Tinned tomatoes

I've been following the populist 'no more tinned tomatoes' debate that broke out just over a week ago in the New Zealand media, when a women's refuge worker demanded (not just requested) that food donations to the charity should not include tinned tomatoes. The 'Treatise on Tinned Tomatoes and Why They Are Like Books' did not get as much airtime as did the readers' vicious comments about the connection between 'poor people' and tinned tomatoes, which sounded like it was coming from non-Maori/Pasifika (read: white) higher-end middle class New Zealand society. The post (I found a cached version) did not actually villify tinned tomatoes. All the reasons that the writer gave for banning tinned tomatoes were based on solid facts and sound logic. Given that we are just days away before Christmas, it shouldn't be too difficult for most people to see why words like 'tinned' and 'staple foods' don't collocate well with 'Christmas'.

The women's refuge worker claimed that refuges (like food banks) often have many tinned tomatoes in their pantries, often past their due date. Women who use refuges generally don't use tinned tomatoes, nor did the people who raised them, and some of the women who use refuges don't even (know how to) cook. So if you gave those women a choice, they would never even ask for tinned tomatoes. In other words: if a woman cooks with tinned tomatoes, its a cultural thing. Pasifika/Maori women - the main users of women's refuges in NZ - are unlikely to have a cultural background of cooking with tinned tomatoes. Middle class NZ society might be very surprised to discover this: some people just don't use this quintessential global pantry stocker. By judging these women on foreign (to them) cultural terms, ie as good and knowledgeable budgeters ("tinned tomatoes are cheap!", "tinned tomatoes are versatile!"), the 'tinned tomato brigade' can't actually see what these women are feeling when they enter a refuge, ie sadness, depression, shellshock, running away from violence. Coupled with a lack of life skills and literacy skills, being cash strapped, in debt and looking after children, they wouldn't even feel like cooking, let alone cook from scratch: tinned tomatoes usually imply cooking from scratch.

Women who turn to a refuge for help have no family support - if they did, they would not be asking a refuge to help them. The writer made a point of how important it was to help such women get what they wanted, rather than what other people feel they need. In such moments, they want simple comforts: "spaghetti on toast or really simple things, stuff [that can be eaten] straight from a can if needs be".  Donors donate what they think poor people (which does not always mean the same thing as 'women in a refuge') need rather than want: "That’s you putting your values, and your mores, and your cultural prejudices on other people." Offering to teach women how to cook, how to use tinned tomatoes, and any other life skills they may be lacking is all very well, but there's a time and place for everything; when they arrive at a refuge, they need to settle into a new kind of life. Eventually, they may start preparing meals like they used to for themselves and their children; but some of these women may never want to cook, let alone from scratch. So tinned tomatoes are probably never going to be useful for them.

My old no longer wanted books started this foreign language library at CIHEAM.MAI Chania. Many students use it in their free time, and students also add to the collection.

The writer made the analogy that "tinned tomatoes are a bit like books": just like we don't all cook, we don't all read. While cooking and reading may sound like very basic activities to some people, to others they are not. For some people, cooking and reading are very difficult activities. Giving things to people who need things is not the same as giving people presents: the things you give to people who need things have to be useful things. Giving tinned tomatoes - a very cheap common product - to someone who has never used them is like giving away your old books which you no longer wish to read to people who never read novels. The better off harbour comfortable perceptions about what others should be doing all the time to become better off.

The treastise against tinned tomatoes aroused a storm of comments from both sides of the argument. A (Maori) woman working for another women's refuge added canned chickpeas and canned lentils to the forbidden list of items that refuges didn't want:

"We ask for fresh meat and vegetables and we get beans and lentils. What are our people going to do with chickpeas? Are they going to be making hummus in the safe house? Like tinned tomatoes, chickpeas and lentils have to be cooked and accompanied with other ingredients, using knowledge and supplies that many families [don't] have."

A (white) woman working for a Salvation Army food bank said she was shocked to hear that other charities were turning away tinned tomatoes:

"...the refuges are being a bit fussy... We are very short on things like [tinned] tomatoes... chickpeas and lentils are staples in Salvation Army food parcels given to families at this time of year... The staples are never going to go out of fashion. And hungry families will usually eat anything."

Anything? I doubt it. (And she also put her cultural prejudices into the picture by calling women in refuges hungry.)  Food is incredibly personal and highly cultural. Clearly the Salvation Army is catering for different kinds of people from those entering a women's refuge. People on a low income may also lead a more stable kind of life, not the nomadic existence of a woman fleeing from violence. Processed food is not necessarily the greatest miracle in the food world to make women's lives easier; having someone doing all the bloody cooking for you is even better than buying, carrying, storing, preparing and cooking food yourself. We don't all have that luxury of a private home cook; this usually happens when you are very wealthy or if you live in a cultural setting where one of the household's women (eg the grandmother) will prepare meals for all the family members, who may be working out of the home, or have been assigned other tasks. As mentioned above, if a woman has this kind of family support, she would not be asking a refuge to help keep her safe in the first place.


Snails and xinohondro - highly acquired Cretan tastes!

As I was following the discussion in the media, what really struck me was how unlikely it is among these refuges that someone will be cooking something for someone else, so that those people who need a decent meal (especially children) would find something that wasn't full of sugar/fat/salt (read: snack-type ready-to-eat highly-processed, eat-from-the-packet kind of food). It is already obvious that a lot of the people using these services don't have many life skills needed in order to maintain a healthy standard. So why not have someone cooking something on a regular basis, which can be served up to everyone and is also healthy and comforting? Some of the commentators mentioned that they would like to do such a thing as a cook-up, where some of the meals produced can be frozen for emergency moments. I think that the answer to this question will bring to the fore a host of other social issues that will be difficult to resolve.

It seems to have escaped people's notice that a lot of people in highly advanced countries like New Zealand are too busy to cook these days. This doesn't apply just to people in difficult situations. Most people in advanced countries spend their time in many creative ways, which often include doing things away from the home. And when they do have free time, they spend it more leisurely. Cooking is not a leisure activity when you are thinking about how to feed a family. It's a chore.

Lentil (φακές - left) and bean (φασολάδα - right) stew/soup - it depends on how much water you add.

