I'm traumatized because this year's crop is poor. They didn't grow to their full size and they were damaged by the excessive rain here in California. Still, I can't stop eating them, the first bite of the season has never ceased to be a revelation in flavor for me. Cherries are the greatest fruit on the face of the earth!! Figs Hot fresh bread spread thickly with salted butter. Halloumopites: a dough that is made with egg rolled out very thin and filled with grated halloumi cheese mixed together with a bit of beaten egg to hold it together, chopped mint and some pepper. They are then popped into hot oil and fried until they puff up and are unbelievably light, crinkly and crispy. I could live on these for the rest of my life. Perfectly salted homegrown tomatoes (these are truly heirloom tomatoes, the seeds are planted every year from the last year's crop and they go back at least four generations in my family) cut into wedges. I also like to sink my teeth into them and suck out the the juicy, slippery, seedy interiour, just like a vampire. It's like nectar and they are as fragrant as strawberries. And they're almost here...
  7. My mom tells a story that took place when I was nine months old. Every year she cures her own olives, several different varieties and flavors. It was the time of year that she had them actively curing in big buckets covered with cloths and she kept them underneath the kitchen table. This was because my parents had only been in the country for about a year at this point and were living in a tiny apt. and saving money for their first house. So the kitchen table was the only place big enough to store giant buckets. Apparently when my mother wasn't looking, I tottered over (I walked early) dipped my hand into all three buckets, took out equal amounts of olives from each, settled myself comfortably beneath that table and proceeded to eat them. By the time my mother found me I had eaten close to fifty or sixty olives. She freaked out because she thought I was about to choke. In her mind, what baby can safely be given something like an olive with the pit still inside? But when she looked closer she saw that not only had I not eaten the pits, I had managed to eat them clean and had lined them all up in a row right in front of me. First were the really dark pits from the wrinkly, super salty black olives, then the dark reddish brown pits from the tangy, oily, vinegary slitted brown olives and last were the light colored pits from the green cracked olives that were cured with garlic and cracked coriander. Even at that age I knew to save the best for last and to this day my mom's cracked green olives are my favorite thing in the world. She says that in the midst of her screaming freakout I looked up at her with a calm smile and oily olive smeared mouth and laughed. Then I put my arms up to her so she could pick me up. That was long wasn't it? Like another poster said above, my favorite holidays were also the first cherries of the year days. The only other fruits that rivaled them in my eyes were the first loquats and the first figs. I would settle myself in front of a big bucket of them and go crazy with delight. And by age eight or nine I had developed excellent one handed jackknife fruit carving skills.
  8. I just tried the new diet Coke with splenda earlier this week and liked it. It's true that it doesn't measure up to Coke Classic, but to me it's a million times better than diet coke with aspartame...although I'm used to it by now. I'm in California so I'm guessing that it's out all over the country by now.
  9. My parents forbade processed foods in the house and we lived very seasonally. They grew and still grow most fruits and vegetables you can think of. So veggies cooked in the Greek way (with tomatoes, onions, oregano, lemon, garlic, etc.) taste like home to me. Also everyday summer meals consisting of watermelon, halloumi, salata horiatiki, olives and home made bread, all summer for lunch and dinner. zuchinni and eggplant cut into bite sized chunks and fried up with eggs. my mom's apple pie, the recipe of which she got from our neighbor and proceeded to tweak into a creation of her own (she makes a whole wheat crust). Loukoumadhes (a very light puffed up sweet fried dough drizzled with syrup made with rose water) on January 6th Epiphany. Stuffed eggplants. Avgolemono soup. Dough rolled out thin and then stuffed with a mixture of grated halloumi and chopped mint held together with beaten egg and then fried until airy and light. Stewed taro in tomato, onions and celery. Stewed artichokes, fried artichokes. Artichoke stems, fresh green fava pods, and fresh garlic greens made into a sort of soup/stew with lots of olive oil and some vigegar and flour. I bring this up because it's the season for it and I'm craving it...it was a village staple for my parents when they were kids...Smelling my mom's homemade bread. Steeped camomile tea with a few anise seeds, whole cloves, and a cinnamon stick thrown into the tea pot while boiling water. This tea was for when we were sick. Another thing she made us when we were sick was fideo noodles in homemade chicken broth. I miss her cooking and try to get home whenever I can.
  10. i have now added Stewart's Diet Orange n' Cream soda to my list of favorites. God that stuff is good, and absolutely no aftertaste. On my honour.
  11. I just bought some Cricket Green Tea Cola and it is soooooooooooo good. I LOVE it. The flavor is so fresh and wake up surprising to me compared with any other soda. I'm so glad I tried it...and guess what, the Pepsi holiday spice is still in the fridge at this store, newly stocked AGAIN.
  12. I absolutely love frozen drinks, and get them whenever I can. Even in freezing weather in the dead of winter when I was a grad student in Boston, I'd still get the Icee while the rest of my friends got steaming hot coffee. And always coke flavor. edited to add that American ICEES/slurpees didn't used to be all fluffy air. They used to be as great as the ones you Canadians still get. I think they became shitty about five years ago or so. But I still love them to a certain degree and still get one from time to time.
  13. Really juicy spicy, flavorful giant prawns from my favorite Chinese restaurant.
  14. Yesterday: My mom's rustic olive bread loaded with loaded with home cured black olives, fresh cilantro, and green onions. Today: My mom's anaropites. These are made with a very delicate egg dough that it rolled out very thin and then filled with a mixture of the Cypriot cheese anari (unsalted) that is smashed up with sugar and cinnamon. You then drop them into a pot of hot oil and they puff up as they're frying with the cheese mixture still inside. Once they're taken out you lightly dust them with powdered sugar. So meltingly crispy and thin. So amazing.
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