Pickled capers (Κάπαρι τουρσί)

Caper bushes are especially pretty in spring when their impressive flowers are in bloom. They abound in olive groves, especially in patches of land which do not undergo strenuous tilling, which is why they are usually found on the borders between fields or by the roadside. The field across from my house was full of caper bushes growing uncultivated when I first arrived in the neighbourhood a decade ago; now, they've all but disappeared, although they are found in other fields close by to where I live. They are stunning as hanging plants, growing in amongst the crevices of high rocks. They are not fun to work with: they have sharp thorns that get stuck in your skin and clothes.

Capers have been known since ancient times in Greece as a pain reliever for rheumatism, but they are generally not used in Greek cooking. I know of a couple of people in Crete who pickle them, but they are mainly older people who do it as a way to pass their time, and have something unusual to give away as a present for friends (which is how I acquired a jar). Despite this, the Greeks - probably islanders, where caper bushes grow profusely - have invented their own recipe for them: they are eaten as a kind of horta: branches, leaves, buds and even the seed pods. Therefore, all parts of the caper bush are edible. Once they have softened, they can be used to flavour salads and other meals. Anne Yiannoulis gives a recipe in her Greek Calendar Cookbook: "Pick short branches from a caper bush, wash well, lay in a bowl, cover with boiling slated water (50g salt to 1kg of branches). Leave in the sun for 3-4 days, changing the cold water every day. Strain, place in a jar, cover with vinegar and a handful of salt. They are ready to eat in a few days, drained and served with anchovies in an oil dressing." We don't eat anchovies, preferring fresh fish instead, so I'm wondering whether this preparation would be a wasted effort in my own home.

UPDATE: these capers looked so fresh and tender that I pickled the lot.

 
The last time I pickled capers was over a decade ago. This year, my family's been eating puttanesca spaghetti, a lazy Saturday meal, on a regular basis, something we enjoyed eating in Paleohora on our mini-break. I've been using store-bought capers for this purpose; now I have a reason to pickle them myself. The capers were found in a field very close to my house. But I won't be able to use them this summer - they need a few months to pickle, so they'll be ready to use in autumn if I jar them now. In Greece, all sizes of caper buds are used in pickling, although you will only find very small bead-like capers in store-bought jars. This is because commercial growers of capers grade them according to their size, and the tiniest ones are the most prized. GourMed has a simple recipe for pickling capers. I used this one and added a few more spices - a bay leaf and some carnation cloves - for a more piquant taste. I left part of the stalk on the caper buds, but I couldn't understand what to do with the tender shoots - they were all covered in thorns, right to the topmost bud. None of my sources mention whether we need to get rid of the thorns before pickling or if they soften in the brine solution.



Since I can't use my pickled capers to flavour my salads at the moment, I'll just have to stick to glistrida (γλιστρίδα - purslane), the local variety of watercress growing wild in the garden, to do that in the interim.



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The Mediterranean diet is alive and well and living in Varipetro (Η σχολική εορτή)

Greek primary schools officially close for the summer on 15 June, which falls on Sunday this year, so children get two extra days to enjoy during their summer holidays. Officially, schools re-open on 10 September, which amounts to a three-month summer holiday. If it surprises you that schools close down for so long, just wait till you hear what other holidays they get throughout the 'scholastic' year: a 2 week-break at Easter and Christmas, national, public or religious holidays - there is one every single month of the school year - as well as the school festivals preceding the national holiday when no lessons are conducted, not forgetting the infamous teachers' strikes that occur right throughout the year (and we're not including weekends in this). I've worked out that the average school year in Greece consists of just 160 days: just 7 and a half months (including weekends) of the year. You will often hear Greeks complaining that their children have too many lessons, too much homework and too many after-hours private school classes. They are absolutely right; what do you expect children to learn in just over half a year of state-funded education, while their counterparts in other European countries get at least 9 complete months of regular schooling per annum? No wonder they're doing after-school lessons at the infamous (and expensive) frontistirio (private preparatory educational institute) to learn anything at all (on their own or with their parents).

The end-of-year school celebration usually consists of a theatrical production, poetry recitals and songs. Parents are always invited, and many usually go, as it is a duty towards their children. Today, many carried their cameras to snap their offspring in their moment of glory during a performance. I was carrying mine for one more reason: to ascertain the role that the Mediterranean diet plays at school functions, because, in any gathering of Greeks, whether it's large or small, food is always a main feature. I didn't expect it to take centre stage today, and I hope you will all be pleasantly surprised by the course of events.

The primary school my children attend is located in a village. This doesn't mean that most mums don't work; it means that most mums have more time available to come and see their children performing at school. (Meal preparation, cleaning, washing, helping children with their homework, and all those other chores women take on are all work too, jobs which many urban working mothers hire paid help to get done.) For many reasons, not least of which one may be that the teachers should not be inconvenienced, the celebration takes place in the morning during regular school hours. Those of us lucky (or, depending on your point of view, unlucky) enough to have our mornings free can attend the function. Mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers all came in to see them. Everyone was well dressed, as were their children - bright clean new summer clothes. No matter what the children wear to school on an everyday basis, today was different: it was a day to wear your Sunday best.

I sat among the crowd of other mums, some holding their morning cups of coffee, others their lit cigarettes. A few carried both. They were all dressed to the nines, perfect pedicures displayed on well heeled ladies of all shapes and sizes. The men folk came in their brightest shirt, a sign that they weren't working in the fields today.

Speeches always come first in all Greek celebrations. The headmaster asked one of the older children to recite "Our Father" (the smokers still had their cigarettes in their hands) and then went on to thank the teachers for their efforts this year, praising the children in turn for their achievements. The local priest reminded both the teachers and parents of their duty towards their children, who he advised to heed their teachers well. Then it was the turn of the mayor to make his appearance before running off to another school in the district to do the same thing. The PTA president reminded everyone to come back refreshed after the school holidays. Finally, the kindergarten teacher, a very kindly woman who all the village children have been schooled by at some point in their life, said a few words about the children who will be entering Grade 1 next year. Her class plays a bigger role than the other classes at end-of-year school functions: school plays are usually performed by the youngest children of the school, in other words, those who don't get stage-fright, are less self-conscious and haven't yet lost the facial features that represent child innocence.

