The Social Kitchen of Hania (Κοινωνική Κουζίνα Χανίων)

This post also appears in Greek (scroll down), as translated for the local and Greek press, and published in websites (eg zarpanews). 

Poverty, homelessness and hunger are all relative in the world today. The Mediterranean island town of Hania is not known for any one of these states of being. But there are always pockets of society that need more help than others, having reached a level close to one of these states of being for various reasons that cannot be easily explained. Many times, other problems that these people face have forced them into difficult circumstances which force them to experience a certain degree of poverty, homelessness and hunger, even though they may have a roof over their head.

Poverty, homelessness and hunger in Hania are all tackled in various ways. A number of state-sponsored schemes help people in need with basic food items and rent subsidisation. About 40 homeless people in the area are given shelter for the night at a children's summer campsite during the winter. And certainly, no one need go hungry in a food-rich society such as Hania, and Crete in general. One of the NGOs that help in this direction is the Κοινωνική Κουζίνα, the 'Social Kitchen" of Hania, which runs a small soup kitchen in the town centre on Tsouderon St.

In the frame of showing solidarity, last Friday, 1st of April, the graduate students of MAICh, in collaboration with the chef of the Institute and the President of the Cretan Gastronomy Network, undertook the preparation and distribution of 150 meals offered to the Social Kitchen of Hania. This is the second year that this event has taken place. As a local Institute with a strong multicultural character, MAICh's interconnection with the local community is a major component of academic and research activities, and welcomes initiatives promoting volunteer activities and community service. MAICh welcomes opportunities that make its multicultural character visible in the town.

Today the students of MAICh spent their afternoon preparing meals for the town's Community Kitchen. In the early evening, they distributed it to those in most need.
Posted by Maria Verivaki on Friday, 1 April 2016

Through this voluntary action, both MAICh and the students wanted to express their effective support for the work done by the Social Kitchen, their sympathy and solidarity with the underprivileged residents of our city. In the undoubtedly difficult times that we are living in, every citizen deserves the necessary support to allow them to live a dignified life. In this way, MAICh participated in and strengthened social structures based on the principles of collective responsibility and self-organization engaged in satisfying inalienable human rights, such as access to good nutrition.

Together with the MAICh chef Mr Yanis Apostolakis, the students organised themselves in small groups to provide help in the preparation of the meal, always in collaboration with the MAICh kitchen staff.

A decision was made to pack the portions individually, unlike last year when the pots full of food were taken to the Social Kitchen and distributed there. This indivudalisation of the portions added some cost and waste to the meal (in the form of packaging), but it was done with very good reason, in the belief that an individually wrapped meal will give some dignity to the recipients of the meal, so that they can take it away with them to eat in the comfort and privacy of the place they call home.

The Social Kitchen operates daily in Hania on a volunteer basis. Various people in the community prepare and cook meals in their homes, and take them to the Social Kitchen at serving time. Others collect food and ingredients which can be shared out to the recipients or used in the prepared meals. MAICh's contribution was made in the same way. When the time came for the food to be distributed, the students helped to load the food into the vehicles, and then to unload them at the Social Kitchen. It is not the Mediterranean way to provide cans and boxes of processed foods to feed the needy - people are given the same kind of food that people would prepare in their kitchens. Food banks also do not provide processed food to recipients of the scheme - they are more likely to be given the ingredients needed to cook a 'proper' meal (see: http://www.organicallycooked.com/2013/10/food-bank-community-grocery.html).

Recipients of the meals know when the Social Kitchen operates, and the students watched in trepidation as they arrived. Who are the poor of Hania? What do they look like? Why are they poor in such a food-rich society? For some of the meal recipients, the migration dream did not turn out well for them; most of the meal recipients were foreigners. But there were also some older Greeks, people who have ended up alone in their older age, people who do not make enough income to afford the necessities of life, people with a roof over their head but perhaps no power supply, people that lack the skills necessary to be able to look after themselves completely. The descent to personal chaos has many forms, and each case is unique. But the Social Kitchen is not there to question or judge; it simply provides a service that is needed, without any strings attached. It is not affiliated to any religious group.

The students of MAICh were surprised to realise that many of the recipients of the meals were in fact Middle Eastern/North Africans/Eastern Europeans like themselves. Most of this year's intake of MAICh students speak  Arabic. Some come from Lebanon, a country with a refugee population ratio of 1:3 - Lebanon's population is around 4.5 million and it has 1.5 million registered refugees in the country which is roughly a little larger in size than the island of Crete (which has a permanent population of about 600,000). Some come from Palestine - Palestinians make up 600,000 of Lebanon's registered refugees. It is obvious that MAICh's students understand the refugee issue well.

The students regarded this event in a positive light, saying that they learnt a lot of things which they would not have known if they had not seen it for themselves. Poverty, homelessness and hunger are not always immediately visible, but we only need open our eyes to see what is happening and to be looking in the right places. The main thing is that almost everyone is in a position to help alleviate the effects of such situations, in their own personal way.

Κοινωνική Κουζίνα Χανίων – ΜΑΡΙΑ ΒΕΡΙΒΑΚΗ, ΚΑΘΗΓΗΤΡΙΑ ΑΓΓΛΙΚΩΝ, ΜΑΙΧ

Η φτώχεια, η έλλειψη στέγης και η πείνα είναι καταστάσεις οι οποίες εμφανίζονται όλο και  συχνότερα στο σύγχρονο κόσμο, ίσως για να μας θυμίσουν πως η ανάπτυξη της τεχνολογίας δεν αρκεί για την καταπολέμησή τους.

Στα Χανιά, μέχρι σήμερα, τα φαινόμενα αυτά δεν είχαν λάβει μεγάλη έκταση (όπως σε άλλες  μεγαλουπόλεις της Ευρώπης). Ωστόσο,  υπάρχουν πάντα 'τμήματα' μέσα στην κοινωνία μας που χρειάζονται περισσότερη βοήθεια απ’ ότι άλλοι άνθρωποι, έχοντας φτάσει σε οριακό σημείο, για διάφορους λόγους που δεν μπορούν εύκολα να εξηγηθούν. Πολλές φορές,  τα προβλήματα που αυτοί οι άνθρωποι αντιμετωπίζουν, τους αναγκάζουν να ζητήσουν βοήθεια στις δύσκολες περιστάσεις που βιώνουν.

Είναι αυτονόητο, βέβαια ότι δεν χρειάζεται να πεινάσει κανείς σε μια κοινωνία όπως τα Χανιά όπου είναι πλούσια σε τρόφιμα, όπως και στην Κρήτη γενικότερα. Μία από τις εθελοντικές οργανώσεις  που βοηθούν προς αυτή την κατεύθυνση αυτή είναι η Κοινωνική Κουζίνα Χανίων, στην οποία λειτουργεί ένα μικρό συσσίτιο στο κέντρο της πόλης στην οδό Τσουδερών.

Την Παρασκευή 1η Απριλίου 2016, οι μεταπτυχιακοί φοιτητές του ΜΑΙΧ σε συνεργασία με τον Σεφ του Ινστιτούτου και Πρόεδρο του Δικτύου Κρητικής Γαστρονομίας, ετοίμασαν ένα γεύμα (150 μερίδες), που πρόσφεραν στην Κοινωνική Κουζίνα Χανίων. Το Ινστιτούτο και οι μεταπτυχιακοί φοιτητές του, μέσω της εθελοντικής αυτής δράσης θέλουν να εκφράσουν την έμπρακτη στήριξή τους στο έργο της Κοινωνικής Κουζίνας, τη συμπαράσταση και αλληλεγγύη τους προς τους άπορους κατοίκους της πόλης μας. Είναι η δεύτερη χρονιά που η εκδήλωση αυτή έλαβε χώρα.