Cooking for others, cooking with tomatoes and cooking with beans are therefore all very culturally based. In truth, I cook tomato-based bean dishes not because they are the yummiest thing imaginable, but because I have to feed a family, and beans are a pretty good quick cheap choice of food which can be prepared the night before, by the working woman in the household. (I am doing this right now as I write: a pot of lentil stew is boiling away on the stove. It should be ready before midnight. No, I don't use a pressure cooker.) This is not to say that a woman living in New Zealand from the Maori/Pasifika cultures cannot do the same thing for her family as a Greek or Indian woman (two cultures which use beans a lot in their daily diet); she doesn't do this simply because it's not part of her culture. She could be taught to do something like this - but if it was never part of your culture to prepare food in this way, learning to do this kind of chore is very difficult in modern times, when people are generally being 'taught' to treat food as a commodity: you buy/eat food when it's time to eat, or when you're hungry, or maybe to comfort you - and it's all ready prepared by someone else, and - generally speaking - you will generally cook when you feel like it. What may have been part of the food culture of a Maori/Pasifika woman fifty years ago has now changed, due to her translocation - due both to internal and external migration - into a highly advanced society headed and directed by non-Maori/Pasifika leaders. No matter how settled a woman in New Zealand who has turned to a refuge becomes, she is unlikely to revert to a less processed-food daily diet.

*** *** *** 

The 'tinned toms' discussion that ensued tells us much more about comfort food, processed food, and the act of cooking, than it does about how to use tinned tomatoes. The following can be implied:
- Comfort food is ready-to-eat food
- Cooking is for people who lead stable lives
- Canned chickpeas and lentils are the kinds of food that connoisseurs, health-freaks, vegetarians, vegans (and generally other 'smart-farts') know about (and eat)
- Certain cultural groups eat a lot of chickpeas and lentils, so they will know what to do with them
- Certain classes of people - especially those whose lives are less complicated - have the chance to be more adventurous in their food experiences
- Canned food (eg chickpeas and lentils) is for poor people
- Canned tomatoes are useful in a home where the act (which is now often considered an art) of cooking can actually take place (read: you have a kitchen, a stove/oven, AND you can afford to pay the electricity/gas bills)
... inter alia.

Canned tomatoes - and muuuuuuuuch more recently canned beans, but never ever canned lentils, except at LIDL when it's having a 'Spanish week' - are highly popular among Greek food banks and especially in soup kitchens. They are cheap and easy to work with. They make quick filling meals. A heated tin of tomatoes could quite possibly be poured over some boiled pasta. BUT: If this was never part of your culinary repertoire, then you will not eat it, let alone know how to make it. Culinary knowledge in western countries has passed into the realms of mystery, while things like chickpeas and lentils are considered food for the poor - or food for cultured. Even Greeks will acknowledge that beans are cheap and that's why the eat them.  Most Greek women with a family (including me) will cook up a bean dish once a week on a week-day, de rigeur.

I can't actually imagine any working Greek woman with a family here in Crete not cooking up a bean dish at least 2-3 times a month, but this is based on cultural norms. Greeks may have become impoverished - but still, there is much truth in saying that theirs is a dignified kind of poverty. We can have our cake and eat it, because we know how to make the cake. Greek identity these days often implies food knowledge. Recent Greek emigrants due to the economic crisis often end up working in their own food-based business. Their family background is not necessarily middle class. They rarely realise the superiority of their culinary skills because until they leave Greece, they do not realise that there are people out there who lack such knowledge. They are also astounded to learn that most people in highly advanced societies watch cooking shows and buy cookery books - but they rarely cook meals: most of their food will have been prepared by someone else, for them to heat and eat.

It's still not very common to see soaked ready-to-use chickpeas (let alone lentils) in Greek supermarkets; on the other hand, there is a plethora of dried beans on the shelves. If such canned products were presented to a Greek woman, and she was asked to produce something on the spot with them, I don't think she'd have much trouble producing a hot comforting meal in little time. All you need to make classic Greek φακές (lentil stew) and ρεβιθάδα (chickpea stew) are tomatoes, beans and water; if you add some minced onion and garlic, salt and pepper, your soup/stew - depending on the amount of water you add - will taste nicer. A hot bean soup made with canned tomatoes makes great comfort food - and it tastes better the next day.

Puttanesca is one of the quickest things I can cook from scratch 

Tinned tomatoes are often hailed as a food processing miracle by media cooks:

"The larder is worryingly bare when you've run out of tinned tomatoes. They are the cook's comfort blanket, the progenitor of any number of soups, sauces, stews and braises... Tomatoes are the best source of the carotenoid pigment lycopene. Some studies suggest it can help prevent prostate, lung, and stomach cancers. Tomatoes are an interesting exception to the rule that cooking food reduces or destroys valuable micronutrients: lycopene is better absorbed when it has been heated, either during processing or cooking, as the heat turns the molecule into more useful isomers. Tomatoes provide significant amounts of bone-strengthening vitamin K, and some research suggests that lycopene also supports bone health. Many studies link tomatoes with heart benefits, and although the mechanisms aren't yet clear, the antioxidant vitamins C and E in them, along with lycopene, seem to slow down the processes that would eventually cause heart disease."

An old photo of my pantry - these days I prefer to freeze our bumper summer tomato harvest.

In short, a pantry full of tinned tomatoes and chickpeas and lentils symbolises domestic wisdom, happiness and prosperity. But this is something that is not within the sight of a woman fleeing to a refuge with just her kids and the clothes they're all wearing. They'd rather be having some tea and toast, and maybe something sweet, like chocolate biscuits, to bump up their spirits. In other words, they want the same things you want. I highly doubt that the average citizen of a highly advanced society is eating tinned chickpeas or lentils cooked in tinned tomatoes on a daily, let alone weekly basis. We all want variety.

When buying "food for the poor", we really need to think about what we ourselves like to eat rather than what we think poor people 'should' be eating. Better still, charities can tell you what they need because they know who they're supplying. It's even better to give them money (they are likely to make better deals with suppliers), so they can do the appropriate shopping for that tiny segment of society that is rarely visible to the majority. Especially now before Christmas, to make it a merry one, skip that bloody canned food. As the Greek saying goes:

Φάτε τώρα που το βρήκατε, γιατί αύριο έρχεται η φακή.

