slyaspie

Home-grown (an heirloom variety) tomatoes lightly salted. 3 of them. And they were huge and so fragrant and juicy.

Yes. Stewed until very rich with tomatoes and onions.

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.

Fruit (all types but cherries esp.) Cheese Pie (sweet and savoury)

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.

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...

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.

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.

Watermelon

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.

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.

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.

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.

Really juicy spicy, flavorful giant prawns from my favorite Chinese restaurant.

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.

I seem to do excellently with omelettes, sauteed mushrooms in various forms, spanakopita, curries, avgolemono soup, lentil stews, roasted lemony potatoes. I'm repeatedly ashamed of my pie crust, rice, roasted meats, scones, pumpkin soup. Oh, I also seem to be great at coffee flan and bread pudding. With the bread pudding I just decide I'm going to make it and throw whatever I have together, mix different breads and it always comes out meltingly good.

All these months later I finally tried the holiday spice Pepsi, and I sort of like it although I think it's the color I actually like... My corner store keeps on stocking it (they must have ordered a shitload back in November) and the fridge was newly filled with it today. So I finally gave in and bought a bottle. I kinda wish I had bought the Cricket Green Tea Cola which I saw for the first time at this store today instead.

Yesterday: a giant, extremely fresh veggie burrito with avocado and strawberry salsas. Today: I visited my mom and she made souvlakia on the grill. In a little bit I'm going to have chilled sliced stawberries that have been mixed with Cypriot brandy, rosewater and sugar. God, those are heavenly.

1. Do you eat brown rice or regular rice, or do you have no rice? Regular steamed rice, also fried rice sometimes, cuz I really get a craving for the eggs in it...they always taste sooo good. 2. Do you put the rice into a bowl or plate and then top it with your entree? Or do you alternate bites of rice and dish? I put the rice in my plate, spread it out out bit and put different entrees on different sections of it. Like several others, I like my rice nice and juicy with the different sauces. 3. Are you a chopstick user or a fork and spoon user? Chopsticks. 4. Do you eat everything, all the vegetables but not the ________, or only meat? I eat both vegetables and meat and especially seafood. I always take out the onions unless they're green onions, and I do have to admit that sometimes I don't like eating the bok choy and will tell them to substitute another veggie in something like vegetable chow mein or lo mein. This of course does not meen that I don't like greens, in fact, I'm crazy for them. 5. Are you one of these people who think that fried chicken wings covered in hot sauce on top of pork fried rice constitutes proper Chinese takeout? Proper Chinese takeout for me is sort of a mix and match thing to whatever one's liking is, and believe me I've seen some weird things in my day, especially after many of my friends and I have partaken in some lovely aromatic herb...which occasion I believe is what Chinese takeout was ultimately invented for... But, to answer your question directly, I personally do not find that combo appealing. 6. When ordering takeout, do you always get the same thing or do you try out different things? Largely the same things, but sometimes different. I really like getting the barbecue pork chow mein (real comfort food), beef and asparagus, cashew or almond chicken, sizzling prawns, sizzling rice soup, mushrooms and green beans in sauce, veggie chicken and vegetables, spring rolls, pot stickers, sauteed pea sprouts with garlic sauce (I've only found the pea sprouts at this one place and I love them so much I've taken to asking for them in tons of other stuff such as the barbecue chow mein). I've listed a lot of dishes, but I don't order them all at once! But these are the ones I tend to rotate between. 7. What's your favorite place and your least favorite place, and could you please describe them? I'm in Berkeley, CA (as per your request for outside of NYC) and there are tons of Chinese restaurants here (but not as many as Thai ...and goddamn it I do wish THEY delivered). But I have two places I regularly order from: Mandarin Garden because their veggie chicken is awesome, they're really good in general, and they always deliver an extra dish you haven't ordered (usually whatever they have around that's extra, meaning a veggie dish such as green beens in garlic sauce. A couple of times I've gotten two extra dishes one green beans, the other spicy eggplant. These free extras are significant because they always send a loaded carton full of each. I remember the first time I ordered from there and it happened I thought it was a mistake, but by the second time I realized it was intentional. However, you only get the free food if you ask for delivery. If you actually go there to pick it up you get nothing but what you ordered...is that weird or what? They also send you free desert which is several balls of fried dough encasing either a piece of apple or banana. The outside is candy-like and I believe they have been soaked in some sort of sweet clear syrup. You also get this only if you call for delivery, also if you actually eat in at the restaurant. Is that cool or what? The other place I like to get takeout from is Sun Hong Kong. This place is extremely popular in Berkeley because it is open until 2am, as late night places here are extremely scarce. They only deliver until about ten pm, but it's no problem for us to run over there late at night and get it as actual real takeout when the hankerings strike. THis is also where I get the coveted pea sprouts. There is one other place where I've gotten takeout/delivery from and I'm only mentioning it because of the name: King Dong Let's just say that its food does not match its name. 8. Do you have a best takeout experience? Let's hear it. See above's rave about the Mandarin Garden. Someone mentioned the yuckiness of supermarket chinese takeout, and I do concur with that assessment, but I have a soft spot in my heart for it because growing up that's what my dad would get for takeout ever few months, and if you lived in my household, that was a very special and exciting dinner indeed because my parents were of the type that believed that it was a huge waste of money to eat out. I'm serious when I say that it was to the point where we never even got to go out for pizza, let alone any sort of real restaurant. A couple times a year we got to have McDonald's, and there was the takeout chinese about every three months. In retrospect, I know that we were lucky because my mother cooked everything from scratch made with fruits and vegetables grown in my parents' sizable and varied garden and orchard, but the isolation of only one type of cuisine (Greek), has made me crazy about eating out and adventurous in both my choices and my cooking. 9. Do you have a worst takeout experience? Let's hear that as well. King Dong's kinda yucky food.

