Plenty

My son was watching me make some kolokeftethes (zucchini patties) yesterday, using a 2-month-old overgrown zucchini which had turned into a marrow by the time I noticed it growing. Its skin had lost its green colour, and had turned slightly yellow, but this not spoil its interior, which had not turned fibrous, nor had it lost its moisture. I also added some finely chopped onion, a few herbs from the garden and some salt and pepper. He saw all the ingredients go into a bowl, finally being mixed with breadcrumbs and shaped into patties.



"We'll never starve in this house, will we?" he said.
"No, probably not. Do the kids at school look as though they might starve?" I asked him.
"No way! Have you seen what they come to school eating in the mornings?"
Yes, I noticed. All will be revealed in due course.

In the meantime, you have until Sunday to add your name to the draw for a natural beauty package from Aphrodite's Embrace. 

 ©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.

Washed out

When Persephone doesn't go of her own accord, Hades pulls her by the hair. The torrent arrived last night, complete with thunder and lightning. Such outbursts never last long, but their effects are felt everywhere.

Thanks to PicasaWeb on Google.com for the editing of the photo.

The next morning saw clear skies and bright sunlight, but Persephone's mother Demetra is seething: it's stifling hot, humid and muggy.

Don't let Persephone get you down. Instead, let Aphrodite embrace you with her beauty.
Click here to enter the giveaway for the beauty care package featuring natural products.

©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.

Patience (Υπομονή)

No blogging this week, I've promised myself, as this week is going to be a nasty one for most parents and working people (and maybe for high school pupils, unless they are happy about their teachers striking, to gain more time off school), so I've decided not to post anything about it on my blog, in order to refrain from showing my dissent or sounding presumptive. I will do that once the revolution is over or begins to wane, so we can have a more retrospective opinion about the developments of the week (or two or three) that took place.

Keep calm and have a freddo cappuccino with some frothy milk: prices range from 1.50 euro at a canteen to 2.00-2.50 euro at a beachside cafe to 3.30 euro at a sit-down cafe, complete with a κέρασμα of donuts, some ice-cold water and a pretty arrangement of paper napkins.

In the meantime, you can enter the draw for some natural beauty products by leaving a comment on this post in my blog.

©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.

Aphrodite's Embrace: Feeding your skin with natural beauty products (Go on, have a taste!)

GIVEAWAY! Scroll down to the end of the post for a chance to win a beauty care package with some natural cosmetics for organic beauty.

I was very touched to hear Tina Turner say in an not-so-new interview that she has never done drugs or smoked, nor does she drink a lot of alcohol, which of course all goes against the lifestyle she lives and the people she mingles with, notwithstanding a past troubled relationship. It gives me the courage to declare that neither have I ever done drugs, or smoked, or gotten drunk (I once drank a lot of wine at a NZ party because there was no water being offered with the salty food, only alcohol, but it did not make me drunk - it actually had a very sobering effect on me, making me very sleepy), and this is not because I'm some kind of prim and proper goody-two-shoes, as people often stereotype 'boring' people who have not lived their lives to full extremes: I simply didn't feel any desire to get drunk, take drugs or smoke.

I've always had a passion for natural foods and products, which I was able to develop to a great extent when I came to live in Crete. Here, it is very easy to live as naturally as you want/can, without making a great effort or spending a lot of money, as we are generally surrounded by natural substances which we take for granted. This desire for the natural things in life put me off embracing the well-established Western habits in the beauty products sector, such as using make-up or skin products (like the majority of Greek women who 'put on their face' before they leave home, as a friend of mine once said to me). Maybe I am just lucky to be blessed with naturally good skin, which, unfortunately, my husband and children don't actually share with me - they all have very sensitive skin, something that shocked me as I slowly became familiar with the changes in their faces. Genetical inheritances aside, I am very grateful that I don't need to use what I call 'gunk'.

No one is perfect though. My Achilles' heel is actually found close to Achilles' heel - I suffer from overly dry hard cracked skin on the soles of my feet, something I seem to vaguely remember only my father suffering from (but not the rest of my family). But I also know that that's just an excuse: I confess that I don't actually take care of my feet. I walk around barefoot in and around my home throughout the year (with socks only when it's really cold) and I hardly ever wear anything other than flip-flops during summer. I practically deserve to have dry cracked skin on the soles of my feet.