(Eat now that you have good food, because the lentils are coming tomorrow.)

More articles on Greek food banks and soup kitchens:
http://www.organicallycooked.com/2013/03/soup-kitchen.html
http://www.organicallycooked.com/2013/10/food-bank-community-grocery.html
http://www.organicallycooked.com/2016/04/the-social-kitchen-of-hania.html

All quotes come from the following links:
https://thespinoff.co.nz/parenting/11-12-2017/please-no-more-bloody-tinned-tomatoes/
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018625266/jackie-clarke-no-more-tinned-tomatoes
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/99767397/
https://thespinoff.co.nz/parenting/13-12-2017/no-charities-dont-want-your-inedible-food-items/
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11958543
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/12/charities-ask-kiwis-to-donate-more-than-second-hand-goods-or-tinned-vegetables.html
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/hamiltons-salvation-army-shocked-auckland-charity-turning-away-tinned-tomatoes
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/99813458/we-want-tinned-tomatoes-hamiltons-salvation-army-says

https://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/99843749/comments-rejecting-tinned-tomatoes-illjudged
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/99909805/get-off-your-tinned-tomato-high-horse
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/99946985/hype-about-tinned-tomatoes-has-raised-the-debate-on-giving
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/05/tinned-tomatoes-health-benefits-anti-cancer-strong-bones

©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.

Magic Hania (Τα μαγικά Χανιά)

Ipiros St in Koum Kapi, close to the centre of Hania, still retains its old-world charm. The street runs from a main road in the town to the sea. Its mix of immigrant communities and Greek locals blends well with the boarded up houses standing side by side with the renovated ones.

The lady in black was talking to another lady in black. The motorbike has a bag full of bread hanging off it.

This house is clearly lived in by the house-proud owners.


Basements are often turned into apartments, to accomodate the children's families above. A Greek definitely lives in this one (you can tell from the curtain).


And this one.


The disused electric meters tell us that this house is not being used - but the roadside is...


This was oncε some kind of shop front, attested by the -τοπωλείον ending on the word in the sign (it looks like the original).


Something old, something newer, something derelict...


... and something waiting to be loved.


A close up of the shoe scraper, found on the ground between the door and window.


The street finishes where the cafes of Koum Kapi start...


... overlooking Zorba's hill (where Zorba the Greek was filmed)...


... where the socks-n-Birkenstockers take their pretty photos.


Further down the road, I came across some workers sprucing things up a bit before the height of summer,...


... while the ladies did their shopping at the street market...


... and the idlers sapped up the sunshine.


At the street market, bread and rusks still look like they did a hundred years ago,...


... while tomatos have improved immensely.


I bought one of these baskets from this lady.


I also caught sight of the basket-chair weaver further down the road.


And then I went home and prepared myself some fast food - ότι ήταν έτοιμο...

All photos taken this morning.

©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.

Trapped (Εγκλωβισμένοι)

All photos and links come from Haniotika Nea. More photos are found in each link mentioned.

On the 31st of March, 2014, 345 people of undefined status were picked up in the sea 70km off the small harbour of Paelohora, a summer resort town on the south-western coast of the Mediterranean island of Crete. The rotten rusty leaky boat they were travelling on was towed by an oil tanker that was in the general area of the Libyan Sea, which the boat people boarded.



These people carried similar hopes and dreams of entering Europe as many others who have traveled in a similar way before them. Their quest: to seek a better life, like the many people all over the world who move from one place to another, both within their own countries and beyond their borders. Among them were women and minors whose ages could not be determined on sight. Their arrival coincided with claims by Médecins Sans Frontières that "Migrants face 'living hell' in Greek detention", as reported by the Guardian. Their arrival also coincided with the start of the tourist season in Hania, and the first charter flight to the region.

The boat people arrive in Paleohora

What do you do with 345 people who have nowhere to go in a foreign country? Only the state can get involved at an initial stage. Only the state has the right to be involved. The status of these people has to be determined, their health must be checked, their nationality must be verified, their reasons for finding themselves in this predicament must also be ascertained. At the same time, food and accommodation must be secured for them. It is not the job of the individual residents, nor should any of these actions be viewed as a form of goodwill. The problem of smuggling people into another country is a global one, and there are international laws which govern it.

Despite their undefined status and unexpected arrival, these people need to be accommodated in some way. There was no public space big enough to put them up in Paleohora. The hotels there are nearly all small family-owned businesses; they were empty at the time, but in all fairness, their use does not extend to providing free accommodation out of solidarity, nor should the state be paying such businesses to cater for the needs of unauthorised people in the country. The issue of where such people are accommodated, even temporarily, is a contentious one: no one really wants these people in their back yards, so to speak.

From Paleohora, they were transferred to EMEX, a centre which houses exhibitions in Hania, mainly of an agricultural/culinary nature, as well as the local water board, located in lush countryside with orange orchards and olive groves, about 10 minutes out of the town centre. (EMEX also happens to neighbour the long-standing minimum-security agricultural prison where low-risk prisoners are often seen outside the complex under guarded conditions working on the land; it is also close to the recently opened maximum-security prison.)

Local authorities and volunteer associations were all involved in the organisation of temporary accommodation facilities for the arrivals.

Bedding donated by various associations (a lot is most likely made in one of a number of local SMEs producing mattresses for the town's tourist industry - they are replaced regularly by large hotels, and the old ones are donated to those in need), chemical toilets, heaters and separate women-and-children quarters (for privacy) were set up for them by the local Red Cross and Samaritan groups. INKA supermarket, the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania (MAICh), the old people's retirement home (a state institution in Hania), the Orthodox Academy in Kolimbari (a religious-based unit) and the NATO Missile Firing Installation in Akrotiri offered their kitchen services (they each cooked an extra number of meals to make up the portions required), while the local state authorities, including Doctors of the World, began the Herculean task of working out who is who (smuggler, refugee or opportunist), which country they come from, and who needs medical attention.

