Chocolate flakes, grated coconut and vanilla pods from Madagascar,
Ground hazelnuts, sliced blanched almonds and vanilla-flavoured sugar,
Apple-cinammon mini-pizzas, coloured Christmas cookies and vials of 'baking flavourings'
(at €1.99, a 20-pack of vials is cheaper than buying real lemons, oranges and rum)
Cranberries, plum halves, pitted cherries and sugar strands, all complete with paper cake doilies,
And don't forget the lebkuchem, speculoos, marzipan, pandoro and Advent calendar.
Be in quick because they go so fast - how can Christmas in Crete be complete without them?
©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.
Ground hazelnuts, sliced blanched almonds and vanilla-flavoured sugar,
Apple-cinammon mini-pizzas, coloured Christmas cookies and vials of 'baking flavourings'
(at €1.99, a 20-pack of vials is cheaper than buying real lemons, oranges and rum)
Cranberries, plum halves, pitted cherries and sugar strands, all complete with paper cake doilies,
And don't forget the lebkuchem, speculoos, marzipan, pandoro and Advent calendar.
Be in quick because they go so fast - how can Christmas in Crete be complete without them?
LIDL delivers its leaflets to households every weekend. LIDL has done much more than any other institute/organisation in terms of the promotion of German cuisine. Angela, you need to tell the troika to carry more cookies in their briefcases whenever they have meetings in Greece.
©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.
email comment from a reader:
ReplyDeleteHi Maria,
I agree with you, nowadays it seems as if we are all supposed to have the same kind of experience all over the world, as if uniformity was a good thing and different food, customs, looks were something to be afraid of! I remember the excitement when I would come across a product in my local supermarket which I knew from another country, what a treat! Nowadays it is sometimes hard to find a product from your own country. Last winter I refused to buy onions from NZ (no offence, they were probably very good onions, :-)) and Argentina at a big supermarket in the middle of Europe, because I could not accept that they were the only ones they had and could not obtain any from local producers in our region or even country, but had to ship them across the globe...
It will be a hard task for future generations to maintain their own identity, but your blog will be a great help for your children in doing so. I remember helping my gran with things like her baking, but now that she is gone and I try to recreate things she made, it is not that easy! So you are doing a great job with your recipes and comments on today’s life or life in the past.
If you still feel tempted by all the goodies on display in the prospectus (and it still feels nice to try out something new once in a while, if you don't forget your own traditions, right?), I would go for the Spekulatius spice biscuits. If it is the same pack I bought here in Germany, it is 600 grams (good value for money) and you can use it for many different recipes, not just eat with your coffee (but that is nice, too). You could make a cake with a base made of crumbled spekulatius or a Christmassy trifle-like dessert, crumbling up some of the biscuits, sprinkling them with liquor or some fruit juice and then layer them in individual glasses or dishes with a cream made of plain yoghurt whipped with cream and some cinnamon or just yoghurt and cinnamon and 1 or 2 layers of jam or your spoon sweet. Some people add a bit of vanilla sugar or plain sugar to the cream for a sweeter taste, for me the jam is sweet enough. The top layer should be crumbs. Put in the fridge for a few hours, before serving.
Thanks for your interesting blog, it is great to be able to learn so much about life in Crete! Keep up the good work!
and thanks for your comment - the lebkuchen has always been a favorite of mine, but not so much my family - that's why i stopped buying it because i was being overly decadent!
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