Brockwell Park honey (Μέλι από το Λονδίνο)

My household is a great consumer of honey. When I think of the amount of honey we get through in a year, even I am amazed - we buy about 15-20 kilograms of honey every year, which is consumed among the 5 of us. Yes! 15-20 kg per year! Is this too much? I don't know what to say... I just know that we do in fact get through that much and it feels about as normal as going through 150 kg of olive oil per year (again, among the 5 of us). What's more, I rarely (if ever) use honey in my cooking - honey is used in very limited ways in my household's food preparation:

1. a teaspoon in tea or milky coffee 
2. as a spread on bread and butter
3. a tablespoon poured over each individual sfakiani pita, a traditional Cretan dessert 
4. a couple of tablespoons slathered on top of pan-fried cheese-based kalitsounia, another traditional Cretan dessert (occasionally, mainly when I'm in the mood to make them)
5. making syrup (for Greek-style syrup desserts, eg karidopita, galaktoboureko - very occasionally, mainly for a party)
6. as a yoghurt topping

Lately, I've also used it in some savoury meals like fried chicken wings, and I've also tried it in biscuit batters. But generally speaking, we consume honey as a raw product, and rarely as an ingredient in our family recipes. 

All the honey we consume comes from one source: I have a cousin who is a beekeeper. He refills my jars year after year. He keeps beehives in forested area in Sfakia, and produces fresh honey in the summer. So it is fair to call honey a seasonal product. Cretan honey is said to be among the best in the world. But like any overly good product, it can also be prone to fraud. At the same time, it is almost impossible to tell at first glance whether a honey variety is very good or not - colour, smell, density and crystallisation do not indicate this. Beekeepers may also feed their bees sugar in the colder months of the year or when there is a lack of flora, which is 'against' international rules for honey production. But we can't ever know this - such information can only be obtained by a laboratory analysis.

During a recent trip to London, a friend presented me with some honey that he had helped to produce. Apparently bees find London a better place to produce honey than other parts of England because London is where more flowers are grown, at least this is what we were told. The honey we were presented with certainly did look and taste different to our regular Cretan supplies. For a start, it was very runny (ours is very dense), it smelt of mint (ours smelt of thyme), it had a very clear colour (ours is quite dark), and we were told it was prone to natural cystalisation, which we found quite interesting, because we've never seen honey crystallise in our house (it gets eaten too quickly).


The honey came from Brockwell Park, where there are community gardens and a group of beekeepers who strive to produce fresh natural produce in a city where most food is imported into the general area. Apart from honey, my friend also collects beeswax and makes candles, and he is also learning to make mead. My friend also showed us some older honey, which had crystalised, so that it looked like butter in a jar. It's still good honey, he reassured us, which we found amusing, because he still hadn't opened the jar, which contained only a quarter of the amount that are own jars usually contain!

He also showed us a large plastic tub of honey which he explained was not good for eating because it contained too much moisture and tiny droplets of wax. In fact, it did taste a little waxy to us, and it was not very sweet, mainly due to the excess moisture content, we were told. He intended to use it to make mead - this supposedly sub-standard honey could be used as an ingredient, he told us, but it could not be sold as fresh honey. He also gave us some buttery looking manuka honey to try, which as a beekeeper, he thought he should try. As there was no other honey in his house where we were staying, except the buttery honey varieties, we preferred to use the waxy sub-standard honey which was still runny. I used it to make a pear pie with pears I had bought from Crete, and a cheese pie using mizithra I had also bought along with me. In both cases, I used this waxy honey in the batter as well as a topping. We liked the results very much. 

My friend also gave us some Brockwell Park honey to take home with us as a present. When I went to the store room to place it together with our honey jars, I was surprised to find a jar of Cretan honey lurking in a dark corner of the shelf, which I had not used in due time. It wasn't runny, and it hadn't lost its colour or its texture, but I could tell that this honey had undergone some transformation form its taste - it did not taste sweet and it seemed to lack the thyme aroma that I was used to. That's when I got the idea to take some samples of each honey type - fresh London honey (FL), old Cretan honey (OC), fresh Cretan honey (FC) - into the MAICh laboratories at work to have them checked.



Honey is influenced by very many factors: the flower species, temperature, environmental conditions, age and storage conditions are just a few things that make or break a good honey variety. The floral species used in the honey give honey its colour and aroma, as well as its texture. Crystallisation is also a feature in honey of certain floral species (eg citrus). Honey is like olive oil - their properties undergo a negative change as they age. So honey is not like wine, whose taste could improve with age. Apiculturalists check for moisture content, diastase activity and hydroxy-methyl-furfural (HMF) content.