The issue of how this leaky boat ended up in Cretan waters is also under scrutiny: it had first sent a distress signal from the sea zone of Malta, which begs the question about who 'pushed' it into Greek waters. While the state bodies did their utmost to meet the arrivals' immediate physical needs, Steki Metanaston (one of a number of anti-fascist, anti-racist groups in Hania, which has a very well-organised left-wing political climate in this respect, hence attacks of the Golden Dawn nature are practically non-existent in Hania) expressed the view that the state was 'unprepared' for this incident, since it treats migrants as 'illegals' and 'without rights', and the accommodation provided for these people was inappropriate. (You can find out more about their manifestos in this article, including discussion of the Dublin II treaty.) The various police associations of the island also complained about the diversion of all forces towards the guarding of the accommodation quarters of the migrants, potentially leaving the island unsecured; many officers worked throughout the two days needed to sort the migrants into groups, without adequate rest and nourishment. At the same time that this was going on, in Iraklio (the biggest city in Crete), a people-smuggler's ring was broken.

It is believed that the group consisted of mainly Egyptians (approximately 2/3), who will face deportation, while a large number of Syrians (not the complete remaining third) will not, as they are considered possible victims of a warzone, therefore, they may apply for political asylum. 6 smugglers were identified among them.

People who try to enter a country illegally are also organised in their own way, to meet their own demands. Three days after arriving in Hania, the Egyptians in the group decide to go on a hunger strike because they face the threat of deportation, also refusing to sign documents that stated their undefined status. The hunger strike did not last long, but the Egyptians continue to be held at EMEX, while the Syrians were given a document stating that they have 6 months to leave the country if their status remains undetermined.

Some of the more vulnerable Syrians were then removed from EMEX and taken to a hotel in the town, where they were allowed to stay until Monday (ie a week after their arrival); the others were looked after by the Rosa Nera squat (another strongly rooted left-wing organisation in Hania). No provision was made for the food needs of those who were dismissed from EMEX. It's cold and wet at the moment in Hania - where do these people go once they leave the hotel?! But that is not the worst of it: these people can apply for refugee status only in Athens, not Hania... but they are not allowed to travel to Athens as people of undetermined status, because Athens (together with the regions of Kerkira because it close to Albania, Thesprotia because it neighbours Kerkira, and Axaia because of the port area in Patras) is considered a Greek 'departure gate' - therefore, they may not go there because they may attempt to enter another country illegally... and Northern Europe doesn't want any more illegals in their countries... which are often blamed on Greece's incapability of dealing with issue... which is why Greece wants to pull out of the Dublin treaties (which state that illegal arrivals in the EU must be returned to the EU country where they first entered the EU... which is more often than not Spain, Italy and Greece).

And the icing on the cake: if these arrivals apply for refugee status in Greece, they will not be able to go to another EU country until they are given that status, which they may not get from the Greek authorities, and even if they do eventually get it, it will take years - Greece is often slammed for not dealing with this issue very quickly, and for not issuing such a status to most of the applicants. This also applies to other EU countries, as well as non-EU countries - no country hands out refugee status that easily. The paradox in the present situation is that it is highly unlikely that any of the boat people actually want to stay in Greece: they want to go elsewhere (their most likely destination while on that leaky boat was in fact Italy). There is a more pressing need right now: their status in Greece needs to be determined. Right now, they basically have a kind of non-status... leaving them, for all intents and purposes... trapped.

Boat people were rare in Greece before the barbed wire wall was put up between Turkey and Greece, which effectively stopped illegals arriving in Greece on foot. Some drowned in the freezing Evros river, but the wall basically meant that the only entry point to the Promised Land (aka the EU) was by sea. So the recent arrivals in Hania are effectively trapped here, and will be illegal residents in 6 months' time, unless they are offered another solution.

I wondered what would happen to these people after Monday when their hotel stay expires. I am pretty sure that these people will not be sleeping on the streets of Hania during that time, as their food and accommodation needs will be met somehow. In fact, this is what happened: churches, schools and local bodies collected clothing and food, while their hotel stay was extended: another two overnight stays will be paid for by the local authorities. (NB: the state said it could only afford to pay for one night.) In the meantime, the Egyptians seem to have disappeared overnight - no doubt, they were transferred to a holding centre in Iraklio, where they would eventually be boarded on the overnight ferry boat to Athens, from where they will eventually be deported.

Photo of two Syrian children: from http://www.haniotika-nea.gr/fotografia-tis-imeras-121/

The number of minors on board that leaky boat was estimated at 107 - a huge number given that there were 345 people in total. Just 5 were from Syria and the other 102 were Egyptian. For the time being, they will not be deported: instead, they will be taken to various holding centres for minors in Athens, Thessaloniki and Crete. The accounts of members of the local authorities that are directly involved in the case are enlightening:

"... you try to find relatives of the first or second degree living legally in Europe, who want to get their children back to have a family reunion. The children from Syria have some relatives living legally in Germany and are likely to go there. The procedures may last for 1-2 months, but eventually the children will go where they want..."

"...Two shocking facts that I will never forget during these eight days in the holding center for the immigrants are: A boy from Egypt, who asked me anxiously if, at the guest house where he will be hosted, he will be able to go to school, because that was his dream. And all five children from Syria, on opening their suitcase, pulled out of it, not games, but the Syrian flag, which they hoisted..."

"... We hope to stop this tragedy... And we become better as individuals and as a state, we cannot close our eyes to them and sweep these problems under the carpet..." http://www.haniotika-nea.gr/telos-stin-peripetia-ton-anilikon-prosfigon/

From these accounts, it is clear that most of the local people want to see these arrivals being helped in some way... but most people cannot provide the help themselves. The above newspaper report shows both feelings of solidarity towards these people's plight, and the typical lackadaisical nature of Greek decision-making. 339 unexpected strangers needing hospitality is a lot to handle in one go. It's not easy to take them into our homes and it's not easy to feed them either. Above all, it is not the job of an individual, whether a person or a private organisation: it's the job of the state, as dictated by international laws.

As an example of what I am trying to say, I will use the provision of meals to illustrate my point. My workplace (MAICh, which was also involved in the provision of meals for the boat people) will be staging a dinner during Holy Week (next week) as an act of solidarity towards vulnerable social groups in Hania. This move is symbolic - many of our students are from the general areas of the countries where the recent arrivals are from. Naturally, the institute would want to keep its doors open to vulnerable groups on all days of the year, not just on festive days, and not as a one-off occasion. This comes at a time when the institute has had its state funding cut, and it faces its own financing dilemmas. But at the same time, it has expressed that it is open to collaborations with other organizations of the city.