The kindergarten performed a play all about summer fruit, chanting rhymes about what each different kind of fruit offers in our daily diet. This was followed by Grade 6 - the graduates of the primary school - who read out some notes based on a larger school project that they had worked on concerning the Mediterranean diet. It may have been interesting, but nobody listened to them, which just goes to show how interested the locals were in the subject: local food, food scares, daily diet, food labelling, GMO food, the Mediterranean diet, the future health of their children and their health in general. The girls could not be heard above the audience's chatters and the other children's disturbances. Mobile phones were ringing every minute. It was a shameful way to behave. As usual, people don't bother listening to each other, wanting only to be heard themselves.

The headmaster knows the ways of the people in the area, but did nothing to stop them from drowning the audience's cackle. It was pointless to reprimand the audience for their behaviour; they were probably not listening to him either. He congratulated the children on their effort and then turned to the audience who were by now sounding like gobbling turkeys.

"My dear parents" he started, "I know you weren't listening to the pupils of our graduate class, the children who may one day be teaching your grandchildren in this very school, as one of my former pupils is now (a fact he is very proud of), but what they had to say about the Mediterranean diet actually concerns you too. Let's not forget that we were raised on that favorite of Greek fruit, the tomato, grated onto a plate with olive oil and a little salt mixed into it, with a slice of bread. This summer, don't give your children chippies and cheese crisps, remember what you used to eat when you were their age. Maybe I shouldn't be telling you this, but if you let your children eat an ice-cream every day in the summer, that shows that you don't love them. The ice-creams we buy don't all contain milk, and and some of the ingredients are probably unknown to most of us, we don't actually know what exactly is in the ice-cream we buy."

I don't know how much sunk into the heads of the people that were there; it can't have been much, as most weren't listening to him in the first place. He went on to say that they must take their children to the beach regularly, or at least, keep them physically active, because (although he admits he isn't the best example of this last piece of advice himself), in general, Cretans have a weight problem. I don't think you will find a more caring headmaster than Kirios Antonis.

I asked the 6th grade girls for a copy of the speeches they had just made. They were more than happy to relinquish their papers to me, which would probably have gone into the bin if I hadn't salvaged them. Here is part of the speech that included some facts about the Mediterranean diet:

"Along with hereditary traits and the environment, our daily diet is what our health depends on... We use a wide variety of foods in our daily diet, which are procured from a variety of sources: plants, animals and the food industry... It is preferable to choose foods which come from nature, and to avoid industrialised food as much as possible. The basic food pyramid shows what food should constitute our basic diet, and what foods should be eaten in smaller quantities... The traditional Mediterranean diet pyramid has been proved to be the healthiest. It is made up of the dietary habits found among the Cretans and Southern Italians in 1960. It is well known for its beneficial properties, as well as guarding against heart attacks and various types of cancer. This dietary routine has become more widespread in recent times. The menu is simple, based on a spartan diet: greens, fruit, beans, vegetables, cheese, brown bread, olive oil, dried fruits, home-brewed wine and fish. Its basic structure also protects the skin from signs of ageing. This menu, combined with physical exercise, is the key to longevity and good health."

The show continued with various groups of girls performing dance routines to popular songs, including Kalomoira's dance routine for "My Secret Combination". Greece is always a finalist in the Eurovision song contest, in which a forgettable pop song sung by an equally forgettable pop star usually wins. No wonder we do so well in the competition; children are actively supported in their endeavours to improve on their vocal-kinesthetic abilities from an early age.



The time for the buffet had arrived. Now we would see what had been prepared by the PTA. Everyone knew that this year, the food was going to be representative of Mediterranean cuisine, as Kirios Antonis had promised us in his opening speech, a far cry from the puff pastry junk food that had been offered at the school's carnival party. A gathering of Greeks cannot have a party without food; more so when the school is located in a village setting, next to olive groves, orange fields and grazing sheep. Even though it was only 11 o'clock - too early for lunch - the PTA had organised a well-cooked traditional festive Cretan meal, showing that the Mediterranean diet is alive and well and living, at least, in the village of Varipetro. The meal was organised by the PTA members and cooked by volunteers; anyone who wanted to could bring along their own plate to share. The menu was purely Cretan: boiled locally raised spring lamb, pilafi rice made from the meat stock, boureki, pastitsio (for those who didn't get boureki), and dakos (a small ham and cheese sandwich, admittedly not part of the Mediterranean diet, but it acted as a plate filler. The only drinks found were orange juice and home-brewed wine for the adults; the festivities came complete with Cretan music and mantinades.

Good habits start at a young age. Children can be taught to respect good food choices made on their behalf if this is done in a respectful manner.

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Boiled snails (Χοχλιοί - σαλιγκάρια - βραστοί)

I'm a four-time godmother. My oldest godson is travelling with the Greek merchant navy while my youngest (who's taller than me) is preparing to go to high school next year. We visit his family quite often, as he also has younger brothers who my children can play with. His family represents the epitome of Cretan hospitality: you cannot visit them without being treated to a cooked meal. My father and his mother's mother were first cousins, which is how we met. We eventually realised that somewhere down the line of our ancestors, my mother was also related to his father: one of my great-great-greats was the sibling of one of his great-great-greats, but which great-great it was has now been lost in the passage of time. Don't think you can get away with not calling them up beforehand and arriving unexpected; while Niko orders the souvlakia, Nicky will start laying the table (my godson's name is Nikita, to add to the confusion). This is why we always call them up before we visit; if you have to eat, then you may as well eat healthy food.

Niko comes from Ramni, a remote mountain village in Apokoronas, the easternmost region of Hania. Very few people now live in Ramni; when he was young (he's my age), the village sustained a large primary school. Ramni is a picturesque village - if you like to look at bare mountains from the front yard of your house, that is. The sound of a car is rare; a baby's cries have not been heard for nearly a decade.

Niko is very proud of the fact that he left school at thirteen, and still managed to secure a teaching position (carpentry) in a state-run rehabilitation centre for disabled people, through his local parliamentary representative (the infamous Greek 'meson' can still work miracles - look at what lengths some people go to, to try to secure their future through it), as two of his brothers also did. In the winter, he wears a black shirt, symbolic of the Cretan farmer, matching his twirling moustache very well, while in the summer, he wears a sleeveless singlet. He claims he never feels the cold, and never gets sick. Niko loves to tell people about how he met Nicky:

"I visited a go-between in Akrotiri about a potential bride. But the go-between told me that the bride wasn't available because she had an older sister, and if I wanted, I could marry her instead. 'But her sister's very fat,' I complained to the go-between. 'She has to go first,' he answered. At that very moment, a girl was passing by outside the house with her mother. They were bringing the sheep into their pen for the night. I asked the go-between if she was available for marriage. He told me she was, and that's how I met my wife."