Water content crystallises honey more quickly, which explains why the London honey crystallised whereas the Cretan honey didn't. The environmental conditions of London are damper than in Crete. This in fact was proven in the laboratory analyses: of the three samples, FL contained the highest moisture levels (17.6, while the two Cretan samples (OC and FC) contained  the same moisture content (14.3-14.6). But FL was still within the limits set by international regulations, which state that moisture content in honey must be less than 20.

Diastase activity tells us whether the honey has been subjected to high temperature, which makes it runnier. This is a trick that honey sellers may use if their honey crystalises. Honey production does involve heating but only at appropriate temperatures. Diastase activity is lower in honey that have been subjected to very high temperatures. Of my three honey samples, LH had the highest diastate activity (19.9) while FC had 13.8. Both honey were within international limits, which state that diastate acitivity must be higher than 8. But OC was not within the limit: it had a diastase activity of just 6.7. Since I know my honey source well, and both OC and FC come from the same source, what could have gone wrong? Most likely, the storage conditions of OC were inappropriate: I had left the honey in a space which gets overheated in summer, whcih most likely affected it, since I had forgotten it there for over a year, something I rarely do with honey, given our high consumption levels.

Finally, the HMF content also tells us about whether a honey variety has been heated inappropriately. This should be lower than 40, and all my honey samples fell well within the limit - FL: 3.4, OC: 5.8 and FC: 3. So I am able to conclude that the storage conditions for OC were what reduced the quality of my old Cretan honey sample.

The MAICh laboratory was also able to give us information on the pollen sources of each variety of honey, by checking for the frequency of pollen grains from nectar giving plants found in the honey. More importantly, the pollen information can tell us whether chemicals or artificial feeding have been used in the honey-making process. Bees travel a lot, so they are most likely picking pollen from a wide variety of sources. Here is what we found for my honey samples:

LH: Eucalyptus occidentalis type (29%), chestnut tree (Castanea sativa) (17%), with 3-15% traces of Pyrus-Prunus type (e.g. almond tree), Malus type (apple tree), Trifolium repens type, Robinia sp. (locust tree), sporadic traces of Salix sp., Brassicaceae, Centaurea sp., Boraginaceae, Liliaceae, and pollen grains of nectarless plants: Quercus sp., Graminae, Hypericum sp., Cyperaceae, Pinaceae.
OC: Eucalyptus camaldulensis (40%), with 3-15% traces of thyme (Thymbra capitata) (14%), dandelion (Taraxacum sp.), heather (Erica sp.), Trifolium repens type, sporadic traces of Cirsium type, Urginea maritima, Parthenocissus sp., Satureja thymbra, Citrus sp., avocado tree (Persea americana), Brassicaceae, and pollen grains of nectarless plants: Verbascum sp., Olea sp., Cistaceae, Graminae, Hypericum sp., Vitis vinifera, Ephedra sp.
FC: Chestnut tree (Castanea sativa) (32%), with 3-15% traces of thyme (Thymbra capitata) (12%), heather (Erica sp.), Trifolium repens type, myrtle (Myrtus communis), Eucalyptus sp., Satureja thymbra, sporadic traces of dandelion (Taraxacum sp.), Cirsium type, Apiaceae, Urginea maritima, Oxalis pes-caprae, Centaurea solstitialis type, Parthenocissus sp.and pollen grains of nectarless plants: Verbascum sp., Olea sp., Hypericum sp., Cistaceae, Pistacia lentiscus.

Based on the pollen examination, the London honey was classified as multi-floral while the Cretan samples were honey blends because they contained honeydew elements from pine trees, whereas the London honey contained no honeydew. This tells us a little about the insects that survive in the general area where the honey is produced. Honeydew, a honey blend of flower nectar and pine honeydew, also gives the darker colour of Cretan honey, which is highly prized in for its reputed medicinal value: in Greek mythology, méli, "honey", drips from the Manna–ash, (Fraxinus ornus), with which the Meliae, or "ash tree nymphs", nursed the infant god Zeus on the island of Crete.