Whether this condition causes you pain, or you simply feel that it looks very unsightly, there is little you can do to alleviate the condition if you don't use some kind of skin softener. Natural remedies for controlling this problem are time-consuming and rather messy. Applying a mashed banana and honey poultice on a regular basis isn't cheap, nor is it practical to keep applying olive oil on the soles of your feet - imagine all the stains... In my quest to keep things natural, I bought two rather expensive products packaged in attractive clip-top preserving jars from a well known store... and found that they simply DID NOT work! These products put me off buying anything else for a long time. I then bought a cheaper supermarket product which worked much better than the expensive 'natural' stuff (which I realised was more about supporting good causes than actually being effective for what they were being sold as) but it contained ingredients that would only be recognisable to chemists, eg Benzyl Benzoate, Betaine, Cetearyl Alcohol, Myristyl Myristate, P-Anisic Acid... It's really sad to feel that you need to resort to smearing chemicals on your body on a regular basis to make you feel good.

In my search for a completely natural and cheap product for my problem, I came across Aphrodite's Embrace (after the Greek goddess of love) which promotes beauty products with the motto: "Go ahead, have a taste"! I contacted the site owner, Michelle Lasher, a young mother who created a range of natural beauty products during her pregnancy when she suddenly realised that she was using substances on her body that could affect her unborn child. She began experimenting with products she made herself, using completely natural substances, which she is now selling online. I think it's true to say that in this day and age, more and more people are turning back to nature, having tired of chemically saturated products that harm us in such subtle ways that we really can't work out which one causes our irritations, as we imbibe so many artificial products via so many manufactured food and beauty products, not to mention the general polluted state of the air through means of transport, chimneys etc. So Michelle's products are regarded as highly desirable in our times.

On hearing that I live in Greece, Michelle was overjoyed: her husband is Greek - now that is an amazing coincidence, especially since we really did not know anything about each other! She was also very excited to hear about my website and my interest in natural products. Michelle directed me to the product I could use to help soothe my cracked dry heels: her homemade organic Baby Bottom Antispetic Healing Cream (US$8), which contains just coconut oil, olive oil, beeswax, tea tree and lavender essential oil - and nothing else! I find all these ingredients recognisable and pronounceable.

Another important consideration is that the baby bottom cream has multiple uses, as Michelle explained to me: "It can be used for any dry skin, eg dry elbows, knees, lips, knuckles; it is very healing and can be used for sunburns, scrapes and burns; it has completely replaced other antibacterial ointments in my medicine cabinet. It can be used to prevent stretch marks in pregnancy. If I have any irritated skin, no matter what it is, that is the first thing I put on it. I have a friend that likes it for his eczema." Most of us are fooled by the labelling of commercial beauty products which usually designate a specific use, and we end up buying more products than we need when one product could have done more than one job. People are getting tired of being fooled by big business.

I decided to place an order for the healing cream - the prices at Aphrodite's Embrace seemed quite reasonable - which Michelle said would be packed with a gift of her Lip Quenching Balm (US$2.50) containing beeswax, coconut oil, olive oil and peppermint essential oil. On opening the package (which conveniently fit into my mailbox and arrived only a week after I ordered from Texas to Crete!), I was also surprised to find some more gifts: some Honey Face and Lip Exfoliating Scrub (US$5) containing honey, sugar, baking soda, oatmeal, olive oil, tea tree and lavender essential oils, and a Deep Moisturizing Face and Body Lotion (US$6) containing coconut oil, beeswax  and lavender essential oil and extra virgin olive oil. "Try them," Michelle emailed me, "and tell me what you think." I couldn't wait!

I live in a hot country, but this package from Texas, USA came to Crete, Greece in perfect condition - despite being knocked about during transportation, nothing leaked or looked melted or seeped out of the packaging. The products in the above photo are exactly the same products that were photographed in Michelle's home in the smaller photos above. Michelle sent me - she had photographed them before sending them to me.  

The face scrub felt and smell so natural. The aroma it exudes reminds you of a forest full of honey. In two minutes, just a tiny bit mixed with a little water made the skin around my nose oil- and grit-free (in Greece, the hot summer climate gets muggy in September, and my skin usually feels the effects of the sweat mixed with natural airborne dirt). The moisturiser had a nice matte finish - even my very good skin could feel a difference. I used the lip balm by chance before I had a shower - it's highly waterproof!

And finally, the baby bottom cream: it's absorbed quickly by the skin, and again it leaves a nice non-oily finish, two qualities which are very important elements of a good foot skin softener. Once you apply it, you can't walk around much until it is absorbed, and you don't want an oily sensation because it leaves residues on your socks/shoes. Another very important feature of foot skin softener is how often you need to reapply it; it's simply not something you can do every day/night because it limits your mobility. I've used this product once this week, and I don't feel I need to reapply it until the week passes - I would need two applications with the chemically-saturated supermarket product. So it really is quite effective.