This may all sound as though it goes against the principle of Greek hospitality, but it also goes against the international laws often created by countries who make war (in both the literal and figurative sense), leaving refugees in other countries, who are then distributed among yet other countries that are not necessarily well equipped to look after the needs of their own people, let alone strangers. The countries that have the luxury of distance, and therefore do not have to deal in any way with the immediate problems of these unfortunate people, are no better in the way they handle them: the so-called developed nations of the world do not accept so many refugees as may be believed by refugees themselves, nor are those countires in a rush to change their laws so that they can accept more. Take New Zealand for example: it accepts 700 refugees per year - that's a couple of boat loads of the size that arrived overnight in Hania last week. As I write this, an unconfirmed sighting of yet another boat in Greek waters is being checked, this time near the island of Kithira - that's not far from Crete...

I will end this post with a quote from Athens - The Truth" by David Cade:

‘Do you think we are racists?’ I (David Cade) say I’ve no idea, that I’d just like to know what she (a Greek psychologist) thinks. She replies that there are two definitions of racism: one that belongs to countries like the United States, the UK, and France, and one that is more general and appropriate for countries like Greece and Italy. Greece, she reminds me, is not like Britain, France, Spain, and other countries which have gone out all over the globe in recent centuries and conquered and colonised other lands. In her opinion, Greece’s problem is that as a member of the EU it’s being forced to wrestle with a definition that is only appropriate to countries where racism describes the treating of members of an invited resident race as inferior. But this definition can’t be applied in a country where immigrants arrive uninvited and unwanted. Greeks, Chryssoúla says, can’t be described as racist because they really don’t think of immigrants as being inferior. She reminds me that Greece is famed for its traditional philoxenía, its hospitality or, literally, its love of strangers, and she tells me many Greeks have given much help to immigrants, particularly by providing food and clothing when they turn up on the islands. And, indeed, I’ve witnessed several Greek restaurant owners giving food free to immigrants who simply stop and ask for it. So Greeks are well-disposed to visitors but draw the line at those people seeking to populate their country without permission or invitation. ‘To your country,’ she says, meaning the UK, ‘your government invited many people from India, from Uganda, and the Caribbean. To invite them and then to treat them badly, now that is racism! But to not invite immigrants and to not wish that they force themselves upon your country, that cannot be called racism!"

Just a thought. I think my country and her people are doing what ever they can for these people. And now, it's time the countries that created the status of these people also pulled their weight. It is heartening to know that, despite Helena Smith's sensationally headlined article being placed prominently on the Guardian website when it was first published, of the 1269 comments made on the article, the overwhelmingly majority are pro-Greece. As a commentator pointed out:

"It is sensationalist and shameful to be writing such articles, demonising a country, as if all of us, here in the UK and throughout the EU have nothing to do with it! Move the UK where Greece is, geographically, and then tell me how it feels like to be inundated by the world's most desperate people from every border, at the same time as the majority of your people is descending deeper in poverty and misery."

UPDATE 11/4/2014 - This report appeared in today's Haniotika Nea:
"The Syrian immigrants who are still being hosted at a hotel in Nea Hora (a suburb of Hania) are asking for help to leave Greece to go to European countries where they have relatives and the laws are more friendly to refugees. Speaking briefly before the local media, the migrants thanked all the Greeks who stood by them during their stay in Hania but also indicated that they had meant to go to neighboring Italy, and from there to other European cities. Among the Syrians are many children and minors with their parents who traveled to escape the flames of war."

If anyone thinks that Greece should be wasting her resources ascertaining the status of these people who don't want to stay here, they are completely deluded.

UPDATE: A month later, the Syrians are well and truly trapped in Hania.

UPDATE 1/8/2014: A solution was proposed by judicial order for the Syrians to be moved into the old psychiatric unit (close to my work place) that is no longer used. This was countered by the local hospital administration which still holds authority over the old premises, who stated that the buildings have not been cleaned for over a decade since they stopped being used, the water/electric facilities are not operating, there are no safety mechanisms, and the premises are basically uninhabitable in their present state. It  looks like the Syrians are well and truly stuck here without any options.

UPDATE 8/8/2014: The story of the Syrian refugees' stay in Hania ends tonight: "On the initiative of the Regional Government, a solution was found, regarding the Syrian refugees remaining in Chania for four months. Of the remaining refugees who do not exceed 70 in number, they will be given tickets to leave for Athens today. There will be an attempt to take them to camps for political refugees. It should be noted that of the [original] 140, many Syrians have managed recently in different ways to leave the country and go to Northern European countries where they have relatives and friends." This is the first time that the newspaper has reported the departure of the 'trapped' refugees. In essence, where there is a will, there is a way.

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Cinammon orange biscuits with chocolate glaze (Χριστουγεννιάτικα μπισκοττάκια)

A colleague recently bought some biscuits into work which her children had made. The combination of orange, cinammon and chocolate created a very tasty flavour. I asked her for the recipe, which comes from an advertisement by a Greek flour and confectionery company (ΓΙΩΤΗΣ), published in one of the latest issues of Gastronomos, a Greek gourmet magazine.

I'm loking forward to making these biscuits at the weekend. In the meantime, here's the reicpe (it makes approximately 50 biscuits).

Crafted by children - in Greece, Christmas time is generally all about them and ultimately for them.

You need:
200g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup butter (my friend used a mixture of butter and olive oil)
1 1/2 cups blanched ground almonds
1 large egg
80g icing sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons of cinammon
Grated zest of 1 orange
Grated zest of 1/2 lemon
1 shot of cognac (most Greek cooks keep a bottle of Metaxas in the house)
125g cooking chocolate
1/2 cup cream
1 tablespoon cinammon flavoured liqueur (my friend didn't use this)

Beat the butter and sugar till well combined. Add almonds and egg and beat till well blended. Add cinammon, zest and cognac and beat well. Sift flour and baking powder, and fold it into the mixture, beating just as much as needed.  Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 2 hours.