Malawry, do souvlakia (pork is best) stuffed in fresh pitas, with a chopped tomato, cucumber, onion, cilantro mixture that has been flavored with olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper, and then drizzled with either tzatziki or squeeze more lemon over the whole thing (the whole pita mixture) instead. Marinate the souvlaki in dark red wine, and oo. Right before stuffing it in the pita squeeze lemon on it, leave out lemon wedges so as to squeeze the lemon at the last minute. It is soooo good and a traditional way to make souvlaki. Definitely get the thick greek yogurt. You know how you mentioned the green beens stewed in tomatoes? Do that with eggplants (the long thin kind), okra and onions. Lightly panfry them in just olive oil and salt, then separately sautee up your tomatoes and garlic, then combine the whole thing together and put in your spices and lemon and stew until the whole thing is velvety and falling apart. Make sure you use small okras. This is good to do with a artichokes, cauliflower, potatoes, and onions together as well (use lots of tomatoes with this one too). The greenbeens are always a good thing though, with plenty of garlic and onions. Do a salata horiatiki (village salad). Roughly chop up really juicy tomatoes, cucumbers, green bell peppers, red onions, make sure the tomato juice runs to the bottom of the bowl for it forms the base of the dressing. Drizzle with olive oil, squeeze in a lemon, or pour in some red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, oregano, and toss really well. Crumble a good amount of feta, and get some good kalamata olives. Throw those in and toss well again so that the feta coats everything and also melds a bit with all the juices and oil at the bottom of the bowl. It's really good to dip your bread in it. I second the galatoboureko, and I recommend flavoring the syrup with rose water. very lightly battered fried calamari, with sprinkled with salt, parsely and lots of lemon. Gemista. Various stuffed vegetables such as green bell peppers, eggplants, zuchinni, tomatoes, onions, squash blossoms, filled with a ground meat and rice mixture that has been cooked in red wine, tomatoes, onions, lemons, mint, parsley and various spices. The secret is to very lightly so that they are still almost raw, pan fry the hollowed out veggies before filling them. Then line them all up in a baking pan and bake them until they are velvety. Also put a dry grated cheese of your choice in the mixture for more flavor. Also stuffed grape leaves with the above meat mixture, but without the dry grated cheese. A bulgar wheat salad is good too. Spanakopita though is and always will be my favorite though. Don't wilt the spinach before putting into the philo, it's better raw. Do saute the diced onion and green onion in oo and mix still hot into the spinach along with all your herbs (dill, cilantro, parsely, mint). Don't crumble the feta too well, big chunks are good, and try to find a slightly lemony green to include in with the spinach, cuz it gives it a more full bodied flavor. Add a several beaten eggs too, (some recipes don't call for eggs and I find them unmoist). O.K., I'm going to shut up now. But let us know what your menu ends up being.... Sorry if my writing is incomprehensible in this post. The longer the post the more grammatically incorrect I become.

Rachel, those are wreaths made of olive branches on the athletes' heads. Olive branch wreaths were the traditional offering to the victors of the ancient Olympics. The olive tree was and is the sacred tree of Greece and mythology states that Athena the goddess of war and wisdom planted the first olive tree, not far from where the Parthenon was eventually built. The offering of the olive branches to the athletes was the offering of Athena's and Zeus's sacred blessing as well as a token of the peace that the athletes promised to keep during the games. The olive branch was the symbol of peace in the ancient world.

Maybelline, you're very welcome; and I do understand what you've been going through with your appetite as I've been experiencing problems with my kidneys the last several years and I frequently will lose all semblance of an appetite. I'm so fascinated by food however, that I too come to egullet to "eat food with my mind" at least. I also watch a lot of Food Netword, the saturday cooking shows on PBS, and check out scads of cookbooks and food magazines from the library for the same reason. It's a comfort thing I think. If you'd like other fresh lemony recipes let me know. They are a Cypriot specialty.