I'm still trying to work out what took me so long, given such a simple formula. Obviously, I was never around at the right time.



Snails are sold in Crete at the supermarket, in little net bags, in the same place where you would normally find fresh fruit and vegetables. There are also roadside dwellers selling them from the back of their pick-up trucks. Snails are a particularly Cretan affair, as Nancy points out, most other Greeks preferring to give them a miss. I prefer to think of them as land shellfish; we eat oysters and limpets, clams and scallops, so why not eat snails? Some edible varieties are also found in the sea. My mother used to collect snails from our garden in Wellington on a rainy day, of which there were many in WWW (wet and windy Wellington – and I do miss a good rain shower). The only difference between the Cretan and Wellingtonian snails was the size – Kiwi snails don’t need fattening up; they are ready on collection. The only reason they were placed in a potato sack to feed on flour and pasta is so they can empty their bowels, eating only foods known to be harmless to humans. I must admit that snails were the only food my mother cooked that I never ate. I now regret this immensely; here I am, living in the land where she was born, picking, storing and cooking snails for my husband.

In Crete, snail gathering takes place once the first spring rains start, after which the snails need to be confined in a well-aerated container to fatten up and 'seal': once they have had their fill, in combination with the hot weather, they find a comfortable position away from direct sunlight in a dry spot, and stick themselves onto a flat surface where they form some kind of web over their shell. They are edible at this stage, right until the middle of autumn. After that, they start moving around and mating, at which stage they shouldn't be eaten because they emit an unappetising aroma. I'm only telling you what I've been told, and I’ve only eaten them in their season.

When we visit my godson, 'hohlious' along with horta are always on the menu; Niko ensures that he's gathered them all before anyone else. He gets his wife to boil them up just after we arrive. I suppose he’s never heard about the parasite that snails may harbour, causing a rare form of meningitis if the snails are consumed undercooked. But then again, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet – Tamus creticus is supposedly poisonous, even though Cretans have been consuming it for centuries, while the berries of Solanum nigrum (stifno - black nightshade) are considered poisonous, even though the literature states that they are edible. Eek - I'll stick to what my ancestors have taught me.

The snails are placed in warm water to see if they open up and move around, which ascertains that they are alive. Then they are boiled (in their shell) in salted water, just enough to cover them, with an onion and a tomato chopped into the water. Once cooked, they are strained (they're still in their shell) and sprinkled with fresh rosemary. The meat is twisted out with a fork - if it doesn't come out entirely, the shell needs to be cracked on the top to make the rest of the body budge. There's a little black squiggly big at the end of a complete snail carcass, its pancreas; it's up to the eater if that bit is consumed. Nikos’ three sons slurp away happily on snails dipped in olive oil; my urbanite offspring are content with dipping a piece of bread. We also collect snails from the village; once fattened up, I cook them the way my gourmet husband prefers - but that's another story.

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The 100-mile pie (Η πίτα των 100 μιλίων)

With the increasing interest in food sources, local diets, environmental awareness and the ever-increasing cost of living, more and more people are turning to local produce for their food needs. Val recently discussed the 100-mile diet which is based on eating food produced within a 100-mile (160km) radius of where you live. How local you can get even in a small town like Hania depends on how local you want to keep things.

In Crete, we can easily survive off our own produce. I need take only local products and reach out as far as Herakleion, about two hours away - 150 kilometres. The length of the island is twice this mileage, but I don't actually need to go out as far as Lasithi, the westernmost province of the island, to get my fresh produce. I can easily get a varied menu at this time of year (summer) for every day of the week, although I'd probably have to serve up the same ingredients cooked up in a different manner on a daily basis. Seasonal variations need to be taken into account if I were to try this at a different time in the year.

There is no doubt that there are some products which I use on a daily basis which are not local and never will be. I like my morning coffee, produced not just more than 150 kilometres away, but in another continent. And the milk I buy for my family, is unfortunately, not local, even though we have a booming dairy industry in Crete. Locally produced milk costs twice the price per litre of fresh carton milk produced in large industrialised outlets in other parts of Greece, collected at a centralised location, packaged, and sent off to other parts of the country. I used to buy NOUNOU CALCI (1.5L) fresh milk, which now costs over 3 euro a carton (while KRIARAS goat's milk costs 2 euro per litre). This is what made me switch to NOUNOU FAMILY (1.5L) fresh milk, costing me just over 2 euro a carton, produced by the same company. The television news keeps telling us on a daily basis that fresh milk in Greece is the most expensive in the whole of Europe, and it costs 20 cents more per litre than the next most expensive country, France.

Trading products started once people conquered the natural borders of a land when they learnt to sail. I wouldn't want this kind of trade to stop; even people who have been eating locally all their life out of necessity will succumb to the luxury of being allowed a bite of pineapple, even if it is from a can (and when they discover how sweet and juicy it is, they may even want to see a real one). If we really were keen on eating locally in a bid to save the environment, then we wouldn't travel for holidays, either. Can you imagine a Brit preferring to go to Brighton or Blackpool, instead of coming to a Greek island for his or her fortnight's worth of annual summer holidays? I hope the travel agent reminds them to pack a brolly in their suitcase just in case.

Congratulations should be in order for the Small family of Fife, Scotland, for creating the Fife diet, a meals plan using only locally produced food, even for their Christmas dinner. We should all try it, simply to see how difficult and rather boring it can be; no matter what way we try to apply it in our own lives, it will still make us all conscious of what we eat, and what it takes to produce it and get it onto our plates. Michael Pollan discusses this very issue in The Ominvore's Dilemma, where he discovers how difficult it is to "make" all one's dietary needs, despite the fact that it always turns out to be a tastier meal than fresh produce that has been shipped or trucked into his environs.