Στις αναμφισβήτητα δύσκολες εποχές που ζούμε, αξίζει να υποστηρίζουμε, να συμμετέχουμε και να ενισχύουμε κοινωνικές δομές που βασίζονται στις αρχές της συλλογικότητας της αλληλεγγύης και της αυτό-οργάνωσης που δραστηριοποιούνται στην ικανοποίηση των αναφαίρετων δικαιωμάτων του ανθρώπου, όπως η σίτιση, εργασία, παιδεία, υγεία. Άλλωστε, το ΜΑΙΧ, ένα διεθνές μεταπτυχιακό Ινστιτούτο με έντονο πολυπολιτισμικό χαρακτήρα, αντιμετωπίζει τη διασύνδεση του με την τοπική κοινωνία ως κύριο συστατικό των ακαδημαϊκών και ερευνητικών του δραστηριοτήτων και χαιρετίζει πρωτοβουλίες και δράσεις εθελοντισμού και κοινωνικής προσφοράς. Με τον τρόπο αυτό, το ΜΑΙΧ συμμετέχει και ενισχύει τις κοινωνικές δομές που βασίζονται στις αρχές της συλλογικής ευθύνης που ασχολούνται με την ικανοποίηση των αναφαίρετων δικαιωμάτων του ανθρώπου, όπως είναι η πρόσβαση στην σωστή διατροφή.

Μαζί με τον Σεφ του ΜΑΙΧ, κ Γιάννη Αποστολάκη, οι φοιτητές οργανώθηκαν σε μικρές ομάδες για να παρέχουν βοήθεια στην προετοιμασία του γεύματος, πάντα σε συνεργασία με το προσωπικό της κουζίνας του ΜΑΙΧ. Αποφασίστηκε να συσκευαστεί το γεύμα σε  ξεχωριστές μερίδες,  με την πεποίθηση ότι μια ατομική συσκευασία γεύματος μπορεί να δώσει κάποια αξιοπρέπεια στους αποδέκτες του, με την έννοια ότι  θα μπορέσουν να το πάρουν μαζί τους για να το φάνε σε ένα δικό τους χώρο, όπου θα υπάρχει άνεση και ιδιωτικότητα, ένα οικείο περιβάλλον που για αυτούς αποτελεί το σπίτι τους.

Η Κοινωνική Κουζίνα λειτουργεί καθημερινά στα Χανιά σε εθελοντική βάση. Διάφοροι άνθρωποι  προετοιμάζουν και μαγειρεύουν τα γεύματα στα σπίτια τους, και μετά τα μεταφέρουν στην Κοινωνική Κουζίνα την ώρα που γίνεται η διανομή. Άλλοι συλλέγουν τρόφιμα και συστατικά που μπορεί να διανεμηθούν στους δικαιούχους ή να  χρησιμοποιηθούν στην ετοιμασία γευμάτων. Η συνεισφορά του ΜΑΙΧ έγινε με παρόμοιο τρόπο. Όταν ήρθε η ώρα να διανεμηθεί το φαγητό, οι φοιτητές βοήθησαν να φορτώσουν τα πακέτα στα οχήματα, και στη συνέχεια να τα πάνε στην Κοινωνική Κουζίνα. Δεν είναι στο πνεύμα του Μεσογειακών λαών να παρέχουν κονσέρβες και κουτιά επεξεργασμένων τροφίμων για να ταΐζονται οι άποροι. Είναι πιο ανθρώπινο και σίγουρα συνυφασμένο με την κουλτούρα μας να προσφέρουμε το ίδιο είδος φαγητού που και εμείς θα προετοιμάζαμε στις κουζίνες μας.

Οι παραλήπτες των γευμάτων ξέρουν τις ώρες που λειτουργεί η Κοινωνική Κουζίνα, και οι  φοιτητές τους παρακολούθησαν όπως έφταναν. Ποιοι είναι άραγε οι άποροι των Χανίων; Γιατί δεν έχουν να φάνε σε μια τέτοια κοινωνία πλούσια σε τρόφιμα και υλικά αγαθά; Για μερικούς από τους αποδέκτες τους γεύματος, το όνειρο της μετανάστευσης δεν πήγε καλά. Οι περισσότεροι από τους παραλήπτες ήταν αλλοδαποί. Αλλά υπήρχαν και Έλληνες, άνθρωποι που έχουν καταλήξει μόνοι τους στη ζωή, άνθρωποι που ίσως δεν έχουν αρκετά έσοδα για να ανταποκριθούν στις ανάγκες της καθημερινότητας, άνθρωποι που μένουν σε σπίτια που μοιάζουν σαν τα δικά μας, αλλά ίσως δεν έχουν πια παροχή ηλεκτρικού ρεύματος λόγω χρεών, άνθρωποι που στερούνται τις δεξιότητες που είναι απαραίτητες για να μπορούν να φροντίσουν τον εαυτό τους. Η πορεία του κάθε ανθρώπου στο προσωπικό χάος που ζει έχει πολλές μορφές, και η κάθε περίπτωση είναι μοναδική. Αλλά ο ρόλος της Κοινωνικής Κουζίνας δεν είναι ρόλος δικαστή, δεν κρίνει, δεν αμφισβητεί.  Απλώς παρέχει μια υπηρεσία που είναι απαραίτητη, χωρίς δεσμεύσεις. Δεν είναι συνδεδεμένη με καμιά θρησκευτική ομάδα, εθνότητα, χρώμα και φυλή.

Οι φοιτητές του ΜΑΙΧ έμειναν έκπληκτοι όταν συνειδητοποίησαν ότι, εκτός από Έλληνες, αρκετοί από τους παραλήπτες των γευμάτων ήταν από την Μέση Ανατολή, την Βόρεια Αφρική και την Ανατολική Ευρώπη. Δηλαδή προέρχονταν από τις  ίδιες χώρες με αυτές των φοιτητών! Αρκετοί φοιτητές του ΜΑΙΧ μιλούν αραβικά. Μερικοί έρχονται από το Λίβανο, μια χώρα με αναλογία προσφύγων  1: 3 - ο πληθυσμός του Λιβάνου είναι περίπου 4,5 εκατομμύρια ενώ υπάρχουν 1,5 εκατομμύριο εγγεγραμμένοι πρόσφυγες στη χώρα αυτή που είναι περίπου λίγο μεγαλύτερη σε μέγεθος από την Κρήτη. Μερικοί έρχονται επίσης από την Παλαιστίνη - οι Παλαιστίνιοι συνθέτουν αριθμό 600.000 επί των   εγγεγραμμένων προσφύγων του Λιβάνου. Είναι προφανές ότι οι φοιτητές του ΜΑΙΧ έχουν καλή κατανόηση του προσφυγικού θέματος.

Οι φοιτητές αποκόμισαν πολλά από την προετοιμασία της προσφοράς αυτή. Ήταν γι’ αυτούς μια εμπειρία μοναδική με ιδιαίτερη συναισθηματική φόρτιση.  Η φτώχεια, η έλλειψη στέγης και η πείνα δεν είναι πάντα άμεσα ορατά, αλλά το μόνο που χρειάζεται κανείς για να τα δει είναι να ανοίξει τα μάτια του για να δει τι συμβαίνει και να αναζητήσει τρόπους για να επιλυθούν τα προβλήματα. Το σημαντικότερο είναι ότι σχεδόν όλοι μας είμαστε σε θέση να συμβάλλουμε στην άμβλυνση των επιπτώσεων τέτοιων καταστάσεων, με το δικό μας προσωπικό τρόπο.

Learn more about the Social Kitchen of Hania - Μάθετε περισσότερα για την Κοινωνική Κουζίνα Χανίων:
website/ιστοσελίδα - http://koinonikikoyzina.blogspot.gr/
facebook - http://www.facebook.com/%CE%9A%CE%BF%CE%B9%CE%BD%CF%89%CE%BD%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AE-%CE%9A%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%B6%CE%AF%CE%BD%CE%B1-%CE%A7%CE%B1%CE%BD%CE%AF%CF%89%CE%BD-386558588039898/

©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.

All things pass (Όλα περνάνε)

While clearing out my desk recently, I came across a paper issue of locavores.gr, a local food site. The May 2013 issue contained a poem by Pavlos Polychronakis, entitled The crisis has its good moments, which reads as follows (scroll down for the translation):

During the occupation, thousands died of hunger,

for under those past circumstances, times were much much harder.