I'm ashamed to say I didn't even realise that sweetbreads disappeared as animals got older - but of course now you mention it I've never eaten ox or sheep sweetbreads, only those from calves and lambs. What happens to them? Do older animals not have thymus glands and pancreases? Maybelline, you know, I never even knew that perhaps there are some animals that don't have sweetbreads or that lose their sweetbreads as they age. I haven't really had any since I was a young teenager as I lost my taste for them. I know that every year my family and many other Greek families in the area get a freshly killed goat for Easter from a man who raises them and who used to also be from the same village as my family. I'm glad you liked the legumes, greens and squash recipe. Now is the time to get the fresh green blackeyed peas (my mom's favorite) and boil them up with greens and a light green buttery squash if you can find something like that. The thing that I like about this kind of dish, especially when made with dried legumes is that it gets starchy and when mixed with a little bit of the cooking liquid, the lemon and olive oil it becomes a hearty, soupy mess of rustic yum for your bread to dip into. Experiment with different combinations and let me know how it goes. Lemon is one of my favorite things too and I use it in pretty much everything I make. p.s. I hope you feel better soon.

I grew up in a pretty strict Greek Orthodox household. Meat is to be avoided on Wednesdays and Fridays, although fish is ok on these days but not both in the same week (Fri was usually fish day). Both days are traditionally the day to eat boiled legumes (lentils, favas, black-eyed peas, or white beans) with all kinds of crazy greens my family imported over here and grow which I don't even know the name of...apparently they grow wild over in Cyprus and are a staple. You load up a plate of the legumes and greens, drizzle liberally with olive oil, squeeze tons of lemon, salt, pepper, sprinkle on some finely diced onion and mix up the whole thing really well and start scooping it up with your bread in one hand and your fork in the other. Really hated this as a kid, love it now (I always loved the greens, and in the spring and summer the favas and black eyed peas are boiled green and fresh, partly in the pods, partly shelled, and also big chunks of this big light green squash, seeds also brought over from the mother island and planted with great success here). To round out the meal there was always a dish of olives and maybe another of sliced haloumi, and another of caper leaves still on their stems (with the tiny thorns), cured in vinegar and olive oil. The thing is, this was not only a wed/fri meal (fri. also usually included a fried whole fish that everyone picked off of) but also a typical village meal in my parents' and grandparents' time because this was the staple for Greeks who lived off the land, and sometimes the only things they had to eat. And let me tell you, they looooved to tell me that when I would make a face at the dried favas. Other common dishes are to make really rich vegetable stews with tomato bases or roasted vegetable stews (any combo of potatoes, cauliflower, zucchini, okra, egglant, artichokes, etc.), fried potatoes, eggplants, okra and zuchinnis with eggs scrambled in them, or tender greens and chopped fresh artichokes scrambled with eggs. During Lent we are supposed to give up meat, eggs and dairy for the whole forty days, but what most people do except for the extremely devout, is fast for the first week and last week everything, and but then include the eggs and the dairy for the time in between. During the last week, things get really really strict, and the last couple of days we are not allowed to eat even oil, because of the law that we must not ingest any fats at all. This of course means two days (fri and sat before easter) of boiled legumes and greens with only lemon, bread, olives (but not olive oil), special bread that has had sesame and anise baked into the crust, grape leaves filled with plain cooked bulger wheat, raw vegetables and fruits. We could not cook with oil at all. This is a torturous time for Greek kids, we all always tried to sneak better food. The thing is that a lot of the celebratory easter foods that are filled with cheese, eggs, dairy, oil, meat are traditionally made on fri and sat. To have the house filled with incredible smells and food just waiting at your fingertips while being forced to endure a diet of twigs was a particularly evil torture. Of course as soon as we were let out of midnight mass at 2 am, the eating began, with most people not going to bed until five, and eating the traditional soup, magherritsa (made with lamb and it's offal), or avgolemono with chicken, usually both, dyed red eggs, cheese, and TONS of sweets. The feasting then continues the next day, usually with a small lunch of fried goat livers and sweet breads and then the huge dinner which sometimes even included a roasted goat head along with all the regular goat pieces and potatoes in the traditional outdoor, stone oven that one of my great uncles built for my parents. Things of course are a little less strict than when I was growing up, but almost all the Greeks I know still pretty much follow these rules, except for the wed. thing, although my family still won't eat meat on wednesdays. edited to add that we ate A LOT of nuts, my mom's apricot marmalade, halvah and bread with honey the last two days before easter. I know that the nuts and the halvah have fat in them, but for some reason they were ok to eat. Natural peanut butter was ok too.

the real secret to souvlakia is to marinate the already cubed meat in tons of dark red wine along with olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano and onions for at least 12 hours. then when it's time to skewer them, you thread like this: meat, two squares of onion, meat, two squares of onion (not thick squares, but thin). and use pork. while the skewers are grilling, have a bowl with a mixture of olive oil, lemon, salt, pepper and oregano, and use a brush to get it on the meat. the onion and wine are key. try not to use a cut of pork that is really lean and white, because they will be too dry. If you use a mix that's usually the best actually. this is the way my family and all other greeks i'ver ever met do it. i wish i had seen this thread from before.