There are many times in my life when I have felt a psycho-somatic need to cook and eat in a manner based the old-fashioned peasant diet of the Mediterraneans, who lived on (at the time) isolated islands. Their food consisted of a high content of fat (there were no such things as "light" staka cream), while they themselves worked on average 8-10 hours a day on their own self-sufficient farms and walked at least 15 kilometers on a daily basis from home to farm and back home again, while today's average Cretan farmer does the same kilometers in the pick-up truck (I proofread a study containing this fact at MAICh), walking only an average of two kilometers nowadays. I wouldn't call any of my own jobs hard labour, not even the housework; how strenuous can pushing a button on a washing machine be?

*** *** ***

My son hates seeing green things in his food. If there's bell pepper in the spag bog, he will carefully remove it from his forkful before plunging it into his mouth. He asks me if I could one day make a boureki without courgettes. He eats zucchini chocolate cake as long as he can't see the zucchini. He ate the courgette patties because he thought it was a hamburger (I had hidden one in a hamburger bun with a slice of cheese on top and a slice of ham at the bottom). But he won't eat a salad, or horta, or anything that is clearly green - with one exception: spanakopita. This is why I make so many spinach pies, green pies, kalitsounia, and anything else that is stuffed with greens and encased in pastry. Right now, I am in the middle of a 'pie run': my hortopites are going to go into the deep freeze, ready to be cooked in September when school starts (and that's only three months away), and tucked away in lunchboxes.


Last year, we had a vlita and courgette boon in our garden. Of course he refused to eat boiled horta, and wouldn't even look at the zucchini that accompanied them. So I devised a recipe that got him eating summer greens in a pie without losing any of the vitamins usually lost when vegetables are boiled. The idea to stick courgettes in the same pie came from a family friend who made kalitsounia using zucchini, including the zucchini flowers. To make this pie according to the 100-mile rules, I would have had to omit certain ingredients, as well as make substitutions; this would have a disastrous effect on my family's routine, which is why I decided not to deviate for my original recipes for fear of forcing my family on a hunger strike.




My 100-mile hortopita and kalitsounia were made by using the following ingredients:
- amaranth leaves , grated zucchini and chopped zucchini blossoms, a mixture of herbs (green onion tops and onion, parsley, spearmint and fennel): all growing wild in our garden; the zucchini plantlets were bought from a small family-run garden centre, but I wonder where they procured their seeds from?
- mizithra cheese: produced locally, from locally-raised sheep and goats;
- salt and pepper: I have no idea where the pepper is grown, but salt can be (and is) procured from salt build-up in large rocks by the sea, which friends have often gifted to us in the past;
- an egg to brush the pastry: our neighbours and my uncles give me free-range eggs;
- semolina and white-flour pastry; this is my biggest dilemma: does Crete produce its own flour, or does it come from other sources? I am waiting for MYLOI KRHTHS to let me know where the procure their grain from. Flour was milled in Crete from ancient times, but in the industrialised world we live in, where food is collected at one point and re-distributed, I have my doubts about the where the grain in the silos at Souda Bay come from - is it a coincidence that the ferry boat is found a stone's throw away?
- sesame seed: ditto as for flour; the packager is located only 5 kilometers from where I live, but where did the sesame actually grow?

To make the world a better place does not necessarily mean that you have to eat locally, but you should be able to justify your choices in food, in the same way that you justify the choices you make for your children's schooling (I drive mine daily close to the village where the sesame seed is packed) and the kind of car you drive (a 9-year old Hyundai Accent, still going strong).

I'd like to thank Val for bestowing upon me the "Yummy" award, so I dedicate this post to her.

This is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Paulchen.

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CRETAN PRODUCE:
Soft mizithra cheese
Xinohondro (hondro)
Stamnagathi
Marathopites
Cretan boureki
Avronies (wild asparagus)
Wedding pilafi
Dakos rusk salad
Lagos stifado
Sorrel
Silverbeet
Black mustard greens
Kalitsounia in the oven
Kalitsounia fried
Malotira
Orange juice
Bougatsa Iordanis
Sfakianes pites
Olives tsakistes - pastes
Olive oil

See also:
A day in the field
The rape of the countryside
A summer garden
A winter garden
An autumn garden

Home-made lemonade (Σπιτική λεμονάδα)

My aunt has just become a great-grandmother for the second time, to a baby boy living many miles away from her in New Zealand. The internet has made those miles seem like a short bus ride across town; I passed on to her some photos of the new addition to the family.

"Let me make you a coffee," she said to me, to which I passed, because it was early morning and I had just had my caffeine fix at home. Coffee can be a personal thing: some people (like myself) can only have a coffee the way they like it made, which is why I like to make it myself.

"Then have a lemonade," she said, getting up to fetch it for me. (If anyone thinks I need a new camera, donations are most welcome).

"I'll get it myself," I answered.

"Look for the Coke bottle on the fridge door," she instructed, as if I didn't know where it was. I've had many lemonades in that house for me to know exactly where to look for it. In fact, I once made some of this refreshing lemonade syrup for my family, according to my aunt's recipe. They weren't too keen on it, unfortunately, preferring to drink the readily available (and much sweeter) fresh natural orange juice straight from our trees. This is fair enough; my sweet tooth is less demanding than theirs (I don't expect otherwise from children). I was also scolded by my husband for using up all the precious lemons to make something that needs added sugar to make it potable. This is why I don't make lemonade at home any more - that, and also because I usually drink it all myself, in which case, I may as well stick to orange juice or water.

Lemonade syrup is really quite easy to make. The tastiest version is when the lemons are tangy rather than sour, and the whole lemon has been used to get as much flavour out of the fruit and into the syrup as possible. I like to grate the zest of the lemons, then juice them, and throw in the whole fruit into the saucepan with the sugar and water to boil up altogether. The cooled strained syrup is then bottled and stored in the fridge. To make a glass of refreshing lemonade, a few tablespoons of this syrup are placed in a glass, and cold water is poured on top, with a few ice cubes and a sprig of mint for the final visual effect.

As Delia Smith says, "there are a million and one commercial versions, but nothing can compare with the flavour of fresh lemons made into lemonade." And there are also a million versions of storable lemonade syrup for making refreshing lemonade in the summer which you can browse over the internet: some are for storing as a syrup, others are for drinking once you make it, as well as some single serves for those of us whose family doesn't appreciate home-made lemonade. And if you're interested in making something totally different, but equally refreshing, The Nicest Woman in the World™ once served me some kanelada, a drink often served up in Eastern Crete, which Mariana made recently.

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Offal (Τζιγέρι - Εντόσθια)

It's a load of old waffle
that awful is OFFAL.
It may not look good
to treat it as food.