Though many goods we did produce, like every other place,

to carry it from A to B, we did not have the ways.

And thus did many people die of malnutrition sadly

and due to lack of vitamins, as one more reason maybe.

But now that goods reach all of us in this world as we know it
in such short time and they are cheap, with more than enough of it,
a damned one as this crisis is, but no one here should fear it
despite the fact it threatens us, no matter how we feel it.
To put it simply, once again, our belts we all will tighten,
and from our body we will drop the excess weight that fattened.
The Cretan diet's where we turn, as we will all remember
in terms of health and money that it's good for people's welfare.
We'll go towards the pulses, peas and mama's fasolada
and lentils, chickpeas and broad beans which kept fed all Ellada.
The fruits we'd turn up noses to will come back to the table
and for our sweets and medicine, it's grape must to the rescue!
Just one spoonful of olive oil from our own Cretan produce
will feel like ten steaks bon-fillet on our developed torsos.
We'll go back to our olives, greens, whatever we can forage,
our askrolimbous, onion bulbs and spinach pies we savoured, 
dakos, xinohondro and pasta which all were home- and hand-made.
Towards fried snails with rosemary, a hint of vinegar,
and to the sweet and fiery taste of onion from Mesogeia.
With all this and some home-cured olives, cucumber and tomato
mizithra, rocket, cardamon, and lettuce and potato, 
And barley rusk made in Sfakia, we will get through with bliss
without so much as one hint of the hunger in crisis.
And when God feels like ending it, the crisis comes to pass,
but may that pseudo good life scram
and Crete's nutrition last.

All crises pass; in the more connected world that we live in, they pass more quickly.

©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.

Living below the line

You may have heard about Jack Munroe's story (from the UK) of how she found herself unemployed with a two year old son, with no food in her house. To save herself from losing her rented home, she began to sell everything in her house that she knew she didn't need, she turned off all the electricity that she felt she could do without and she had cold showers. She blogged about her life and her frugal recipes, documenting how she found food on the cheap, using the benefits she was paid until she found herself a job. 

Living do frugally is not easy, but Jack Munroe realised that with a young son to look after, if she did not prioritise and behave morally responsible, she would lose her home and no doubt her son. So she bought the healthiest food she could afford and she prepared home cooked meals for her and her son. Her story was highlighted in the BBC recently, and she has now been given a  £25,000 advance to write a recipe book. 

As I read more about her through her blog, I realised that she was motivated by her will to survive without complaining that she was not being given enough by the government to support herself and her son. I liked that about Jack: she wanted to show everyone that she was capable of standing up on her own two feet. We read a lot about people struggling on benefits, but mainly in the form of a whinge that they are not getting enough. Few people are bold enough to make public that they are trying to cope, even if it means they are going beyond the bearable. 

Jack's biggest problem was of course keeping her son and herself fed healthily on a daily basis. She was very frugal in her shopping purchases and never wasted any food. When her story became public knowledge, apart from the praise she received from some people congratulating her on her effort to make it through despite adversity, she was also castigated for her frugality, accepting a challenge to live off a pound a day on food, because many people believe that this is impossible. Sure it isn't nice, but life isn't always nice. It seems that there are some in society that take a dislike to frugal people because they are pretending to be modern-day martyrs. They even go so far as saying that frugal people who become famous for their modest lifestyle are actual;ly some form of government spy spreading state propaganda. 

When the BBC ran a series of recipes living on just £1 a day for five days, as part of a campaign by the Global Poverty Project, the article was rubbished by commentators who insisted that such a claim is untruthful because you can't compare prices between supermarkets because you won't be able to afford the transportation costs to do so, and you have to buy in bulk to eat so cheaply so you can't have spent only one pound a day but much more, and the food you buy in bulk will go offso you will throw it away, and the cooking costs are not included nor is the washing up, and so on, ad nauseum. These commentators made me realise just how prejudiced people are against frugal living which is simply not fashionable in a market-driven world where money is getting harder to come by. Excuses, excuses, excuses: maybe they don't like to hear about a person's frugal success story because it puts them in a bad light.

But that is the horrible truth about being frugal - you make do with what you have got, and you use things wisely. You don't necessarily buy in bulk and you may just chance on a frugal purchase when you are shopping. Why should food go off in the first place if you are storing it apporpriately? People who do not cook much or who have been taught to always check sell by dates are generally not well versed in home economics.

Don't we buy salt and pepper, sugar and flour, tea and coffee in bulk? Tinned and dry goods last a long time; vegetables last very well when properly stored; cheese can be stored safely too - meat and fish are the main problem, and frugal people avoid them anyway because they are the most expensive food items, or at least they eat them less often. When I'm preparing my own cheap frugal meals, they are virtually 'free' - eg eggs from my relatives, greens from the garden, frozen vegetables from our own harvests. But I appreciate that Jack Munroe (the blog writer in question) cannot do this. If I lived in an urban environment and I had those wacky supermarket offers that they have in the UK (they don't exist here), I would take a different approach to being frugal. My hosts during my recent trip to London created a good feast of a meal with organic chicken, roast potatoes in duck fat and salad for the six of us when we arrived, spending just 3 pounds - they know how to shop in the same way that Jack Monroe does. 

I'm not sure if the recipes that Jack posts on her blog could work out as cheaply for me as they did for her because we simply do not have those super-dooper discounts - but I would still supplement cheap store bought staples with my 'free' food (wild greens, herbs, fruit and veges) and my meals will cost just as little to produce. Last year, I ran a cheap'n'Greek'n'frugal section in my blog, where I proudly presented meals costing me on average 50 eurocents a serving. I was cooking for the whole family, doing just what Jack was doing: using what I had available cheaply to me to the best of my ability. 

Being frugal in this crazy money-driven world is not easy. But it can be done if you want. And if you hear of someone who tells you how they fed themselves on a home-cooked meal that cost them less than a dollar/euro/pound, they are probably not bragging: they are just saying "You can do it if you want".

Time for a blogging break so I can get over a bad case of tonsilitis and have a little rest over the holidays - I should be back by Easter Sunday.

©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.

From Athens to Papakura by Nikos Petousis

There was a documentary recently broadcast on Greek TV, which presented a snapshot of the Greeks currently residing in NZ. I hesitate to say that it presented the Greek communities of NZ, because it was a rather disjointed programme. All in all, very interesting, as I saw some familiar faces, and heard some stories from the newcomers of Greek immigrants to NZ. It's not easy to go to NZ as a Greek, as some desperate people believe - you need to know the criteria very well for entry.

Because the programme did not present the Greek community as I knew it, I did not feel much nostalgia as I watched it (so far, it has been broadcast in two parts: you can see them here (for Part 1) and here (for Part 2) even though I had been born, raised and educated among this community. Only towards the end of the second part of the documentary was I moved in any way by the feelings expressed in the show, when Mr Nikos Petousis was interviewed.

Born in 1936 (only 1-3 years younger than my parents), he came to NZ in 1956. Greek immigrants at this time were often poorly educated, unskilled and often from rural backgrounds, making Mr Petousis an oddity for his time (the 1950s), as he explained in the documentary:

"I had just obtained my engineer's licence... I was ready to embrace the earth, the world, a 19-year old youth, with a diploma which I regarded as having a very important value, and my good luck finally brought me here, finally I had left Greece. And that is the thing: with a passion and the utter need to leave Athens, where would you go? No one really knew, a young person doesn't know where he's going to go, all the world feels like it belongs to him..."

Mr Petousis had expressed a higher need in Maslow's hierarchy of needs that he was looking to fulfil in his desire to leave Greece. This is not the same need that my parents had felt when they decided to migrate. My parents came to NZ to work in the jobs that New Zealanders didn't want to do (cleaning, factory work, cooking), whereas Mr Petousis was a trained professional looking to work in his field. It is this factor that differentiates Mr Petousis from most other migrants: he sought a new place to build a new life as a professional away from the grinding poverty of an urban warzone, whereas my parents left a rural environment as unskilled labourers to seek paid urban employment opportunities.