Heat oven to 160C and grease two baking trays. Divide dough into four pieces. Roll out each piece on a floured surface to just under 1cm. Use cutters to make Christmas shapes, place on baking tray 2cm apart from each other, and cook each tray 10-15 minutes till golden. Remove from oven and allow to cool 10 minuted before removing them from the tray onto a cooling grill.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler, and gradually add the cream and liqueur. Allow to blend without boiling. Dip the biscuits into the chocolate, allow excess chocolate to drip off, then place biscuits on greaseproof paper. Allow the chocolate to set before placing biscuits on a serving plate.

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Personal crisis (Προσωπική κρίση)

I was in Iraklio on Saturday, working at the English examinations. I decided to leave the house early because I wanted to do a bit of exploring in the city before starting work. I parked the car close to the examination centre (an inner-city school in a built-up, congested, and perhaps one could also say, working-class area or maybe even poor neighborhood , and went on a short walk into the city centre, in search of an arts centre where a photography exhibition would be opening in the evening. I knew roughly where it was located, and simply asked people for directions just in case I got lost. I firmly believe you can never get lost in coastal areas. In Crete's case, either you are heading for the water, or for the mountains - one way or the other, one of them will come into view eventually, and you will know which direction you are walking in. The walk didn't take me longer than 15 minutes  including the information stops along the way.

Saturday, 7.30am, at the Vrises turnoff between Hania and Rethimno

Iraklio is a walled town, but unlike Hania, many of the town's walls are still intact and they are very well maintained. Compared to Hania, Iraklio is BIG: it is home to approximately 175,000 people (in the urban part alone - the figure refers only to the town). It has an Athenian feel to it: the part inside the walls (where I walked to) will remind you of Plaka in Athens in many parts, where the roads are very narrow, more like pathways, and the old houses have a romantic grandeur about them. But they stand side by side with derelict rundown properties too. The newer parts of the town directly outside the walls (where I was working) will remind you of a built-up congested neighbourhood in Athens, something like Pangrati, with its narrow one-way streets, heavy traffic, bumper-to-bumper parked cars, apartment buildings with shops on the ground floor and homes on top, and its generally run-down look. Most of the time, you cannot do much more to an inner-city area apart from splash a bit of paint and seal the cracks in the walls. Such areas will still look old and tired no matter how much veneer you add to them - to improve them in any way, they may need to be demolished and something new built in their place, which will probably sell more expensively and push the locals out of the area as they won't be able to afford to live there any more. We've already seen that happen in many places around the world - lucky for us, this trend has not caught on here.

Imagine this window opening as you are walking by it, and a n old man pops out his head. You ask him if you are heading in the right direction for the Lions (a central point in Iraklio) and he says: "Is your name Anna?" I told him it wasn't, and he told me not to worry, if he didn't guess right the first time, he never asked again. And yes, I am heading in the right direction for the Lions.

I found the exhibition centre, and as I had no interest in the shops which had just opened up for the day's trading, I walked back to the examination centre. The stores in Iraklio are much more enticing than those in Hania - the products are often of higher quality and cheaper. These are some of the advantages of living in a bigger place. On my way back to the exam centre, I met up with some of my colleagues, who had also come from Hania; they were doing a bit of shopping while they were in the Big Smoke. They asked me which direction the exam centre was in. I pointed to the road across from where we were standing: "It's about a 15-minute walk from here, all straight ahead, no turns."

A memorial service for a loved one was taking place as I walked by this church while I was heading towards the Lions. About 8 Roma children were waiting coming in and out of the yard. The liturgy had just finished and the congregation was  in the yard, having the customary coffee and cakes (it must have been a forty-day memorial service). When I walked back past the church after my walk in the town, I caught the Roma children each carrying a very full plastic plate with goodies that have been left over.

"Oh. I'm not walking that far," one said. I could have said '10 minutes', but I didn't want to mislead them - I am a fast walker. Besides, I knew that these particular ladies would not want to walk, even for 10 minutes. They headed for the taxi stand while I walked. The taxi would not be that expensive (probably something like €3-3.50 euro), and with the congestion, it probably would have taken them the same amount of time to walk as it would to be driven there (in fact, I found them in the main office when I arrived there myself!), but each to his own. I preferred the walk, as I knew that I would be sitting down for a good many hours in the exam centre and I had driven to work, whereas they had taken the KTEL (long distance, city-to-city) bus; they had spent a good 3 hours sitting in wide seats, chatting, moving about, and they may have had a bit of a snooze as they would have caught the bus quite early.

The warmest thing at work was a mug full of tea. The room was cold, as it would be when it's full of schoolchildren during the week. My kids spend the morning in freezing schools: just when the day starts to warm up, it's home time. 

My colleagues in this line of work are mainly, in their grand majority, Greek-something women like myself, in their mid-30s to early 50s. They had come to Greece in her heyday when the going was good: there was a lot of money going around, people were generally more optimistic, and everyone seemed busy. And rich. They were all helped by their Greek-heritage parents who had connections to the island to set themselves up here, with money earned abroad; few of us with Greek-heritage parents who lived abroad are renting. We still all have work, even though the pay is less now, given that prices for English lessons have dropped, and fewer children are attending private after-school lessons, a natural effect of the economic crisis. So my colleagues are coping with similar financial issues like myself: we have less money, but we still have jobs. But there is one major difference between me and my colleagues: we are all growing older within a crisis-riddled lifestyle, but they are growing older all by themselves. They are now faced with the dilemma of whether to stay in Greece for no other reasons than that they have a home (which is getting expensive to maintain), and that they have a source of income (which is lower than what they had in the past, and continues to diminish).

The narrow roads of Iraklio are romantic and lonesome at the same time. The picturesque old houses sit side by side with derelict ruins.

I'm not propounding the benefits of marriage and having children. I'm simply pointing out one of the biggest problems plaguing modern western developed nations, where people have the option of sorting out their basic needs (food, shelter, work) with a great degree of independence, but by doing so in a place like Greece, they unknowingly create another problem: they suffer from a great deal of loneliness which they were not inflicted with in the days when the crisis had not been brought to the fore. The economic situation has forced us all to downsize in many ways, including entertainment. It is a fact that single working people have more disposable income, and they are also more likely to spend money on entertainment than people raising children. But in a crisis, they too are affected. Either they have less money to spend on entertainment, or the actual modes of entertainment that they were once used to are now more restricted. They may also have grown out of them, so to speak. So, they often end up without the means to be entertained.