However, the diastase activity of OC was below the honey legislation limit, so that particular honey sample can only be characterized as 'baker's honey'. Although I don't use honey in my baking, I am now using this honey in my cake batters and syrup making, instead of sugar to use it up without wasting it. Even my friend's high-moisture waxy London honey was still edible - it just wasn't marketable. Another interesting point is that the famous thyme honey of Crete can only be called 'thyme honey' when the thyme pollent content is at least 18%. Therefore, my thyme honey samples, while smelling unmistakably of thyme, cannot be called thyme honeys in the market sense because they contained only 14.6% (OC) and 13.4% (FH) thyme pollen.

I passed on the tests to my London friend who took them to his apiculturalist's club, who were very pleased to get them. Such tests are not available to small producers in London, mainly due to the cots involved. They were very pleased to read that their honey was of the highest quality that could be produced anywhere in their country. As for my own honey samples, I couldn't have been more pleased - and next time, I'll be more careful of where I store my honey jars.

Many thanks to Slim Blidi, whose thesis on the topic of "Effect of thermal treatment on the quality of Cretan honeys" I had the pleasure to read, whcih helped me to better understand the magic of honey, and enabled me to write this post.

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Junipers and sea daffodils (Κέδροι και κρινάκια της θάλασσας)

Despite the sunny weather, it's getting quite chilly now, which means that beach weather will be coming to an end soon, and the coastal habitat will get a rest from too much human activity.

The Cretan coastline is lined with some of the most interesting Mediterranean flora, most of which is, these days, facing great risks from the changing nature of the landscape. Uncontrolled tourism, logging, forest fires, camping and general trampling, coupled with global climate changes, are leading to the restricted growth and regeneration of endangered plants such as junipers and sea daffodils. The flora found on the coastline of Crete are under constant threat of destruction, especially during the tourist season: campers who were surveyed to find out whether they knew that the juniper tree habitats were protected or not were cutting the dry stalks of the juniper tree to make a fire, but they didn't realise that this breaks down the root system and dries up the plant. Despite this fact, the plant itself is not under any formal protection orders.

The walking paths around the beach of Elafonisi have all been demarcated so that people and cars (which often park directly beside endangered native species) do not damage the flora of the area, namely Juniperus species and the sea daffodil, Pancratium maritimum, as well as other species.

Juniper trees, as well as sea daffodils, are found mainly along the coastal sandy dunes of Crete. Their habitat is considered both rare and aesthetically beautiful, which has led to its classification as a 'priority habitat' by the EU Habitats Directive, leading to its protection. So the habitat is now being protected from further damage from the risks involved in the highly connected world we live in, even though the actual species located in this habitat type may not be protected individually.

The sea daffodil - Pancratium maritimum - is found all over the Mediterranean coastline, but it's considered an endangered species in places like Crete due to tourism - too many cars, too many people, too much trampling. There are signs on the beach reminding people not to pick or disturb it, even though it is not officially protected by an law. 

This 2008 photo shows that the sea daffodil is less prevalent than it is in 2013.

Both the juniper and the sea daffodil are found on the most popular beaches of Hania. Crete's large tourism industry has placed them at risk of great damage. In other less touristy areas of Greece, these species are gaining habitat, but in Crete, if an attempt was not made to protect them, they would now be faced as endangered species. Swaths of sea daffodils are now seen on our beaches, but it was not like this at all in our recent past - better educational awareness of the locals (and tourists) has helped such species to survive better in Crete. The signs that have gone up in Elafonisi for the junipers, and the local beaches on the north coast of Crete for the sea daffodils, are a clever 'trick' that seems to be working - the signs all over our beaches have actually helped the daffodils to multiply and stay on the ground, they aren't being picked and our parched-looking soil in the summertime gets a boost from these wild flowering plants. The venture of protecting it was undertaken on a local level in Crete. 

2013: These signs have remained virtually untouched at my local beach - Greek and foreign tourists are more environmentally aware than in the past, thanks to small efforts such as these ones. 

Interestingly, the island of Limnos came up in a discussion of juniper coastlines in Greece (in a MAICh seminar I attended recently), where the sea daffodil was also mentioned as a point of comparison. Limnos is a not-very-touristy island compared to Crete. The sea daffodil was mentioned in relation to the importance of protecting various plants in certain areas; in Limnos for example there are a lot of sea daffodils and not many tourists, whereas in Crete, the opposite is true, and the loss of one is due to the rise in the other - and so it is for juniper too. 