A quick internet search revealed that Mr Petousis had recently published his memoirs. I decided to read his story (it is available as an e-book - it's cheaper on amazon.com than on amazon.co.uk). You never know what you will read in a memoir: perhaps a glorified account of a simple life, a pompous narration of ordinary events told by someone with an inflated ego. My verdict is that Mr Petousis' story is so unique and his descriptions of grinding poverty and hunger so gut-wrenching and nothing like the way poverty and hunger is perceived in crisis-ridden Greece today, that everyone should read it this book to put a few things into perspective. Above all, it is the story of a man with a very strong Greek identity, who did not want to live in Greece, and he had decided this from a very early stage in his life. A Greek man who did not fit into Greek society, a Greek soul and spirit who knew he had no place in the land of his ancestors; I recall the words of Harriet Ann Jacobs: "It is a sad feeling to be afraid of one's native country."

Mr Petousis' harrowing experiences as a young child caught up in the Nazi crossfire of Athens (and the subsequent Greek civil war with its devastating consequences in Athens and Northern/Mainland Greece) do not make light reading. But he has a way of downplaying the severity of the conditions under which he grew up: he tells his story as one of survival, as someone who was determined to come through this destruction alive. No matter how much I would like to think of my parents' life as difficult when they were young children in Crete during WW2, I cannot equate the fear of losing one's life with a subsistence lifestyle. My father never had to sell cigarettes at brothels, while my mother never ate filthy orange peels lying in the gutter to stave off hunger. While Mr Petousis was sailing to NZ, he abhorred queuing for his self-service economy class meals: it reminded him too much of the last time he queued for food - in some cases, the food would run out and he wouldn't get any.

Despite his origins, Mr Petousis had a taste for finer things in life. He knew they existed because he had viewed them from up close in Athens - but he never experienced them. Take ice-cream for example. As an engineering graduate, he came across some American soldiers guarding a building. Although he didn't know English, with the help of some imaginative gestures, he understood that they wanted him to go buy them a couple of ice-creams. They gave him the money, and he brought them the cones, as well as the change. They began to lick their ice-creams as he watched them, but they never gave him any, nor did they give him a tip. At that moment, Mr Petousis battled with his conscience - wouldn't it have been just as righteous to take the money and never return to those soldiers? This dilemma plagued him for many years after the incident occurred.

On arriving to the town where he would be hosted by a New Zealand WW2 veteran, he came off the train, where he saw a sign on what looked like a chicken coop, stating that he had arrived in a place called Papakura. His image of Papakura was not the one he was now looking at. He thought he was coming to the land of his dreams, but on seeing where he arrived, he realised that he was not the country of his dreams: eventually, he came to understand that he had arrived in a country where he could build the life of his dreams, if only he wanted to.

Mr Petousis was an avid fan of classical music, and he came to love theatre and opera, hardly a pasttime of the average Greek migrant of the time. He knew the history of his country very well, and made a concerted effort to connect his modern life with the ancient world of his ancestors, despite the glaring differences between the two societies. He kept clear of any religious groups, as he had seen the destructive power that the church had over his own family. Despite acting as honorary consul for Greece in the Auckland region, he purposely kept himself away from any kind of Greek migrant community as he felt that he had nothing in common with them. They had come to NZ to continue living like Greeks, never fully grasping the opportunities that lay before them in a country that could let them be who they wanted to be.

As he later states in the documentary, gone are the days when an unskilled migrant can pack up and leave with just the clothes on his back, to work in manual labour in another country; the world economy has little need for them in our days All Greeks migrating now are highly educated, with skills and qualifications obtained not just in Greek universities but also in foreign countries. He has this to say about them:

"Inside me, I grieve for these people, they were the ones living a wonderful life in Greece, and now they have felt the need to leave, to go - go where? To New Zealand! If you go a little further than that, you fall into the ocean, the Antartctic, it's so far away, we are at the end of the world."

In a sense, this illustrates the desperation felt among Greeks as they leave their country. The difficulties are not immediately apparent to them; this knowledge sinks in much later. It is not easy to return home, even for a short period, a brief holiday, even in modern times. In a sense, the journey is a one-way trip.

I never met Mr Petousis during my years in NZ, so I am honoured to have met him so many years later, electronically through his book. Unlike him, however, I have chosen to live in Greece, but I am lucky in one major respect. I have come to a country that has been completely reshaped since the crisis. Forget the post-war period, forget EU entry - the crisis is the defining moment that Greece had to change.

We generally cannot go back to the past: only last night, the Greek PM Andonis Samaras said that "Yesterday doesn't fit in our tomorrow". Greek people need to be constantly reminded of the truth in this statement. I feel that these days, with the internet and so much more global connection, we can be who we want to be. Even in crisis-ridden Greece, we really can do this. Imagine a Greek telling the world publicly over the WWW not to buy Greek strawberries like I did in yesterday's post. I fear to think what would have happened in the cushy state-imposed past when a person spoke her mind.

We don't have to accept anything; we can express our anger in a way that we never could, and more importantly, we have support for this, whereas we never did before. I truly believe that the future holds good promise for Greece, because Greece has no other choice but to move forward. It is hard for most people to see this now. But Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will Athens be.

©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.

Hungry (Πεινασμένος)

Every day on the TV news during the Christmas period, food was the main focus in most items: how people are donating to food banks, how the poor, needy and homeless are being fed in soup kitchens, and how people are asking churches to look after their children because they don't have enough money to buy food to nourish them. The stories are all from Athens: the worst-hit area is the Western suburbs (the poorest and most polluted part of Athens), an area I know well as I worked there before moving to Crete, choosing also to live in the area instead of following my colleagues every night, back into the glitzy facade of central Athens (beneath the veneer, that too was grimy). The Western suburbs of Athens are full of working class people who have worked very hard to maintain their dignity in a city that never really allowed them to rise. These same people are now suffering the loss of what they strove to maintain: their dignity, as they search, not for ways to keep themselves sheltered, but ways to feed themselves and their families. Urban areas suffer the most in times of crisis because they cannot be self-sufficient to any degree. As a priest said in one of those reports, "all that these people have left for them is a house and a car, and neither of those can put food on your plate."

A stroll off the beaten track in Hania led to my chancing on an event staged by a work colleague. She was holding a 'soup party' in a very quiet narrow car-free zone in the old town of Hania.

The situation is now very dire. Teachers are now noticing that children are fainting in class, being sent to school without breakfast, not even a glass of milk, and their lunchboxes contain very little food and/or very low-quality food (one person remarked that when a child opened its lunchbox, he saw just one piece of toast bread in it). A milk-at-school campaign is now being started to help the children most badly in need of nutrituous food. Soup kitchens abound now, but this is not really going to solve the problem because people cannot really be fed nutritiously, even from soup kitchens. What malnourished people need is high-energy food full of proteins; but what they're most likely getting is hi-carb food - filling, but fattening, which is not really appropriate for a sedentary body like many homeless and unemployed people's.

Ilektra is a forester, and her partner is a cook. They presented a range of soothingly warm soups (pumpkin, greens, beetroot and onion) outside Ilektra's friend's arts and crafts store. 

Because soup kitchens have to cater for a large number of people, they cannot cook meals that require a lot of preparation in terms of vegetable chopping. What's most likely to go into a soup kitchen meal is a lot of beans, rice and pasta, and little fresh food, cheese or meat. Food collection points ask people to place non-perishables in the bins and the food isn't collected on a daily basis, because it isn't easy to do this. I recently felt guiltywhen I placed a packet of pasta into a food collection bin at the supermarket, which was filled with other dry goods, like flour, sugar, condensed milk, etc. I know that I can afford to give better quality food. But I had no choice. I could not place anything other than dry packeted goods. I couldn't bring my excess garden-grown produce to it, as it would go off. And what about all those oranges that fall off our trees every year? It's doubtful that the hungry and homeless have eaten very fresh food in a while, but even in that case, there are some foods that the very hungry cannot eat. An apple for example would do much more good for an empty stomach than an orange.