The Lions, Iraklio - the business around this central point in the town were relatively busy, as most central focus points often are in any urban centre. But the most places beyond here were relatively quiet, with just 1-2 tables taken.

If you are single and unattached, then living in a place like Hania at this time means that you end up spending a lot of time indoors, alone, without anyone to speak to, except on the computer. You may also have seen some of your friends leaving Greece, with or without a family (they may have been unattached or married, with or without kids), something that did not occur to you to do too, because just 2-3 years ago, you thought you were coping quite well on your own, despite the economic problems. Now that these problems have grown bigger and you've gotten older, you feel the heavy burden of independence, and you wonder why you did not leave when you could have done so. Hania is not an easy town to grow old in alone. Eventually, it will get tiring. And boring. And incredibly lonely.

An arty corner of Iraklio - on the left is a Chinese restaurant, on the right an enticing bookstore; the building in the background is where the photographic exhibition took place.  

You are then plagued by one more dilemma: should you stay or should you go? You begin to count your blessings, but the fickle nature of the issue makes it difficult to arrive at a decision. Will it be easy to set yourself up, all over again, all alone, in a more progressive world, which has a higher standard of living, which comes with a greater cost of living? Or will the costs and expenses involved in making such a move cancel out the advantages? Is it a good time to start all over again? Or is it too late? And what are you heading out to find? It's not the work or the money that you lack; it's the company. Again, you think how much easier it might be to cope with such changes if you had someone to share the burden of change with. The feeling of insecurity arising from the economic crisis has an effect on your psychological security. It may hit you that your independence was artificial - you thought you were independent because you were paying your own way, but with less money and fewer outings, you find yourself dependent on others' company, or at least a third party that can offer you the comfort you need to get through the evening without remembering that you are alone in a very small town. Company is not easy to find these days in a very troubled world. Having a partner/children/family makes up for the need to find company, as you rarely find yourself alone most of the day. But if you have none of that, you are not just alone, but also very lonely.

One of a number of well-preserved Venetian arches in Iraklio - this one is now called the New Gate, the last to be built in the town (it was renovated in the 1970s); construction began on it in 1587. 

More often than not in our times, people tend to blame the troubles that befall them on the economic crisis. But the crisis has shown up an identity crisis that was brewing well before the economic crisis sank in. And for a certain sector of society, this is now turning into a personal crisis. Our rather cold winter this year has forced many of us to count our blessings. Huddling up in a blanket or by the fire watching a film among company feels so much more uplifting than sitting in a room all by yourself with a bar heater by your legs to stop you from freezing. If a comedy is showing, your laughter will be heard by no one. Summertime, with its visiting relatives, foreign tourists, sunny skies and outdoor life, seems so far away.

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You could be anywhere

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?

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.

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Pressed for time

What's the moral of the story? Scroll below if you want to skip the details.

The children are growing up now, and I am finding that I can do grown-up things with them, things that I never wanted to do with them before, because they felt more like little pains in the butts when they were around me, rather than fun companions. One of those things that I like to do with them now is to have a sit-down snack when we are running errands in town. This usually happens on Saturday mornings (not afternoons, because that's the eve of never never on a Sunday for Greek commercial centres).

We had almost an hour to kill before my daughter finished from basketball, so I sat down with my son (after we had both had a hair cut - another crisis-related experience that I may remind myself to write about another time) at one of my favorite people-watching places in the town, located on a pedestrian zone behind the touristy area just off Stivanadika (the leather street). I hadn't been there for close to two years, so I was delighted to see this particular place still going, looking pretty much the same as I remembered it from past times. It was a really busy moment for the cafe because on that day, a lot of people were in town. It wasn't just the lovely calm weather but the 100 years celebrations of the Agora that bought a lot of us into town. There were only two tables free, a big one and a small one. We took the small one naturally, and waited for the customary menu to arrive.

The waitresses never seemed to stop running in and out of the cafe, bringing menus, orders, bills, receipts, and clearing tables. But that menu card didn't arrive, so we picked one up off another table. Menu cards are fun to browse, even though you know what you want to order; I didn't need to check if the cafe had cappuccino on the list, but my son had more difficulty finding what he wanted. The 'toasted sandwich' came in an array of tastes at cafes and he found it difficult to choose from the list of toasts that he found in the menu. Mindful I suppose of the many crisis discussions that take place in our home, he chose the cheapest one. I told him not to do that - there's always a time to splurge! He then chose the one called 'French toast' (there were no accompanying photos). I wondered whether that would be a sweet toast with cinnamon  or one of those things the French call 'croque monsieur', but I decided not to worry him (he needs to find out for himself how to handle disappointments when they come).

All that was now missing was the waitress to come along to take our order. Every time she came past our table, we were hoping she would stop... but this didn't seem to happen. I raised my hand at one point to grab her attention (I really hate doing that), and she did eventually notice, but my problem now was not that she would come to take our order, but that time was running out and we had to be somewhere else very soon...

Eventually she came. My son ordered his French toast, and I asked for a cappuccino in a large cup. I'm a fussy cafe coffee drinker, being rarely happy with the coffee served in Hania's cafes: usually, cappuccino in Hania is served in a small cup, and usually, it's tepid. But today's outing was not a quest for good coffee; it was just a mother and son moment that I wanted to enjoy, and we were both in need of a pick-me-up.

The waitress didn't understand my extra request (the big cup). I realised she was not Greek from her accent, but I didn't expect not to be understood. I had to repeat the order a couple of times; as an English teacher, I know how she was probably feeling at that moment, and I didn't really want to make her any more uncomfortable. The place was really busy now - there were hardly any spare tables (and Greeks still don't sit communally, as is common elsewhere).

I was still worried about the time, and I hoped things would hurry along now that the order had been taken... but that didn't happen. Even my son was now getting fidgety. It looked like there was only a 25-minute timeframe for the order to be prepared, come to our table and for us to finish it. Not very relaxing if the point of your visit to the cafe was to relax... I tried to stop the waitresses, but I was out of luck. They were both zipping in and out of the cafe at lightning speed. They were rushed off their feet. I went into the cafe kitchen and asked if the order would be getting ready soon, because otherwise, I told them, I'm sorry, but I would have to leave.