 Juniper bush on Grammenos beach, Paleohora

The speaker at the seminar said that the authorities in Limnos, when asked to make special arrangements to protect the sea daffodil, rolled their eyes at the idea because there are so many of them. But in places like Cyprus, where the habitat of the sea daffodil is under threat due to tourism (just like in Crete), huge efforts have been made willingly on a very short stretch of coastline. So there is a difference in people's attitudes towards protecting something, and there are different reasons for such attitudes.

A close up of the juniper berries - they are highly aromatic and can be milled when dry to be used as pepper. I gathered two dozen of them for personal use.

The once not-so-environmentally Greeks are now making greater efforts to protect their surroundings, even at a personal level. Funds are always hard to find these days, but the willingness of the people is there. What was once seen as the domain of municipal authorities is now being dealt with by concerned individuals. It's just another sign of a a re-examination of one's values, and their relation to one's identity.

Above: Juniper and sea daffodil, Grammenos beach, Paleohora.
Below: Juniper tree gum, seeping out of the bark; aromatic nut not commonly used.

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Jujube (Τζιτζιφιά)

A quick post today, showcasing an unusual fruit which most people wouldn't be too familiar with: the jujube.

 

These little berries are green inside, and taste a little like sour dry apples.

The tree that they grown on is not necessarily a very bog one - it can look more like a shrub.

When the fruit wrinkles and dries up, it tastes like a date (no wonder the jujube is also called 'red date').

The Chinese use them dried in teas and tonics.

In Greece, they were very common in many parts of the country, and their Greek name - tzitzifies - is also a common placename (there is a suburb in Athens called Tzttzifies, and even an urban village in Hania).

I would never have got to know this tree if it weren't for my keen eye to spot unusual flora in my environment. Most of the students at MAICh come from Mediterranean countries where the jujube is more well known, hence, I never got a chance to get my hands on the fruit before they did. This year, the jujube seemed to survive thanks to its late fruiting - most of the students who know this tree well have left the Institute!

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Eucalyptus (Ευκάλυπτος)

Eucalyptus trees are plentiful all over Crete. They are very hardy trees that offer a lot of shade because they grow very tall. As you pass through a eucalyptus forest, its aroma wafts in the air, especially after a light rain on its leaves, as it dries up in the sun. Its wood does not burn so easily, making it a perfect species for planting in a forest. In Greece, the eucalyptus is regarded as a blessed tree because it is αιωνόβιο (e-o-NO-vi-o) - it never dies.

Among the eucalyptus species growing in Greece, the smooth-bark variety is very common in Crete. It has an interesting characteristic: it grows a new layer of bark every year, and the upper layer of the old one can be seen peeling off, creating a very pretty spectacle. The bark of the Greek eucalyptus takes on camouflage colours, like a military uniform.

Uses of the eucalyptus nowadays includes taking a bunch of leaves in winter and soaking them in a pot of water, which is then placed over a wood-fired oven (or a radiator connected to central heating). This allows its aroma to exude, creating some humidity in the air at the same time as clearing your nose and throat. This is especially important when a house is heated with fossil fuel through central heating, as it dries up the air.

 

 Eucalyptus bark - August 2012

Eucalyptus forest, Ayia village, on the way to Omalos

The eucalyptus bark is another reminder that autumn is on its way now and the wood fire will be burning in our house soon.

As it is the first of the month, I can wish you Καλό μήνα (ka-LO MI-na) - have a happy month. Greeks have a 'best-wishes' phrase for nearly every aspect of their life. Since most people have taken their summer holidays by this time and are now getting into the post-summer routine, another wish is also in order: Καλό χειμώνα (kaLO hiMOna) - have a good winter, although it is a little early for that in Greece...

Another unusual species of eucalyptus peeling bark cna be seen in the rainbow eucalyptus of Hawaii.

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The old man and the kumquat tree (O Κρητικός και τα κουμκουάτ)

My children have grown up enough now so as not get sick very often. It has been a while since I had to take them to the doctor for what seemed like a cold that wouldn't go away. On seeing me, the paediatrician was surprised that I was still around.

"I thought you'd left and gone to Australia," she said to me. Australia and New Zealand - they're all the same to some.

"No," I looked at her sarcastically, "why would I want to go there?"

"Oh, you know, with all the problems Greece is having," she said apologetically. I replied by telling her that I was quite happy living here and I don't feel things are so bad that I have to leave the country.

"I know," she sighed (she had also lived abroad for a number of years while completing her education), "but people don't seem to seem to see things the same way."