But once you have cut it
and floured it and fried it,
believe me, there's nothing
that tastes quite just like it.

Maybe it's hiding
in that little SAUSAGE
you ate as of late
in your wholemeal bread sandwich.

So next time you're buying
a small spring-born lamb,
you might think of eating
what you thought was spam.

It's liver and kidney
and sweetbreads and heart,
the kind of things chucked
in a steak-kidney tart.

Let it all cook until it is crunchy;
just think of it then as a squidgy BIFTEKI.
And when it's all done, it needs very little:
some lemon juice, salt and horta to fill you!

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Courgettes a la Bulgaria (Κολοκυθάκια α λα Βουλγαρία)

Aristotle wasn't feeling well one night, complaining of tummy ache. I usually ask my children to go to the toilet in such cases. This time, though, the tummy ache didn't go away, and it was still there the next morning, so I decided not to send him to school. We would visit the doctor and to kill two birds with one stone, Christine, who's starting primary school in September, could get the necessary verifications as to her state of health by a registered paediatrician, ophthalmologist and dentist, as Greek law states. Being the good Greek wife that I am, I had enough time to boil up the horta I had washed the previous day. All that was needed to complete the meal were some grilled meat patties to go with the greens; this could be done after returning home from the doctor's.

On the way to the doctor's, Aristotle said he felt fine and his stomach didn't hurt any longer. As we had set out to get other jobs done, I decided that we would treat the day as an outing. In any case, we had not seen Dr M, our lovely friend, in a while. She has never viewed us as paying customers, nor does she rush us out of her office, even though her waiting room is always packed. When I pay her, she insists that if I can't afford it, she'll take less from me. The care she offers and the advice she proffers is worth more than what I pay her. I say this, because this is the reason that I don't often go to her surgery. She's more than willing to help me out over the phone. After examining my children, she decided that they were healthy and Aristotle's tummy ache would probably not return, but as a precautionary measure, I could get free blood and urine tests done. Because Aristotle was born with a blood disorder which eventually cleared up on its own (after a year of having bi-monthly blood transfusions - no laughing matter), I decided to take her up on this. As she also had some business to attend to at the health centre where these tests are done (for non-Greek readers, this is the infamous IKA, which might be called the NHS in Britain, with similar connotations), she asked us to pick her up from her surgery after our little stroll in the laiki - the paediatrician's surgery is located on the same street that Wednesday's open-air market takes place - so we could drive out there altogether.

The laiki is filled with wonderful sights: the brightest coloured vegetables, the most delectable smells and aromas, as well as the cheapest T-shirts and kinkiest string underwear. With summer coming on, I decided to buy the children some summer shorts. A stall run by a friendly-looking Pontiac (I mean a Russian migrant with Greek origins from the Pontus region) was selling children's summer clothes. I picked up a pair of shorts for Aristotle. "This one, please," I said to the stall owner.

"No, mum, I want this one," said Aristotle. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my children have developed their own taste in clothes! Even the stall owner found them difficult to satisfy, as he had shown them almost all the available prints and styles before they finally came out with their own choice of a T-shirt and capri pants.

It was time to pick up the doctor. As we walked out to the car, Dr M pointed out the linden tree (we call it by its Latin name, 'tilio') whose spring blossoms were highly aromatic. She even managed to procure a bag of dried tilio for me from one of the locals - everyone knows and loves Dr M, which is completely understandable - ready to be made into a relaxing evening tea. The only problem is the location of the tree: it's on a main road with heavy traffic, which does defeat the purpose of imbibing a natural product. I'd like to believe that the leaves and blossoms were collected from the part of the tree facing the houses rather than the road, and that the car emissions rise to the higher parts of the tree, but this is also wishful thinking, isn't it?



The Greek national health system works very well when you have insider information. You can get this by having a friend or relative 'inside' the system, or by the goodwill of an 'insider', which I had today. The doctor spoke to a specialist in child surgery, who got the blood and urine tests sorted out, as well as the dentist and opthalmologist, who were both quite non-plussed by the paediatrician's request that we be seen to without an appointment, which is a holy prerequisite in places like IKA. All this took a long time, which of course meant that we came home late, and there was no time to defrost and cook biftekia. It was probably one of those days when I would have preferred to call it a day and take a rest. A sandwich (something like the ones Val made recently) and a glass of water would have sufficed. No such luck for the Cretan wife - her man expects a cooked lunch, even if it's a light one. And I, the tired Greek wife, dream of finding a ready cooked meal on the table waiting for us.



We both found what we were looking for from Georgia, the wonderful smiling Georgia, who waters our garden, digs up weeds, washed my carpets, sewed me a pair of shorts - she's a seamstress by profession - as well as a looking after my mother-in-law. On that day, she had cooked a dish that she often made in Bulgaria, which she says is quite popular in her country, as is the use of yoghurt in cooking, more so than in Greece where it is more often eaten as a side dish. As much as I insisted that I could not eat the food she had prepared for herself to eat, she insisted even more that I take it; being very hungry, I did. And here it is: fried zucchini slices dipped in a batter made with flour, eggs, water and salt, allowed to strain a little, and layered with tzatziki dip, which had been given a slight overdose of garlic. If I had to give it a name, I'd say it was another regional version of the famous borek.

It was delicious, I would definitely have it again, and I would serve it with biftekia, or another kind of simple grilled meat, something like lambchops. It's especially nice on a hot day, as the yoghurt is refereshing, and it is of ocurse served cold or at room temperature.

This post is dedicated to Georgia.

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Amaranth - vlita - and black nightshade - stifno (Βλήτα και στίφνος)

This post is mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for Solanum nigrum (black nightshade).

One man's poison is another man's meat. And one man's foliage is another person's salad. Eating grassy weeds - collectively known as 'horta' χόρτα - only ever became fashionable in the West when it started to be eaten by the elite, who let the word spread that they were good for you. It is amusing watching foreign tourists buying vlita (amaranth) which was already at the end of its growing cycle (it was in flower, which means it's ready to seed) in the supermarket at the beginning of spring; if only they knew that the vlita sold at such an early stage have been grown with so many chemicals. Leafy greens, a staple of Cretan cuisine, have a high water content; if they have been grown with an overdose of artificial fertiliser, it's like drinking water with chemicals added. The first time I bought them, I left the woody stalks on them and boiled everything together. I couldn't understand what I was doing wrong. Now I know why the stalks are sold with the vlita: they add weight to a weightless crop that is easy to grow and cheap to sell. maybe that's why the word 'vlito' can also be used to mean 'ignoramus'.