It's a nice feeling to know that I can feed my skin in the same way that I feed my body, with completely natural products, to achieve an organic kind of beauty. And at such a reasonable price.

Giveaway! Just leave a comment on this post for a chance to win this beauty care package!

And here's the best part: Michelle has asked me to host a giveaway contest for one lucky winner of a beauty care package from Aphrodite's Embrace, for anywhere in the world! Just leave a comment on this post and I will place your names in the draw, to be held in a week's time from now when I will announce the winner.

©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.

Herbs (Βότανα)

As part of the interesting side of my work, I recently proofread a thesis listing over 350 species of flora, mainly low-lying shrubs that are used in similar ways to herbs, that grow in Palestine. As the study focussed on plants that grew in a Mediterranean country, many of them were recognisable to myself too, as part of the shared nature of Greece with other Mediterranean countries. Apart from food, herbs have always been used as a source of medicine from past times, and are the main basis of medicines in modern times, so the listing of plants used as food and medicinal uses, not to mention for social, animal and other uses, has been important throughout mankind's history:

"The more popular knowledge on the uses of wild plants becomes obsolete, the more indispensable becomes the need to record this information, not only for historical reasons, but also in view of unveiling products and uses, long forsaken in the course of time; this is knowledge to be exploited for rural development and the so-called multiplier effect." (Tamara Saleh, Unpublished MAICh thesis, 2013)

The herbs description contained scientific, common and English names, with information on location, photos, preparation methods and uses of each herb. Local herb specialists were used to collect the data, so the informaiton was gathered first hand from the field, using the knowledge of local shepherds, cooks and shop owners with a family history of herb gathering. Plants as common and mundane as wild grasses were documented in standardised fashion, with numbered references for the sources of the information:

Adiantum capillus-veneris L. Family: Adiantaceae		WAY OF PRESERVATION Leaves are air-dried for 3-4 days and kept in bags [19].
Distribution in the Mediterranean: Palestinian Territories: NATIVE [4] Distribution in PAL T.: Nablus Mountain, Al Quds and Al Khalil Mountains, Jordan Ghour, Shafa al Ghour, Dead Sea Region, Barriyat Al Quds and Barriyat Al Khalil [4]. Occurrence: rocky, humid habitats of Mediterranean woodlands, shrublands, semi-steppe shrublands, shrub-steppes, deserts and extreme deserts [39]. Life form: hemicryptophyte [39]. Abundance: COMMON [4]. Blooming months: [4, 39]  12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
English name(s): Maidenhair fern	Common name(s) in Palestine:  كزبرة البير Kuzbaret al beer
USES Material: Parts used: leaves. COSMETIC. As a hair wash to remove dandruff [21]. Medicinal: Parts used: leaves. A decoction of leaves is an emmenagogue, used to treat cough [8]. Green leaf extraction is placed on affected areas of snakebites [7].

Interest in herbs is growing more and more these days, as people try to source their needs through nature. A friend from the US who knows that I rely on the use of a variety of local herbs in my cooking and use local herbs as teas in the winter sent me a link describing a seed pack containing medicinal herbs. She was wondering whether she should buy something like this to get a herb garden started. Some of the so-called medicinal 'herbs' in that seed pack are also considered common 'weeds', which basically means that they can even be found growing around her.

The seed pack basically represents how seemingly reputable international companies have commercialised the mundane, being, in this case, the health aspect of common plants for everyday use. It's good to see companies/people showing a healthy interest in the all-things-natural sphere, especially in countries whose biodiversity has been negatively affected by mass streamlining, the standardisation of nearly everything and a greatly reduced biodiversity in a more sterile environment. But a deeper look into what those medicinal herb seed packs contain makes me question their integrity. It contains a wide range of seeds that originate from different continents and climates. Plants from such differing environments need their own special conditions to grow appropriately. Acclimatisation to new environments needs time, usually over a long period (years) due to seasonal differences in various places.