It turned out that my daughter had developed a bad cold (helped by the low temperatures and lack of sun that Crete has been experiencing recently), but she didn't need any antibiotics, just some extra care. After paying the doctor (30 euro, the same rate she charges me whether I bring one or both children to be examined) and giving me my receipt, we left her surgery and returned to the car.

As I was unlocking the door, my daughter showed me something she'd found sitting on the fence of the house which we'd parked in front of. It was a kumquat, which had fallen from the tree in the garden of the house. All the fruit in the lower branches had fallen (or been picked), so it wasn't easy to pick any for ourselves. Just at that moment, an old man was crossing the street towards us.

"Shall I pick some for you?" he asked me."They're very good for the throat, you know."

The man was well wrapped up for the cold weather. He was tall, with the typical Cretan looks: a thickset moustache, olive skin with ruddy cheeks from the cold and a tall stature that was unbent, despite his age. His hands looked well-worked in the fields, the palm clumpy and the fingers thickset, reminding me of many others amongst me who have toiled in olive groves well past their prime. He was easily able to reach up to the higher branches to bring some fruit down to us, which we stuffed into our pockets.

 Such a precious present cannot go wasted - I turned the kumquats into a spoon swwet, together with bergamot (περγαμόντο - pergamonto).

The old man reminded me of my father who would have looked just like him, had he not gotten sick and passed away too early.
 
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Tzerevelos - Pistacia terebinthus (Τζερέβελος)

Very often in my stories, I find that I am not the story-teller; I am merely the scribe.

My first reaction to seeing the axe next to the bread was 'Waste not, want not.' My uncle never wastes food. "This makes good breadcrumbs, doesn't it?" I joked with him.

"If you'd been alive during the war, you'd be thankful for having something to eat," my visiting aunt replied. "There was never enough food in those days and you ate whatever you could get." I've heard this all before, from my grandmother, my late mother, her brother, and now her sister. "During the κατοχή^, when we didn't have any wheat, we'd grind the dry carob pods, which were used as animal feed, and make that into flour."

Carob tree - χαρούπι; carob pods - χαρούπια

When my aunt comes to visit the island, she is always full of stories about the past. "They're giving it to the animals," she added, before I put any strange ideas in my head about what use that bread would be made into. "The baker gives them the loaves that don't get sold, and they give it to the chickens. But in the village, there was no such thing as a bakery. There was nothing to make people's lives easy. That's why we all started leaving the village, one by one."

Although she now finds herself in a village, it is not 'the' village. She is now in the village that her family moved down to once the family property was sold up in the mountain village of her birth; the latter is the χωριό she and her brothers still refer to as 'the' village. Few permanent residents remain in the village now, even though roads have been built, everyone owns cars and there is at least one general store that sells mass-produced storable foodstuff; even a gypsy truck passes by selling furniture, clothes and electrical goods!* People are now used to living with modern commodities; the old make-and-do lifestyle is out of place in the modern world, even when that world is an old-fashioned one.  

She offers me some grapes from the shady vine crawling above us. "They may look scrawny and dusty, but they're very, very tasty," she says, trying to tempt me. Because she lives in Athens, she takes every chance she can get to eat seasonal local food whenever she is here: "you never know when you're going to find it again", she keeps reminding me.

Then she sighs. "It was never like this." 

"You mean the grapes tasted better in the past, theia?" Whenever I talk to my mother's brothers and sisters, they always remind me of how different the food tasted in the past. They often blame the air for the difference in taste: ο αέρας άλλαξε.

"No!" she laughed ironically. "I mean, it was never so easy to have so much food to eat. We certainly didn't have it growing above our heads in the village like we do now. There was no such thing as leftovers," she said, pointing to a bowl of salad swimming in olive oil, where the dry bread was being thrown into. "Even the chickens are well fed these days!"

Σακούλι (sakouli) - a typical Cretan village bag; the material is woven by hand on a loom; it would have been used for foraging wild greens, snails, etc (it was made by my mother, but she never used it; these traditional hand-made woven fabrics are now worth a fortune).

"Every day, we'd all get up early, take our σακούλι, put it on our back, and off we'd go and fill it up. We all had our own foraging duties: one of us would pick horta, another would pick snails, another would look for firewood, another for figs..." Her voice trails off. "Do your children eat figs?"