In Kambi, my mother's family grew tomatoes that were never watered ('anidres' - άνυδρες), like the famous waterless Santorini tomatoes. Olive trees do not always receive irrigation. Now the village is almost deserted, the leftover residents have hot and cold running water and electricity in their houses, and this system has all but ceased to be working; with climate change, it will probably not be a sustainable solution. Crop yields have already shown signs of reduction. Orange trees cannot survive without irrigation. Try growing something without some kind of fertiliser now (let alone water) and see how far you get.



We're onto our second harvest of vlita greens from our garden. Cretan peasants have known about the beneficial properties of horta for a long long time before the West began preaching their virtues. Whether or not they knew about the nutritious qualities of vlita (amaranth) makes no difference to the fact that many people subsisted on greens. The Cretans were lucky they had tasty leafy greens to pick from their land or field, even if eating them on such a regular basis stigmatised you as poor. Protein came from milk and eggs, but as animals were slaughtered for a festive meal or maybe on a monthly basis, most of the protein the average Cretan got came from beans. The diet of the average Cretan has of course changed, but grasses, weeds and leafy greens have always constituted a regular part of a Cretan's daily meals.

If plants have been allowed to seed from the previous season, both vlita (amaranth) and stifno (black nightshade) grow without being sown, as did our plants. Vlita lend themselves to being replanted whereas stifno does not. It wilts rather quickly, which is surprising, because vlita is the first to suffer when it doesn't receive enough water; stifno is more resilient. It's nutrients are obviously more soil-borne than that of vlita. Vlita is so sweet it can substitute spinach in spanakopita; stifno balances out the sweetness of vlita with its slightly acrid bitterness.



Stifno is a rather strange edible grass. It only grows as a weed, and is not usually sown. This one grew in our irrigation waste water channel. In Greece, it isn't known very much at all. In fact, Crete and possibly (without being sure of what I am saying) only a few other islands may treat it as an edible weed. Most people around the world regard it as poisonous - except in Turkey, where stifno is well known and goes by the same name as in Greece, (istifno). Funnily enough, it is related to the tomato plant. The stifno in our garden came out in the spring, and is now flourishing wherever there are other irrigated plants.



After washing these grasses very carefully, they are boiled separately - vlita needs less cooking time than stifno - and mixed together in the ratio of 1:3-4 stifno:vlita. I change the water in each pot once to get rid of any bitterness and grit that didn't come off in the rinsing. Vlita can also be eaten on its own, but stifno is ALWAYS mixed with vlita. Boiled zucchini and potatos (don't boil them together because the potatoes will turn grey from the green courgette water) are also added to make this famous Greek salad a filling meal, served with a dressing of olive oil, lemon and salt. Fried fresh fish or grilled meat make for a very Dr-Atkins diet meal with a bottomless serving, but the average Cretan will want a couple of slices of good quality bread to mop up the olive oil remaining on the plate.

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Regional cooking (Η τοπική κουζίνα)

Sometimes I wonder whether the neighbouring village is actually another country when I hear of the many different variations for making a particular Cretan dish. Let's take the well-known boureki:

"Didn't you top your boureki with some pastry?"

"You didn't grate any tomato over the mizithra in the boureki?"

"You forgot to add garlic to the boureki!"

Why is it that Greeks cannot agree on how a dish is cooked? How did regional variations of the same meal come about?

My mother, who came from Kambi, never used tomato or garlic in her boureki. She topped it with home-made pastry, making it look more like a pie with a self-crusting bottom. Don't be surprised if the locals in Nerokouro also make their boureki like this; as people moved away from the mountains, preferring lower flatter land close to the main town (Hania), they often moved to a village in their proximity on lower ground, taking their culinary practices with them. Many members from my mother's family live in Nerokourou.


My mother-in law comes from Fournes; she uses garlic and tomato in her boureki, as does Dimitra's sister-in-law, who comes from Lakki. These villages get their water from the same source: Lakki is the next village one comes across after Fournes, before reaching the Omalos plateau where the Samaria Gorge begins, an 18-kilometre stretch ending on the northern coastline of Hania.

Both Kambi and Lakki are villages at the foot of Lefka Ori, the mountain range at the centre of Hania. They have only recently become accessible to one another (without having to drive away from the mountain to find the road that drives into their route) by a road which crosses through Therisso, another village on the foothills of Lefka Ori. This road was once a footway used by shepherd and their flocks, widened by the passage of time, and eventually by bulldozers, making Crete more accessible than it ever has been.

The regional differences in cooking styles were known to people before the depopulation of villages and migration to urban centres became commonplace, through the marriages of people from different villages. Wikipedia mentions the pastry boureki without tomato, which is the one more commonly found in cookbooks (such as the famous Psilakis cookbook on Cretan cookery). Another website describes the tomato-without-pastry version. Interestingly enough, the same website mentions another recipe (for marathopites - fennel pies) which is specific to the areas where the tomato boureki version is more common, which would make me think that the recipe writer is connected in some way with the area. The way someone cooks a meal often signals their origins.

But where does the word 'boureki' come from? It is used right throughout the countries formerly connected to the Ottoman Empire, Greece being one of them. In each country and different region, boureki (or burek, or boreg, among quite a few variants) refers to some kind of pie, usually made with cheese and pastry. The word is clearly Turkish in origin.



Whichever way you prefer to make your boureki, it's delicious.

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Black forest chocolate and zucchini gateau (Κέικ σοκολάτας με κολοκύθι)

That river of zucchini is still flowing. The fridge has filled up with zucchini, there's zucchini on the kitchen work top, there's zucchini in the garden, we're going to have to start selling the stuff; either that, or give it away by leaving bags full of it at neighbours' doorsteps, with little signs saying: "Cook me", or "Free to a good home".

Thank goodness I found Clotilde's chocolate and zucchini cake! I have kept the basic recipe, but made a few changes to it: I used only white flour, not a mixture of brown and white; only cocoa was used, not a mixture of cocoa and chocolate chips; the topping is completely different since I turned the cake into a gateau. It's a shame that no one in my family celebrates their birthday in the summer, because now I know how to make the most moist, vegetable-based chocolate cake ever - and get rid of some of that excess zucchini crop.