The assistant looked at her order list. "Yours is being made up now," she told me. I thanked her and went back to my table. A few more minutes later, and the order finally came (coffee first). The  cappuccino was not the best I'd ever had (the froth was a bit lacking), but at least it was hot. I always keep in mind that I am a fussy coffee drinker, so I easily forgive anyone who can't make a coffee good enough for my tastes. My son's toast was, in his opinion, the best he'd ever had. (Why it was called French is beyond me - the baguette had something to do with it no doubt, but it looked more like a good sandwich-type roll to me than anything else.) I gulped down my coffee, trying not to let my son know how annoyed I was that I could not savour it more slowly. Thankfully the sandwich was cut in two pieces, so I knew he would eventually have to carry one piece with him as we made our way to the other side of the town to pick up his sister...

I didn't really have time to wait till the bill came, so I hurried that one along too. Time was now of the essence. The waitress came round, looked at the empty plates and cups (the other half of the sandwich was now in my son's hand), and said: "A nescafe and a toast, is that right?" No, it wasn't, and I suppose I could have just said "Yes" and the cafe would have lost money on my order, but I didn't, so I had to wait a bit more for her to correct the bill, which still didn't sound right when it came back (I think they under-charged me), but I really didn't have time to get it corrected for a second time. Still, it was polite service with a smile all the way, and I was happy to see the staff doing whatever they could do to please me, even if it didn't really make a difference. Some things cannot be undone.

The moral of the story is:
- don't sit at cafes which are full if you are in a hurry,
- don't expect to be given priority if it is not your turn,
- don't pretend you are trying to relax when you are looking at the clock all the time,
- the customer is not always right: you chose to be where you are, whereas the staff didn't choose to attend to your needs - they simply have to
and above all,
- just because you think you understand the ideology of a concept well doesn't mean that thing will work out the way you want or expect them to:

Capitalism is not real; it is an idea. America is not real; it is an idea that someone had ages ago. Britain, Christianity, Islam, karate, Wednesdays are all just ideas that we choose to believe in and very nice ideas they are, too, when they serve a purpose. These concepts, though, cannot be served to the detriment of actual reality. http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/10/russell-brand-on-revolution

We can enjoy daily life more if we put it into perspective.

If you like cool places away from the crowds, you might like to try the Red Bicycle cafe - but don't order medium-rare beef steak, like this German customer did: 'rare' meat is never served in Crete, so it's only to be expected that it wouldn't be cooked according to your expectations (ie your own concept) of a rare meat dish (we don't generally eat pink meat - we still think of that as 'raw'). As for beggars and illegally-copied CD/DVD sellers, that's not the cafe's problem - it's a European issue. 

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The white plastic bucket chair

Another Greek teaser: the white plastic bucket chair. Some people love them. Some people hate them. But most people in Greece are so used to seeing them that they don't even think twice about them. The white plastic bucket chair is an iconic Greek summertime image. They are cheap to buy, easy to stack and store, easy to keep clean and relatively comfortable. But many of our visitors regard the plastic bucket chair as very tacky and unstylish.



The en masse sight of the white plastic bucket chair has a special significance for me: it can only signal one thing, and that is FEAST. FEAST also means one more thing: FOOD. I then imagine those chairs filling up as people come to take their place, to eat a communal meal at a communal table or simply to enjoy some public free-for-all al fresco music, song and dance. And I can also imagine the tables slowly filling up with food and laden with platters.



The romantic's iconic image of a Greek chair is usually the wooden one with the woven seat.




Such chairs are more expensive than the white plastic chair, bulkier in terms of storage, heavier work in terms of stacking, and difficult to maintain. Whether they are comfortable or not often depends on the size of your bum or if you have a bony build. The newer style wooden chair is made with a woven seat covering all parts of the chair that your bum touches. But the older style wooden chair (see below):


... does not have this slight comfort advantage - if the wooden legs stick into your knees and the back legs dig into your hips, you will not be able to sit on them for long. This is a big issue when it comes to enjoying your meal. If you are too broad of backside, you will not be able to sit comfortably in the wooden chairs, as the posts will stick into the backs of your thighs.



The plastic bucket chairs are miles more comfortable. They almost feel as if they are purpose-built to mallow people to sit comfortably for a long period of time, as long as it takes to enjoy a Greek feast from start to finish.

Bonus photo: our outdoor dining space at my workplace, which houses an ISO-approved conference centre. The wooden seats are of a more comfortable style than the traditional woven taverna chair, but the bucket seats still beat them on this point.

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Greek-style simple comfort food: Orzo pasta rice with chicken and peas (Κριθαράκι, κοτόπουλο και μπιζέλια/αρακά)

Here's a picture that won over many people's hearts on my facebook site:

The vegetables were cooked separately from the pasta and chicken: I cooked them in this way, because some of us prefer the vegetables and the others prefer the meat and pasta. If I combined everything, it wouldn't have had the same effect on the family. It looks like double the work, but it gave double the pleasure. Both dishes are made in the same way - and it was terribly easy to make.

For the orzo dish, you need:
some chicken (I used about 500g of chicken with the bone, in small pieces)
1 onion, finely chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1 large fresh tomato, grated
3-5 glugs of extra virgin olive oil
350g orzo pasta rice
2-3 cups water
1 large red bell pepper (optional), finely sliced
salt and pepper

For the pea dish, you need:
500g mixed peas and other frozen vegetables
1 onion, finely chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1 large fresh tomato, grated
3-5 glugs of extra virgin olive oil
1 large red bell pepper (optional), finely sliced
salt and pepper

Proceed in the same way as described below, for each dish: Heat the oil, add the onion and garlic, and cook till transparent. Add the grated tomato, red pepper, tomato paste, salt and pepper. Mix till smooth. Lower the heat to minimum, then add the chicken/mixed vegetables. Cook till done with the lid on - the chicken will need about 30 minutes, the peas etc about 15. Add only a little bit of water if needed, to ensure the food has enough liquids to cook in and won't stick to the pan.

For the orzo, now add the water to the chicken and then pour in the pasta, mixing carefully so that the pasta isn't clumpy. Let it cook slowly on minimum heat, with the lid off. The water will be absorbed by the pasta - turn off the heat just when the water is almost absorbed, and you can still see some liquid in the pot.

You still have time until Sunday to add your name to the draw for a natural beauty package from Aphrodite's Embrace. 

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