Late autumn figs: in the Cretan kitchen, figs are always peeled before being eaten. These were found by the roadside. Figs are a popular summer forager's fruit; most Cretans living away from the main urban areas still have access to fresh seasonal figs.

These days, nearly all people, not just children, are picky when they have the opportunity to be. There are very few people these days that will be happy to eat anything placed before them.

Local variety of pear - in Crete, pears are called 'apithia' (απίδια)

"We used to harvest the figs in this season. There were many, many fig trees, all over the hills, and pear trees too." She looks up and points to the αχλαδιά in front of us. "They all grew wild all over the hills. We'd pick the pears and figs, but we wouldn't eat the figs, only the pears. That was our autumn fruit. We had to keep the figs for winter. We'd cut them open and oven-dry them, and when they were ready, we'd store them in a κασόνι, about this big..." She uses her hands to show me an imaginary rectangular box as big as a pirate's treasure chest. "... and store them away for eating in the winter. That was our winter fruit. There was nothing much growing at that time." She always laughs and smiles when she tells me these stories, even though the conditions she describes sound very harsh.

As she spoke, her face lit up. "Those figs were like manna to us." She wasn't looking directly at me now. She seemed to be conjuring up a picture in her mind of those old times. "Whenever I ate those figs, I would think of the people in Egypt who had nothing to eat, but God gave them manna and they survived." She spoke as though she was remembering the taste of a dry fig as she ate it by the fireplace in the one room that all the family members shared (the other room of the family home was a stable) in the snowed-in remote mountain village, with probably only a Bible, η Αγία Γραφή, as reading matter.

"That was our manna, our winter fruit, and that was also what we served with tsikoudia when someone passed by and visited us. But tell your children to eat a dry fig nowadays, even one you've bought from the shops which sell them all in pretty packaging, and will they eat it?" She shakes her head. "They'll ask you for a πάστα from the zaharoplasteio instead, won't they?" This is something quite difficult for all of us to conceive. In those days, no one could imagine the ease with which the average Greek would walk into a zaharoplasteio and buy some sweets to have on hand for a chance visit from a friend. Old-fashioned treats like dry figs are now either a thing of the past, associated with old-fashioned people, or novel ideas for use in trendy upmarket recipes found on the internet, perhaps in combination with outlandishly expensive cheeses.

Living in a world of plenty: there's a zaharoplasteio (and a souvlatzidiko) in practically every neighbourhood or village.

"In September, with the πρωτοβρόχια (the first rains) came our first autumn vegetables, mushrooms and asparagus; if there was a hunter in your family, your meat was λαγός (hare) and συκοφάγες (fig-eaters - birds), and..." she pauses for a moment, "there was also tzerevelo." Now she turned to me. "What would kids today think of munching on tzerevelo instead of chocolate?" she asked. "They don't want to eat what we used to eat, do they?" she moaned. "Give them some meatballs, fried potatoes, rice, pasta and a glass of γαζόζα (soft drink) to wash it all down with, and they're quite happy to eat like this every day!"

What on earth is tzerevelo? I've been in Crete for nearly two decades, and have never heard of it before.

Δραμιθιά - τζερέβελo; Pistacia terebinthus

"Tze-RE-ve-lo," she explained, "it's a kind of..." She was now searching for a way to describe to me something that she herself had probably almost forgotten and/or had last eaten 50 years ago^^. "Well, it's a kind of nut... it grows in bunches... on the dramithia tree...,  like grapes... it's blue when it's ready to eat..." She gave up trying to explain what it looked like. "It comes in the same seasons as figs and grapes."

"Where can we see these trees now?" I asked her.

"In the village."

"But we don't go to the village now!" I felt that the concept of tzerevelo was now out of my grasp, since I do not visit the village any more. It's frustrating to think that something that was once considered common, almost vital, is no longer within your reach simply because you were born a few years too late.

"They only grow in mountainous areas, like in the village." My uncle had now joined the conversation.

"Oh..." I replied with a forlorn sound to my voice. I hadn't been to my mother's village since just before I got married.

Δραμιθιά - τζερέβελo; Pistacia terebinthus

"But there's one in the olive grove here," he continued. "Don't know how it grew there, since you only see these trees in the highlands. A bird must have dropped a seed or pooped one." Let's just say I was thrilled; my thanks go out to that bird who left some of its luggage down here.