You need:
2 cups all-purpose flour (English teacups)
1/2 cup cocoa powder (4-6 tablespoons, according to taste; the more cocoa, the less zucchini is visible)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup margarine (I'm thinking of substituting olive oil in this as I now do for banana cake)
1 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla powder
1 tsp instant coffee granules
3 eggs, at room temperature
2 cups of zucchini, unpeeled, grated
Beat the margarine with the sugar, then add the eggs one at a time and mix in well. Now add the salt, vanilla and coffee granules. Mix in the zucchini, making sure it is spread evenly in the mixture. Add the sifted cocoa, flour, baking powder and soda, and mix in till the mixture looks like a thick paste. Pour into a greased tin and cook for 40 minutes in a moderate oven. To check if the cake is done, stick a knife into it to see if it comes out clean.

I decided to divide the mixture into two tins: a small loaf tin and a small round tin. The loaf became part of my children's lunchbox, while the round cake, when it had cooled down, was decorated with whipped cream (a leftover from a pasta dish) and cherries, which were 3 euro a kilo today at the supermarket (last week, they were 6 euro a kilo).

Leave it in the refrigerator for an hour before serving, because it is so moist that it may lose its shape when it is cut. For a richer version, slice the cake in the middle into two rounds (or better still, cook two small round cakes), spread whipped cream on one layer, sprinkle a few slices of pitted cherries onto the cream, place the second layer of cake on top, and finally, ice it with more whipped cream and a few whole cherries to make the perfect torte.

This is the kind of cake that I will definitely make again, as well as have a go at turning it into muffins - it is moister than my boiled chocolate cake (which is a very moist cake), and the zucchini simply makes it much healthier. The bold combination of the grass green courgette in a sea of brown chocolate dotted by the crimson cherries is eye-catching. If I could only convince my family that zucchini can be eaten raw, I'd have sprinkled a few courgette skin shavings in between the cherries to highlight the contrastive colours. This is a naturally beautiful cake.

This is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by maninas.

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Waves on the Rocks (Ραβδούχα)

If I could describe the island of Crete, I would say it looked like one big long sunbathing mermaid, whose body is divided into four uneven parts: the west, where her head and hands are; the mid-west, which constitutes her petite bust; the mid-east, where she keeps her big wide hips; and the east, where her tail is located.

That westernmost part is called Hania, the one with the small head and two outstretched hands. I live on the northern coastline, just below the left hand side of the mermaid's head. On our first outing for the summer (our last family taverna meal was at Therisso), we drove westwards, to her first hand - the bigger of the two, Rodopou peninisula. On the left hand side, in the middle of the peninsula, we stopped at a seaside village called Ravdoucha. There, we encoutered the Waves on the Rocks, where we enjoyed our first summer meal out (this map is from their website). This is the second time we have been to this restaurant.



To get there, we had to travel over mountainous terrain on a small narrow road littered with rocks, fallen debris from the winter's rains and adverse weather. We could see the mermaid's other arm (called Gramvousa) in the distance across the sea. It is barren and arid, unlike Rodopou, which is covered in greenery in its greater part.



We finally came across the beach, which resembled a lagoon, filled with sapphire blue Mediterranean seawater.



We sat outside under the shade of two great big mulberry trees. The only sounds were the sea, the patrons of the restaurant - and the generators, which was tucked away in a neat corner, but whose hum could still be discerned.



From our table, we had a direct view of the sea.



We ordered some tsigariasto (which was cooked in a little tomato - the meat was falling off the bone),



tzatziki,



stamnagathi (slightly blanched, turned into a cold salad, a little bitter as it is ending its season now, but still, very tasty),



calamarakia (fried squid ringlets),



grilled octopus (superb),



fried zucchini, eggplant and mushroom slices, and a plate of potato chips; the owner of the taverna cultivates potatos for the exclusive use of the taverna. We had also ordered a beer, and were treated to one more by the owner of the taverna (he saw me taking photographs of the food).



At the end of the meal, we were bought a dish of cold caramelised carrot (no, it isn't the famous Greek quince in syrup, but it sure looks like it - and if we had some yoghurt or ice-cream, I'd know just what to do with it), as well as some tsikoudia, the locally produced fiery white spirit of Crete. We drank in the sea air, and went home feeling very relaxed. Total cost for four people: 40 euro, including tip.

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Edible flowers (Εδώδιμα λουλούδια)

By now, faithful readers of my blog will know that I have planted zucchini in the garden, picked and stored the zucchini flowers, turned them into dolmadakia to cap oven-cooked yemista, fried them with Italian-style filling and stuck them in a green-onion pie.

I now present to you dolmadakia zucchini flowers cooked in the pot. If ever there was a competition for a beautiful dish, this one would surely give others a good run for their money.

The zucchini flowers were collected over a period of two weeks. They stored marvellously well in the fridge in a plastic bag, one flower stacked inside the other. I gave them a quick rinse just before stuffing them, stacked them in two layers over a bed of fennel weed, and let them cook as long as the rice needed to be cooked.



To serve them, let them cool down because they might break up when you try to pick ladle them out if they are too hot. Accompany them with Georgia's tzatziki or just plain yoghurt, and a green salad. Heavenly ambrosia!

And for some more beautiful food flowers, I give you the overgrown artichoke - edible only before its thistly stage. But its dazzling purple flowers are worth resisting the temptation to eat them all (with or without broad beans or carrots).



Recently, one of my fellow blogger cooks gave me an award for good blogging, so I am dedicating this post to her. Thank you Laurie.

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'Gourmet' zucchini rissoles (Κολοκυθόκεφτέδες του καλοφαγά)

(What I am about to write is in no way meant to be taken literally - it is really a play on words, and is not meant to be a scathing attack on anyone, nor a condemnation of someone's approach to their work. But if anyone is seriously interested in recipe copyright infringement, you light like to check out Alosha' s post to see the point I am making)

In the past, it wasn't easy to plagiarise other people's work simply because printed material was hard to come by, unless you bought it from a bookshop or borrowed it from a library. Now that the internet has allowed people to view someone's writing at the simple click of a button, plagiarism is ingrained in the daily life of Westernised people, whether they live in a modern New World country like Canada, or the backwaters of a Mediterranean island like Hania.