Ilektra was motivated to do this by her desire to share good food and drink (wine and tsikoudia were also offered) in the Christmas spirit. Note that she did not provide food like a soup kitchen - she just enjoyed the idea of sharing her food and called her event a 'soupa party'.   

Foraging has always been a favorite pasttime of both rural and urban Greeks, although admittedly, it is mainly the domain of people who live near areas where they can forage. But recently, I have seen people foraging in areas where no one would have done so in the recent past - near roadsides and urban areas, ie places that are more likely to be polluted by car fumes and animal faeces. But that's all that is available to some people: if you don't live near fields or pastureland, and you can't afford the transport costs, you will forage at any place where you know you can find food. This is in fact what happened during Greece's famine in WW2 when the Nazis confiscated all food resources for their troops' supplies and blocked Athenians' access to food, thereby causing starvation which led to death in the coldest harshest winter of that period. Athenians took to the hills that surrounded them, stripping the earth bare of foliage, cutting down trees for firewood.

The atmosphere at the 'soupa party'. 

The Greek Orthodox Church has graciously extended a helping hand to people in need of food. Nice idea, I thought to myself. But that is not going to really help alleviate the ordinary Athenian's hunger and the problem of feeding a hungry society, as I recently discussed on my facebook page:

• Organically Cooked It sounds like a nice gesture, but I'm afraid that is all it is, it won't make a difference to the Greek food crisis (this is my opinion, but I feel sure about this). 
  The problem is that people need to live NEAR their land to be able to work it to produce food on it - if you live far away, you need petrol and time to get to it, but if you have a job, you don't have time to work on your land; if you are unemployed, you don't have the money to get to your land. The church owns a lot of land and doesn't want the state to make it pay taxes on its land - ie it wants to be an exception to the rule that is forcing all Greeks to be taxed on their land ownership as of 1/1/2013. The church is saying that it will allow people to cultivate freely on it, but that is akin to saying "come work it for me for free". I believe there is no such thing as a free lunch, especially these days in Greece where not even the bones and off-cuts of meat cut at the supermarket butcher counter are given away for free (I used to ask for them and cook them with cheap pasta to feed our dog). Now, people are buying them to turn into soup (it's the cheapest way to get yourself some protein).
  I cant speak for the church, or tell it what to do, but I feel it's pretending to be generous. I know how hard it is for me and my husband to visit our fields regularly given that we have a regular day job and our kids are young and need our attention. When we go, we often find things missing in them (ie someone has come along and picked up firewood, or foraged, or harvested our own crops). I hold no grudges - if people are hungry, in need or whatever, then I guess this happens, especially when fields are located far from inhabited areas. Ours are only 10 or so km away, but we can't drive there and back every day when we have other jobs, and we have no place to stay overnight to get more work done on them over a weekend, for example.
  In a nutshell,I don't think the church's offer will provide the soluton to the Greek food crisis.

Look at the homeless people being fed a New Year's lunch in the BBC link I mention above: do they look as though they are in a position to be able to work someone else's land to provide for their own food needs?

I hosted New Year's lunch this year. The vasilopita was made with our own supplies of oranges and olive oil, the eggs were given to me by relatives, the fruit and vegetables were all our own supplies, as was the wine; but we don't raise beef (for the moussaka mince), or goat (for the tsigariasto stew), or pork (for the tigania) - nor do we grow our own wheat to grind into flour. No money, no honey.  

It's at times like this that you realise you are really useless and your actions will not have the desired effect. Teaching a man to fish is better than giving a man a fish, but when he's hungry and lives far away from the sea, a fishing rod will be useless. He needs that fish badly. But what people really need at the moment is not just food, but a job. They need money. We are not self-sufficient. Neither can we be truly self-sufficient. Trying to fend for ourselves as our ancestors did in the past means we are condemned to an antiquated lifestyle that does not allow us to advance. If you really had to pick every piece of fruit you ate yourself, and you had to keep guard over your land like a hawk to stop people stealing the fruits of your labour, that's all you're going to do in life: feed yourself. Isn't life worth more than that? If the church really wants to help hungry people, well, how about providing jobs on the land (the church's land, mind you), and paying them money, instead of just letting them work their land? Can unemployed Athenians (ie the main group suffering from a lack of food) really be expcted to cultivate land far away from their apartments? I don't think so.

If there is a food crisis in Greece at the moment, it all has to do with the distribution of food. Rural areas grow more than they need, urban centres can't access the freefall; rural people tend to have their own supplies of a range of products, urban people need to buy everything, but don't have the money to do this now; transportation costs cannot always be met for food to be distributed to those that need it, on time before it perishes. It's not a lack of resources that is stopping Greeks from being able to feed themselves - it's a lack of coordination, and the high transport costs.

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Tiding it through

The economic crisis has wreaked havoc on society mainly by the frightening effect is has had on many people, if we are to judge all the reports that we hear - very often in Greece - about people fleeing from it. We don't really know if they are going to a better place but the feedback we get about them is that they are going to a place which is not in crisis, which sounds incongruous because the crisis is a global one.

Two-day-old boiled beetroot leaves and bulbs, two-day-old roast meatballs in tomato sauce, one-day-old spinach rice: fresh food that has been appropriately cooked and stored does not go off after the day it was cooked - it simply becomes more flavourful. The cheap plonk went well with my delicious home-cooked meal, made by my own hands.

I suppose it's easy for me to say this, as I sit in my office at work, or in my comfortable home in rural Crete. "You don't need to flee," is what I hear being directed at me, as I am wearing my old clothes, driving my old car, buying velcro to sew onto my kids' hand-me-down coats to avoid buying new ones, folding away clothes instead of ironing them, eating my one-to-two-day-old well-cooked food, heating my home with wood, among other activities often associated with 'poverty'.

 Έρχονται κάτι στιγμές Certain times are coming
Που θαρρώ πως τα 'χω δει όλα  When I thought I had seen it all
... Και στο όνομα ετούτων των στιγμών And in the name of those moments
Show must go on
Και ίσως κάποτε τελειώσει And maybe at some time it will finish
Όταν κι ο πάγος στην Ανταρκτική θα έχει λιώσει Like when the ice on the Antarctic will have melted
Έρχονται κάτι στιγμές που λες Certain times are coming when you say
Το δυο χιλιάδες δώδεκα νομίζω In 2012 I think
Που θα σε κάνουν να παραδεχτείς σαν κλαις That they will make you admit as you cry
Τον φαύλο κύκλο μου ποτίζω "I'm watering my own vicious circle"
Έρχονται κάτι στιγμές Certain times are coming
Κι ότι έχτιζα αιώνες τώρα το γκρεμίζω And whatever I built over the centuries I am know knocking down
Και στ' όνομα ετούτων των στιγμών And in the name of those moments
Show must go on

(Sung by Haris Alexiou, lyrics by the late Manolis Rasoulis)

No, I don't need to flee, because I saw what happened to those who did flee before me. They came back to a Greece that was better than the one they left. It was never Utopia, but it was pretty good value. Why would I want to leave my country now when I know that things will only be better in the future? It should be obvious to most by now that it is part of the Greek mentality to flee in times of adversity, while this trait is less inherent in other cultures who face a similar predicament:

Some 501,000 foreigners had moved to Germany, the EU's dominant economy, between January and June 2012 - a rise of 15% compared with the same period last year, the data showed. The number of Greeks moving to the country rose by 78%. The figure for Portugal and Spain went up by 53% over the same period.

It's not just Greek people who are leaving, it's Greek businesses too:

[In contrast,] Greek firms and national businesses, which enlarged successfully here and assured themselves great profit and wealth, are making hippity-hoppity jumps on the first turn of the economic cycle. For example, the decisions of the 3E and FAGE companies to transfer their economic headwuarters, the former to Switzerland and the latter to Luxembourg, are indicative and do not provoke the best feelings among... the Greek people.