Anthemis melampodina Delile                 Family: Compositae Giseke		PRESERVATION Flowers are air-dried for 3-4 days and kept in bags [19]. USES Medicinal: Parts used: flowers. An infusion helps to relieve colds and flu, cough, and all the symptoms of colds [7, 8].
Distribution in the Mediterranean: EGY, ISR, LIB (?), PAL, SYR [38]. Palestinian Territories: NATIVE Distribution in PAL T.: Dead Sea Region, Barriyat Al Quds and Barriyat Al Khalil [4]. Occurrence: dry, sandy habitats of semi-steppe shrublands, shrub-steppes, deserts and extreme deserts [39]. Life form: therophyte/ annual [39]. Abundance: RARE [4].                        Blooming months: [4, 39]  12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
English name(s): Negev Chamomile	Common name(s) in Palestine: Arbian أربيان

The seed pack also contains chamomile which grows wild in our garden every year without being sown; I pick it, dry it, store it and throw what I didn't use away once I can dry the new season's bounty. Nettle seed is also included in the pack, and that too grows wild - so wild that Greek gardens are full of them throughout the cooler season (it has started growing now in my garden - I use it in my spanakopita). For this reason, nettle is considered a weed - you don't really need to pay $59 to buy seeds for it to proliferate your garden with; in short, you are being ripped off. What's more, both chamomile and nettle have one growing season, after whcih they go to seed. The seeds lie dormant in the field where the plants were growing until the next season. Don't be surprised if your potted weeds died after the growing season; you will also need to buy more seeds if the seeds were hybrids.

Urtica pilulifera L.                                    Family: Urticaceae Juss.		PRESERVATION Plant material is air-dried for 3-4 days and kept in bags [19]. USES Food: Parts used: leaves. Eaten as a salad [14]. Material: Parts used: leaves. HYGIENE. The hair is washed with leaf infusion as anti-dandruff treatment. Poisonous: Allergenic [40].
Distribution in the Mediterranean: ALB, ALG, BOS, CRO, CYP, EGY, FRA, GRE, ISR, ITA, LEB, LIB, MAL, MON, MOR, PAL, POR, SLO, SPA, SYR, TN, TUR [38]. Palestinian Territories: NATIVE  Distribution in PAL T.: Nablus Mountain, Al Quds and Al Khalil Mountains, Shafa Al Ghour, Jordan Ghour, Barriyat Al Quds and Barriyat Al Khalil [4]. Occurrence: ruderal, nutrient rich habitats of Mediterranean woodlands and shrublands, semi-steppe shrublands, shrub-steppes, deserts and extreme deserts [39]. Life form: therophyte/ annual [39]. Abundance: COMMON [4]. Blooming months: [4, 39]  12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
English name(s): Roman nettle	Common name(s) in Palestine: قريص نجمي  Kurais najmi
USES Medicinal: Parts used: whole plant, roots, leaves, seeds. A decoction of plant material is used in case of coughing. A decoction of roots is consumed to treat anaemia [43]; a foliage decoction for the stomach, intestinal pain and inflammations, liver disorders and circulatory system [5]; ground, roasted seeds with honey to treat bed wetting [5]; a decoction of leaves in combination to consume in case of urination problems [6]; a decoction of leaves in combination as a bath to treat infections of the genitourinary tracts [6]; a decoction of foliage, externally on a bandage to treat aching, tired feet, legs [6]; dried, milled leaves with olive oil applied on injuries, itches, burns [7].

Herbs are the main basis of a wide variety of modern-day medicines, and thousands of books have been written on the use of different naturally growing wild herbs (often used for animal feed or regarded as weeds these days). While growing up in NZ, I recall being fascinated by these books containing so much information about the common plants found growing around me without any help whatsoever save some rain. But at the time, very few people actually applied this knowledge in their daily life - such information was viewed as interesting but not highly applicable. With almost twice as many people living on the planet as there were back in my youth, and with greater issues surrounding food insecurity, this is changing of course; even so, knowledge and information is still being withheld from most people.

The Western world has commercialised the mundane and common to the point of omitting to inform people about how to recognise and value what we commonly see growing around us. Instead of educating people to have knowledge about what naturally occurs in our environment, we are living in a world which encourages us to buy chemical remedies whose combinations of artificial substances may actually be causing us more harm than the good they write on the packets. People are being encouraged to buy 'stuff' without being educated on how they can acquire the same stuff in a more natural form. We live in a nasty world, where knowledge is now being used as an elite weapon, and people are kept ignorant of truth in many ways. I've noticed this even in some blogs, which feed their readers with so very little information, and on a highly irregular basis, until the blog owner publishes a pricey book that contains 'all the knowledge'.

For more information, click here.

Here in Crete we still use herbs as ancient as our civilisation. We can still gather them in the wild (with restrictions), and many people have transplanted them from the wild into their own gardens, so they still contain their wild properties (they aren't hybrids). Despite world marketing trends, Greece still hasn't worked out an appropriate way to commercialise her indigenous herbs into a marketable profitable business. It is still being done rather haphazardly, and of course, we lose ground in the tight market every single second we delay, despite having some of the most marketable medicinal plant species in the world, in a country that is regarded as having the highest index of biodiversity levels in Europe.

©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.