In Greece, plagiarism is the norm. Yes, really, it is. My work involves proof-reading students' English-language theses. In most cases, you can tell when someone has copy-pasted their work. For example, a paragraph is written perfectly without any grammar errors; then suddenly the next paragraph you read is riddled with grammar errors, making it virtually incomprehensible. The two paragraphs could not have been written by the same person. Here's another example of what I call 'vicarious' plagiarism. When a student can't write something himself (or herself - I'm into generic terms), he (which could also mean 'she') gets someone else to write something instead and uses it as their (which of course means 'his' or 'her') own work, without the other person getting any acknowledgement of their endeavours.

Kat had a recent episode of this where an official Greek state body copied her work from her blog without acknowledging it as someone else's work. Well, that stinks, really, which is exactly what Peter thought (the first person to comment on the post), when he read Kat's post: he advises her to "start with the niceties and then increase the pressure... if you can find their ISP, a complaint to them could also throw their site in jeopardy." Dark words, I dare say. At least I can sleep in peace with the thought that such a person will not plagiarise my writing, nor copy my ideas, at least not without acknowledging my own in the first place.

Stealing ideas and intellectual material is also a similar issue with that of plagiarism. On our blogs, we all use little blurbs, graphics and notes to inform our readers that we will not tolerate copy cats. For example, I write: "©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." at the bottom of all my posts, while on the main page, I use a couple of graphics: and

that some nice people created (and have given rights to bloggers to use) to dissuade people from from copying their work. In the world of the internet, where a recent study using Web searches in 75 different languages to sample the Web determined that in 2008 there were at least 45 billion web pages, one can only come to the conclusion that there is a fat chance of ever being caught plagiarising.

The recipe world is one area where direct plagiarism can be softened, covered up or completely hidden - by changing one ingredient, or using a synonym of a word - which basically 'proves' that the author wrote up his (I'm not being generic this time) own work and didn't copy. Just because someone gets an idea for a recipe into his (HIS) head doesn't mean he (HE) copied the idea from someone else. In Crete, people generally eat the same kind of seasonal food no matter where they're from, so they can't be called copycats of each other. That's just part of what the Mediterranean food culture is all about. Instead of making Maria's courgette patties, Gordon Ramsay, upon reading it (I doubt he has had the good fortune to do so), could make (if he so pleased, but as far as I know, has not done so) 'zucchini rissoles' instead. As Pantelis says, "these are also known as fritters." He also said that you can "Call it what you want."

In any case, it just depends on your taste whims, what you cook from one day to the next doesn't it? I guess I just felt like zucchini rissoles (oops, I'm sorry, I meant courgette patties) after seeing the river of zucchini flowing out of the garden and into my refrigerator - an upward stream, like the Nile, the only known river in the world to flow from South to North, from bottom to up. Other cooks might make zucchini rissoles simply because they saw someone else making them, and felt like making them themselves. Or maybe they were passing by the fruit and vege stall after work and saw some zucchini (among the 80% of imported fresh produce their country eats) and decided that this is what they would like to eat tonight.

Mind you, I don't make it difficult for anyone to copy my recipes, what with the step-by-step photos of my meals and the clear explanations of how the ingredients are turned into something edible and delicious. Cretans have this thing about food: you just don't eat without inviting in the passerby. So if you're passing by my blog, you'll know that to make courgette patties (or zucchini rissoles, or kolokithokeftedes, as the Greeks would call them), a variety of different ingredients can be added to them. I didn't tell you in my original post that I've been served them with tomato at a restaurant. Some gourmets add cheese to theirs. I used fennel weed, although the norm is a mixture of mint and parsley (which is just what the gourmet used).

In any case, zucchini patties (now I don't know whose recipe I'm talking about) cannot be worked up in a jiffy: "courgettes have such a high water content that you need to get rid of it to make firm patties." That's the same as saying: "the key to Kolokithokeftedes' success ... relies heavily upon your ability to leech and squeeze out as much liquid from the grated zucchini as possible."

"The second point" that the leecher made was that the "the amount of bread crumb in this recipe is approximate. Again, the amount will depend on how much liquid you squeezed out of your zucchini that will be needed to bind your mixture." That's not at all like my recipe. I mentioned that I do this with flour, not breadcrumbs. In any case, if you stick an egg and some cheese into the patties (as did the "leech and squeeze", rather than the one who "got rid of the excess moisture"), the patties will definitely hold their form better (but they won't be truly vegetarian unless you're an egg-eating vegetarian). Mind you, he's not averse to lenten kolokithokeftedes, as he admits to eating them "with and without cheese."

And isn't it amusing, that all the points mentioned in the squeezer's are in the same order as mine? Maybe it's a case of great minds thinking alike.

So, which came first, the chicken or the egg? In the world of publishing, to prove that you wrote something, you must stick it in a sealed envelope, and send it registered to yourself, so that the date you sent it can be used as proof of when the article originated in its finished form. Blogs are dated, but then I could set the date for any time I like. Despite my claiming to have published the recipe on Tuesday, the 27th of May, 2008 (while the squeegee published his on Wednesday, the 28th of May, 2008, after admitting that he had seen mine by leaving a comment on the post: "AMAN! I'm making kolokithokeftedes tonight!"), I could have written it on Wednesday, and dated it for Tuesday. He even told one of his readers that he "saw Maria's entry on them" and he "left her a note as well."

But I was beaten on one point: we ate our zucchini patties with tzatziki, which the lovely Georgia from Bulgaria (the Queen's live-in) had made for us. I thought it would be cheating if I included it in my post. You see, I didnt' make it myself. I'm not a plagiariser. All my posts are thoroughly web-searched and credit is always given where it's due. The combination of zucchipatties and tzatziki makes it look as though we are both what we eat, and that is we are both Greeks.

I'm not amazed that Peter's courgette patties were a love affair for him - especially after I talked about the connotations of the topic of size and length in Greece. I'm just amazed that he didn't (originally) acknowledge it to me; maybe I had no effect on him in the first place (although he did say he reads through his friends' blogs). In any case, I am not a cook - I've already stated that in my posts - so don't go searching through my recipes for what to eat tonight. Instead, think of me as a famous writer who makes her readers laugh themselves silly with what she writes about.

Thank you Peter, for taking my mind off my domestic mini-crisis, which I promise you all will have a nice ending, because that's the way all good stories should end, shouldn't they?

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