This is in sharp contrast to the number of multi-nationals presently entering the Greek market. Cosco, a Chinese firm that operates part of the port of Pireas in Athens, has made a deal with Hewlett-Packard that the latter's goods will be entering Europe not through the traditional port of Rotterdam in Holland, but through Greece. Unilever is also proposing something similar, with its intention to introduce 110 of its products to Europe through Greece, stating strategic reasons.

Five years from now, Greece will be a much nicer country than it already is, and in a much better economic position than it is at present. Ten years from now, the Greeks who left will be thinking about wanting to move back. Although Greece will be a much nicer country then, it will also be a different kind of Greece; what may have seemed easy to do in the past (return to the mother country, live off inherited land in an inherited house, planting tomatoes and sipping ouzo in the patio) will now not be so easy. Nor will the Greeks tiding out the crisis in their own country be so willing to make it so easy for the deserters, once this crisis business tides through. And it will: the crisis won't last forever, just like all previous crises, because no crises last forever. Wars finish when there is nothing left to destroy, which means that starting up again from scratch is the only thing left.

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The way we are: Poor, not hungry (Φτωχοί, όχι πεινασμένοι)

On Easter Sunday morning, I made an omelet with half an egg and the butter that was sticking on the sides of the plastic tub which I had bought it in. The egg was a remnant of yesterday's kalitsounia-making, an Easter tradition of Crete: these little pies are brushed with egg, so you will invariably end up with some egg remaining, as it is a little difficult to get the perfect formula so an not to have any filling/filo/egg remaining. The butter (an expensive imported variety that I had bought on sale) made the house smell like a French kitchen, which did not escape my husband's notice.

The omelette didn't get a chance to be photographed - it went as quickly as these kalitsounia did once they were cooked (my little pies with home-made filo are at their pre-cooked stage).

The omelette was not being cooked for us to eat. It was Easter Sunday yesterday. We hadn't had meat for the last ten days of Lent! A lamb roast was in the oven, pork chops were on the BBQ, and we were waiting for our friends to come for lunch. I had cooked this omelette for the dog, as a way to avoid wasting food. But the dog didn't get a chance to sample my French cuisine. Husband had it all.

So butter does indeed taste good. But good butter is very expensive, much more expensive than olive oil where I live. So I can't afford to make this omelette as often as I can use olive oil. But that's OK - I'm not going to be hungry, I reminded myself, all the while pretending to be comforted by the thought that butter is not as good for your health as olive oil is. Being poor does not equate with being hungry.

Alki Zei, a former political refugee and one of Greece's most respected living writers, is as old as my mother-in-law. She lived through the WW2 famine in Greece, which she recently spoke about in the Greek online LIFO magazine, where she warned of the severe consequences of division in society - the traumas of the Greek civil war live on:

"Την περίοδο της Χούντας είχαμε αρχίσει να ενωνόμαστε. Ακόμη κι εγώ, που μέχρι τότε έλεγα ότι δε θα μπορούσα να κάνω παρέα με έναν δεξιό, έπαψα να τους ξεχωρίζω. Αυτό που θέλω να πω είναι ότι τότε έγινε μια συμφιλίωση. Ας μην αρχίσουμε λοιπόν πάλι τα ίδια. Είναι πολύ πληγωμένη αυτή η χώρα. Φοβάμαι το διχασμό. Είναι χειρότερος ακόμη και από την οικονομική κρίση." "During the Junta, we had begun to become unified. Even I, who until then could not make friends with a right-activist, stopped distinguishing them from myself. What I want to say is that there was a kind of reconciliation then. Let's not begin the same old things again. This country is very traumatised. I fear division. It is even worse than the economic crisis."

This is the biggest crisis in Greece at the moment, political division, not how much money is one's pocket. Alki Zei has been through much more difficult times, including real hunger. This dark period in Greece's contemporary history, in a sense, belittles the crisis that Greece is going through now:

"Είναι βαριά αυτά που ζούμε, δε μπορώ να πω. Επειδή όμως έχω περάσει πόλεμο, κατοχή, δικτατορία, εξορία, δε με βαραίνει τόσο αυτό που συβαίνει. Ξέρω ότι όταν θα βγω από το σπίτι μου δεν υπάρχει περίπτωση να με συλλάβουν ή να πυροβολήσουν. Κατανοώ όμως τους ανθρώπους που αισθάνονται ένα τεράστιο βάρος. Κατανοώ τους ανθρώπους που είναι απελπισμένοι. Το μόνο που με ενοχλεί είναι ο παραλληλισμός της σημερινής κατάστασης με την Κατοχή και τον Εμφύλιο. Θέλω να σας διαβεβαιώσω πως τίποτα δεν συγκρίνεται με την πείνα της Κατοχής." "These are heavy times that we are living, I don't doubt that. But I have lived during war, occupation, dictatorship, exile, and they don't weigh so heavily on me. I know that when I leave my house, I will not be arrested or shot. But I understand the people that feel this huge burden. I understand the people who are desperate. The only thing that annoys me is the comparison of today's situation with the [Nazi] Occupation and the Civil War. I want to make it clear that nothing can be compared with the hunger of the Occupation."

The 'hunger' that  Greece faces nowadays cannot be compared to the hunger that people suffered during WW2. We are basically not a hungry race. Yes, we are poor, but we don't have to be hungry. I was recently reminded of this when I added to the food collection box at my children's school. "Make sure it's got a long shelf-life," my daughter warned me, as she had been instructed to by the school principal.

The supermarket bag that I gave her to add to the box (with pasta, rice, sugar, flour and lentils) remained there for a week, along with a few other bags of donations. I know how difficult distance is when distributing food, but if people were really in need of food, those bags would have been removed earlier. Those items were still lying in the box until the school closed for the Easter holidays (ie a month).

This was bought home to me recently when one of my readers who is holidaying in Crete at the moment had contacted me before she came, asking me about what she can do for the 'poor' people of Crete. "Go and eat in the Greek tavernas and buy local stuff," I replied. She wanted to know if it's useful to bring clothes that she didn't need any more, to give to a church or other organisation that passed them on to the poor.

What should I have told her? To pack old clothes and cans of food in her suitcase?! Most people here have clothes, despite the fact that may not be new, or they may not be the latest fashion, with a few signs of wear and tear on them. My children are among them. I myself give all their hand-me-downs to other children who need them (via a church group), and there are also now council places where people give their old stuff. (I have no idea how they distribute this stuff.) Packaged food eg pasta, rice, sugar, flour, etc sounds good in theory. Fresh food (eg vegetables, meat and cheese) goes off if it doesn't get to the right places quickly enough - but that's what people in the lower income bracket would really like. They don't want - and don't need - more stodge, which gives rise to obesity. The fattest people in the world are not necessarily the richest!

The way the world is being shown the Greek crisis on TV is highly misleading. The Guardian has even created a regular column called "Greece on the breadline". But Greece isn't a starving nation, as it was in the WW2 period. Hers is a money-poor and resource-rich crisis. In Athens (like any other capital city in the world), you will see the worst cases of the crisis; this is often what is mainly shown on television. But if you come to Crete, you will wonder where the crisis is hiding.

In some of the worst moments of the Greek crisis, we have seen people organising themselves against its effects: there are places where people can pick up some food, old clothes and shoes, as well as some basic medication. If I felt desperate, I know where I can find all this for free. What I can't find for free is someone to pay my bills. As we say in Greek: "To φαγητό είναι το λιγότερο." (Food is the least of our worries.) We may be poor, but we aren't hungry; I personally refuse to be beaten in that respect. Alki Zei also believes we have not reached a state of famine in this crisis - we have reached a state of ultimate change:

"Αλλά ευτυχώς, δεν έχουμε φτάσει ακόμη στην πείνα της Κατοχής κι ούτε πιστεύω ότι θα φτάσουμε. Η οικονομική εξαθλίωση είναι μια μορφή βίας επειδή σε αλλάζει. Αλλάζει τον χαρακτήρα σου. Σε αλλοιώνει. Σε αλλοτριώνει... Η φτώχεια το ξυπνάει. Όπως είπα και πριν, η φτώχεια τον αλλάζει τον άνθρωπο. Από την άλλη, όσοι περάσαμε την πείνα της Κατοχής, δεν αλλοτριωθήκαμε. Ξέρετε γιατί; Επειδή εμείς είχαμε να αντιμετωπίσουμε συγκεκριμένο εχθρό αλλά ταυτόχρονα, είχαμε και πολλές ελπίδες. Σήμερα, ο εχθρός δεν είναι συγκεκριμένος και η ελπίδα είναι σχεδόν ανύπαρκτη." "But fortunately, we haven't yet reached the hunger of the Occupation, nor do I believe that we will reach it. Economic misery is a form of violence because it changes you. It changes your character. It makes you change for the worse. It alienates you... Poverty awakens this feeling. As I said before, poverty changes man. On the other hand, those who went through the hunger of the Occupation were not alienated. Do you know why? Because we had to face the enemy, but at the same time, we had many hopes. Today, the enemy is not specific and hope is almost non-existent. "

Let's not forget the words of Alki Zei: we are free people, who are presently living in a mundane world. There is hope, but we each have to find it for ourselves.

