Still on staycation

With my August visitors all wanting to use the internet on their own devices, I've lost bandwidth, making blogging impossible. Here's a selection of photos showing what I've been up to in terms of cooking and travelling. All the photo captions come from my facebook page readers.

First up, we checked out my husband's handiwork: grafting wild olive trees to turn them into domesticated spieces: 

And when I was a kid thought this was like magic. I was sure about my father having secret powers that affected nature in many ways and all this equipment was part of a rural 007 that was taking up cases that before the eyes of the clueless seemed like senseless.

While at the village, we harvested the first round of figs from our trees:

 It's difficult to resist when you have a bucket of fresh figs

I'd always wanted to make carob drink, called haroubia (χαρουμπία) in Crete. My haroubia was a little astringent because I harvested the carobs rather early, but I know what to do and where to find some good carobs when they are at their best:

One of my favorite spoon sweets is that of sour cherry - I made a jar of this when I found sour cherries being sold at the market (they don;t commonly make thier way to Hania, as they are not grown here):

Quote by YIANNIS MARKOPOULOS: "Greeks want a computer by their side for their daily needs, but at the same time, they want to be able to plough their land."

One day, when I had some leftover cooked vegetables, I heated them in a small pan and stuck an egg in the middle - I recently found out that this is called φαγητό της ακαμάτρας (meaning you cook what you've got in the house and stick an egg in the middle):

I remember my mother cooking similar rustic meals when we were younger when the influences of her Greek village upbringing was still fresh.

While my sister was staying at my house, she helped me to roll up some dolmadakia - something she has never ever done before, which may surprise many of you...

Right after we cooked our dolmadakia, we went to Stavros beach, where Zorba originally danced the first sirtaki:

Just half a dozen kilometres away from Zorba's beach is the bay of Kalathas, where the swimming (and the surfing) was better - there is a tiny green island close to the shore that many keen swimmers swim out to: 

On the way back home, we stopped off at one of Hania's most famous landmarks and a good lookout point over the city - the Venizelos tombs, which have a view out to the Venetian harbour:

The next day, we visited a friend from NZ who repatriated to Greece like ourselves - he lives in a tiny neighbourhood in a small village near the south coast of Hania:

Then we hit the south coast - without a doubt, Elafonisi has to be one of the best beaches in the whole of Europe. Don't be deceived by the photo - half of Europe seemed to be holidaying with us on that day...:

We stopped off at the picturesque village of Elos, where 5 people ate a meal as big as this for 45 euro in total: 

I often remind myself that Greece is made up of a collection of images that play out as quickly, one by one, one after the other, as mere glimpses - if you blink, you may miss them. But when I pinch myself, I can feel the bite.

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