After bundling my uncle into the car (no favour is too great - I am his closest next-of-kin on the island), I drove him out to the field, a few minutes away from the house. When my grandparents left the village and moved to lower ground, they bought a plot of land to build a house on, and another parcel of land which was originally covered in grapevines, which they eventually converted into an olive grove. Bordering the olive trees on the side of the road, a tall tree was growing, with some unusual pink beads on some of its branches.

"This isn't a good dramithia**," my uncle tells me. "The bunches of the fruit aren't very thick and it looks kind of dry. Look at the leaves," he said, pointing to some of the lower branches. "They're mottled." He explained to me that this was also the case concerning the village dramithies. Just like all crops, some fruit species are not so tasty, thus being avoided as food sources. They were either cross-bred or left to their own devices, so that only the better ones survive. The origin of this particular dramithia would probably have had a worse fate if it hadn't been for that bird, and the fact that my uncle is sentimental about 'old' food..

I chopped off a branch of pink beads. "Watch it," my uncle warned me. "You'll get covered in glue." Sure enough, as soon as I snapped off the branch, a very sticky sap began to seep out of the stem. Although it does not irritate the skin, it spreads easily; in no time at all, both my hands felt like they were covered in honey. It was very difficult to keep the camera clean!

Before we left, I took in the view from the olive grove, which is located on a hilly spot in the village. The blue sea was just visible. The fate of this field is sealed; it will one day become a house with a garden, gazebo and swimming pool.

Imagine a house located here - it would have a balcony, so the view of the sea would be more visible (as long as your neighbour across the road doesn't decide to build on his land too).

When we came back home, I showed my aunt the branch that I had cut.

"You'll need to wash your hands, won't you?" she laughed. She then told me that she remembered about the sticky sap just as we had left to visit the field. She explained to me how the berries were once prepared: The berries start off their life as pink beads, which turn blue when they are ripe and ready for picking. When they were harvested (this no longer happens), something children usually did, they were placed in a bowl of water. The berries that floated were thrown away (they were hollow) and the berries that remained were drained and either eaten fresh, or salted and dried in the sun for keeping. Their taste is similar to pistachio, which they are related to. Tzerevelo was served to guests along with the dried figs, with a nip of tsikoudia. It makes a crunch sound when you bite into them. Bits of the berries will stay stuck in your teeth; they aren't exactly the most enticing nut! In those days, peanuts and pistachio were not easily available to Cretan mountain dwellers who didn't venture often into the town. This was something that kept well in their cool stone houses, which they could use to treat a guest. 

The tree that tzerevelo grows on is called the dramithia. Dramithies still line mountain roads in Crete. The next day after learning about this tree and its fruit, I visited a friend who lives in a mountain village and was surprised to see so many dramithies as we drove up the sloping road.

"Nobody eats them these days," my aunt spoke wistfully, her voice taking on a regretful tone. "Now people want to eat fast and easy food... έχουν φάει οι άνθρωποι, και δε πεινάνε πια... and that's why they don't eat these foods any more, their stomachs are full, and they don't even need to remember them. But it wasn't always like that...

"I'll never forget Elpida's daughter, Stavroula," she continued. "While her mother was giving birth to her younger brother, Stavroula wandered into the stables. No one was watching over her because everyone was looking after the mother and her new baby. Stavroula found some dry κουκιά (broad beans) and started eating them. All that dry food must have made her thirsty, so she began drinking a lot of water. Some people said she died because she ate all that dry food, and then drank a lot of water which made her stomach swell. Other people say she died because she had an enzyme deficiency. I'd just say she died of hunger, because if she had had something better to eat, then she wouldn't have been tempted to eat animal feed." Sometimes, the truth is harder to believe than fiction.

The tzerevelo nut, once a vital part of any visit to a mountain dweller's house, is now left for the migrating birds to eat as they make their way south in the autumn to escape the cold climates of the north; gone from our plates, and practically forgotten. If my aunt hadn't mentioned it in passing, I would never have discovered it myself.

^ κατοχή (katohi) 'occupation' - what most old people call the occupation of Greece during WW2
^^ I'm basing this on my husband's age - he had heard of tzerevelo fromhis father, but had no idea what it was; the urban drift in Crete began to take place at about this time.
*At this point in my visit, a hippie-clad foreign resident of the village walked by, holding a dog leash with a poodle trotting along at its end, followed by a gypsy truck selling pottery urns in the same styles and shapes that we are familiar with from Knossos.)   
**The tree is called dramithia, plural dramithies, while the fruit is the tzerevelo, plural tzerevela.

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