"Είναι πολύ δύσκολο να είναι κανείς αισιόδοξος σήμερα. Ίσως βοηθούν τα βιβλία, το θέατρο, οι μουσικές. Για μένα μια κάποια λύση είναι να βρίσκονται οι άνθρωποι μεταξύ τους. Να συζητάνε. Αυτό κάνω κι εγώ με τους φίλους μου, οι οποίοι είναι νεότεροι από μένα. Ο μόνος συνομίληκος φίλος μου είναι ο Τίτος Πατρίκιος. Ξέρετε, η εγγονή μου λέει συχνά: «Η γιαγιά μου είναι πολύ έξυπνη επειδή κάνει παρέα με νεότερους από εκείνη»." "It's very difficult these days for someone to be optimistic. Maybe books will hep, theatre, music. For me, one solution is for people to find themselves with other people. To discuss it. That's what I do with my friends, who are younger than me. My only friend who is the same age as I am is Titos Patrikios. You know, my granddaughter often tells me: «My grandmother is very clever because she keeps company with people who are younger than her.»"

Alki Zei is a true Greek role model that inspires hope in Greek people's souls. You can read all of Alki Zei's interview with LIFO here.

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Cheap and frugal (Φθηνό και οικονομικό)

The concept of frugal food recently gripped the food-related sections of the mass media. In the UK, scientists (not cooks or nutritionists!) recently resurrected the toast sandwich, which is supposedly a very cheap nutritious meal, providing you with enough calories to fortify yourself without it being too fattening (as long as you don't eat more than one of these), made with just three slices of bread - a slice of toasted bread, buttered and seasoned, tucked into two slices of untoasted bread. Apparently, it costs 7.5p and yields 300 calories - very cheap* and very filling - but wholly unappealing.

The whole concept has been borne out of the global economic climate. It's nothing new: bread (not necessarily with marg) is often what sustains the poor all over Europe, but should be viewed with caution, as George Orwell's experiences tell us, in Paris...:

You discover what it is like to be hungry. With bread and margarine in your belly, you go out and look into the shop windows. Everywhere there is food insulting you in huge, wasteful piles; whole dead pigs, baskets of hot loaves, great yellow blocks of butter, strings of sausages, mountains of potatoes, vast Gruyere cheeses like grindstones... You discover that a man who has gone even a week on bread and margarine is not a man any longer, only a belly with a few accessory organs... Have you noticed how bread tastes when you have been hungry for a long time? Cold, wet, doughy—like putty almost. (George Orwell, 1933, Down and Out in Paris and London)

The budget traveller's hotel breakfast doesn't change much from London to Paris - except in the freshness and shape of the bread served. No need to tell you which photograph represents which city.

... and London:

... men... slightly underfed, but kept going by the tea-and-two-slices which the Londoner swallows every two hours... his cheeks had lanked and had that greyish, dirty in the grain look that comes of a bread and margarine diet... two years of bread and margarine had lowered his standards hopelessly. He had lived on this filthy imitation of food till his own mind and body were compounded of inferior stuff. It was malnutrition and not any native vice that had destroyed his manhood... Food, to him, had come to mean simply bread and margarine—the eternal tea-and-two-slices, which will cheat hunger for an hour or two... a ration which is probably not even meant to be sufficient... The result is that nearly every tramp is rotted by malnutrition; for proof of which one need only look at the men lining up outside any casual ward. (George Orwell, 1933, Down and Out in Paris and London)

Freshly baked bread and olive oil make a hearty Greek snack any time of the day. My kids like this kind of snack in the evening. They toast thick country-style bread and pour olive oil over it, sprinkled with a little oregano and a little lemon juice. The bread is dense, crunchy on the outside, soft inside. This kind of bread meal probably won't be considered cheap in Northern European countries, where freshly baked bread is regarded as a 'gourmet', 'artisanal' product and olive oil is an expensive import. Pre-sliced bread is unsuitable for this kind of snack.

Bread and oil are considered staples in Greece, but not in the same form as presented in the bread-and-marg meal: in Greece, spongey square mass-produced slices of bread are only considered edible in the form of a toasted sandwich filled with ham and cheese (at the very least). If this were ever to be presented to someone in Greece with the ham and cheese replaced by bread (and I wouldn't want to be the one to do it), the recipient would probably (and rightly) think of their host as completely lacking in social graces. Even the poorest Greeks right at this moment would laugh at the thought of such food being dubbed a meal. Moreover, Greeks do not resort to other commonly regarded cheap meals in the UK, such as tinned baked beans (~12p per 200g serving) or Chinese bowl noodles (~11p per packet). Again, these cost (much) more to buy in Greece, because, like the sliced-bread lunch, such convenience food has never been regarded as a real meal. (I bet many/most Greeks wouldn't know what to do with the tin/packet int he first place.) In the Greek price comparison sites, they aren't even listed, which shows that they aren't considered a common shopping item in Greece.

 

Above: Frugal meals in our house are very common because they make use of whatever is growing in the garden, which is what a lot of our meals are based on, supplemented by cheap store-bought carbohydrates like pasta and rice. Rice parcels can be made throughout the year with different seasonal leaves and herbs. Right: summer - zucchini flowers, vine leaves and tomatoes. Left: winter - squash flowers, wild-growing sorrel and chinese leaves from our garden (the seeds were a present from a friend). Nothing is truly 'free', but it can be considered as very economical.
Below: Lemon-cured olives collected from local trees, garden-fresh radishes and roasted peppers in olive oil, slow-roasted pork (the cheapest meat on the Greek market - Greeks generally eat less meat now) with freshly harvested potatoes from a friend's garden - a typical Sunday meat meal in our house. It is both frugal and sumptuous.

Frugal food means different things to different people, according to where they live and what their situation is. Urban dwellers' meal choices could theoretically be the ones containing the most variety because of the choices made available to the masses, but to have such variety on their table, they need to pay for it: they are in that difficult position of, generally speaking, needing to buy all their food needs, so their idea of frugal food is no doubt ruled by the contents of their wallets. Discount supermarkets are preferred to the corner store, with people using the street market (in Greece this is known as 'laiki' - λαϊκή) more often. In rural areas, frugal meal choices often combine great variety with high quality, depending on what's growing in the garden, the trees and the fields. There is an element of truth when they say "Το φαγητό είναι το λιγότερo"** in conjunction with the crisis. Their only restriction is that they must produce it themselves - for rural people, this comes naturally.

Despite Asian fare being considered the cheapest kind of restaurant meal in other European countries, in Greece, this kind of meal costs much more than a cheap taverna meal. But with the abundance of fresh ingredients available to the rural Cretan, even international cuisine can become standard fare at a miminum cost. Left: onion bhaji, garden-fresh sauteed chinese leaves (the seeds were a treasured present from a friend) with Greek cured meat (lountza - a kind of Greek bacon: a little goes a long way), and eggplant fried rice. Right: boiled rice, stir-fry chicken with black beans, and sauteed chinese leaves. Frugal daily meals consist of some kind of bean dish twice a week - but it's only cooked once: the second time we eat it, it will be a leftover from the same cooking session. Frugal meals mean being economical from many aspects: money, energy and time all count. 

Greeks now earn less money and are required to pay more special taxes, often with little warning given, under the threat of having the power disconnected if they don't cough up. What we often took for granted has now come under heavy scrutiny. In the past, fruit fell off the trees and onto the ground - this rarely happens now (it's harvested before it falls). The four most oft-discussed topics we hear being talked about concern what heating fuel we use (this one tops the list), which system heats our water supply (ie do we have solar panels, and is our water heater connected to the central heating system), what's growing in our garden these days and whether the latest tax bill has come yet. 

 Heating fuel has now become very expensive, so most people in Hania are now investing in fireplaces or indoor wood-burning ovens/heaters. This is our pile of firewood - the heater will be purchased soon.

We also hear stories about food insecurity, as they apply to other people: Άλλοι πεινάνε - καλά είμαστε εδώ***. This pretty much sums up city life for me: it was never really sustainable. Frugality is nothing new to most rural dwellers. They've been living in crisis mode most of their lives, well before the global economic crisis even hit the news. They've never thought of any part of their income as 'disposable' - to them, that part was always called 'savings'.

A meal out is definitely out for now (pun not intended) - when we eat 'out', it's usually a cheap and tasty souvlaki every now and then: YA! near the Hania town hall sells them at 2 euro per pork gyro and 2.20 euro for chicken, beef or kebab.

Πενία τέχνας κατεργάζεται: "the need for survival (ie hunger) creates ways of survival", the Greek form of the proverb 'make, do and mend'.

*The same meal in Hania costs about 18 euro-cents (twice the price of its British variant): LIDL sliced bread costs E1.19/20 slices and E1.59/28 slices (the same bread could possibly be bought more cheaply from another supermarket).
**"Food is the least of our worries." 
***"Others are hungry - we're fine here." 

*** *** *** 

Stale bread is never thrown out in our house (and probably not in other Greeks' houses now, either). Apart from warming it up (it softens this way) and spreading it with oil or butter, it is used in the mixture for biftekia (meat patties) and skordalia, a garlicky dip. The crusts are removed from stale slices of traditional bakery bread (it can be made with stale mass-produced bread too), which are soaked just a little so as to soften them and make them easy to blend with garlic, salt, vinegar and oil. I used a mixed-grain bread to make mine (pictured, above right), and left the crusts for dipping. This cheap and frugal bread dish is simple to make, and forms a staple part of a lenten meal, especially on Palm Sunday. The dip can also be made with boiled potato (pictured, above left) when there's no stale bread at hand. 

It may sound like the Greeks are eating bread with bread in this way - but again, skorthalia is never served on its own: in fact, it's traditionally accompanied by boiled beetroot and fried fish. It's all a matter of identity, not just a case of a more refined cuisine: you eat what you are.

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Poverty or hunger (Φτώχια ή πείνα)

Greek people are about to decide their future for themselves. Choices generally made by politicians - to be a part of the eurozone, to use the euro currency, to be bailed out by more loans - have now been dealt to us through an upcoming referendum. It feels a little like the meaning of 'democracy' has been put back into this good Greek word. According to Michalis Angelopoulos, president of European Movement in Greece, "the (Greek Prime Minister's) announcement transfers directly to the citizens of Greece the political responsibility for dilemmas like, 'drachma or euro', 'eurozone or marginalisation', 'poverty or hunger'."

I put this dilemma up as my status update on my facebook page, and got some interesting reactions: Isn't poverty the same as hunger? Where's the choice involved there? Doesn't one cause the other? Aren't they interrelated? Are't they both really really bad? I didn't realise the possible confusion in the meaning of this phrase, most likely because I live in the Greek countryside. For me to be hungry here, even when I am poor, someone must be taking away my food, which was the case during WW2 when Greeks were hungry (the Nazis confiscated it to feed their army).

In Greece, you can be poor, but not hungry. Greece isn't like other poor countries with little or no resources; in fact, it is rich in resources, but simply lacking in money. This is basically the same situation that Greece was in in the 1960s. At that time, there was a lot of poverty, meaning people did not have much money. A lot of Greeks were living in rural poverty at a time when the urban drift began to take place. But they weren't hungry: in Crete, for example, most of the rural dwellers were producing their own food needs.

My mother lived in the Cretan countryside all her life until the early 1960s when she went to Athens where she spent a few weeks learning English and (kind of) training to be a hotel chambermaid, just before her departure to New Zealand, where she worked as a cleaning lady at Fielding Agricultural High School. Her previous job had been olive picking. She waited patiently to be paid by the landlord of the fields, who got himself declared bankrupt (does this ring a bell?) and she never got paid. Already in her early 30s, being the eldest of five children - three of them unmarried daughters, which was considered a curse at the time - she decided that she did not want to be poor any more. 


My father left the Cretan countryside for Athens at about the same time as my mother. Nota bene: he didn't want to leave Crete. He felt pushed into doing it because his sister's family had gone to Athens and they told him that there were jobs there. In a sense, he did not feel poor where he was - he felt happy, and just as importantly, he was definitely not hungry. But the concept of bettering oneself is very strong in rural societies, and in those days, right up to the present time, self-improvement was not seen in the production of one's own food: it was seen in the earning of money. The city meant money, while the countryside meant food. In a sense, this was a choice of poverty versus hunger. 


Afterliving in Athens for a few years, and being ripped off by employers (no helath insurance, little pay - does that ring another bell??), he decided that in order to see a better day in his life, he would take up the offer to marry a Cretan lady in New Zealand. It seemed like the right choice; returning to the Cretan countryside was not considered the right direction at the time.

This is basically what Greece was like in the 1960s; people were poor  but they were generally not hungry. The 1960s were in fact when a great flux of migration occurred (noth my parents left Greece at this time). It's the period when mothers and grandmothers told their children to eat everything on the plate (as they recalled the times during WW2 when there was no food on the plate) and gave them second helpings. If Greece were now to collapse completely, people will be faced with the choice of migrating to the countryside, where they will not be hungry, or moving abroad, where they will not be poor (at least, that's what they dream of, as in the case of most of the world's migrants). 

The political developments of Greece (and the whole world, all due to the Greek Prime Minister's recent announcement) are taking rapid turns now. The PM's announcement (if he indeed still is the Greek PM at the time this post is published) of a referendum on Greece's bailout (or is it whether Greece will remain in the eurozone, or the EU) is simply the outcome of his own identity crisis. When he became PM, the Greeks hailed him his father's son, and grandfather's grandson, since the Papandreou name was not a new one in politics. He was a Greek like the Greeks. But when he announced the first involvement of the IMF in the country's bailout, Greeks then labelled him American, the kind of Greek who was born and educated abroad (and whose mother isn't Greek, which doesn't help him in the least). Now that most Greeks can only see his 'abroad' side, he's sick and tired of them himself; he wants out. He can't get through to them; most Greeks don't have the ability to see both sides of an argument because they have only seen one. Those grecs miserables won't do, don't do, as they're told, and they refuse to listen; Greece for Greeks, they say, even though Greece has never ever made a decision that was in the interests for all Greeks (only a certain sector of them).

When crunch time comes (if indeed it will, because even the referendum is up in the air), I'm going to choose to be poor. I will remain in the countryside, where we may not have money, but we won't be hungry. I think it will be a long time before anyone takes away our right to grow vegetables, raise chickens, and pick olives. It's bad everywhere, so it's time to look on the bright side and count our blessings. 

One thing I'm glad about is that both my parents are not alive to see the mess the country they loved is in, because they will feel guilty for having helped their children to return to it. If my mother were still living in New Zealand, I can imagine her begging me to return. "It's bad everywhere, Mum," I would remind her. And I feel quite happy where I am.

The cartoon is a collage of different cartoonist's drawings, together with a Wikipedia map of Europe. In retrospect, I should have had Papandreou holding a euro note, not the Greek flag. Luxembourg is in there somewhere too; I think she slipped through the crevices in the dynamite, because of her size. 

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