Pasta a la norma (Μακαρόνια με μελιτζάνες)

Every day, the Greek government takes measures making it harder and harder on people to get by with the reduced incomes they have been getting used to for the last two years. I've forked out thousands of euro levied on my family and I often think about those people who aren't in my position, which is to have very cheap high quality food easily available to us on a daily basis. In Greece, rent gets paid once a month, landlines once every two months, and you can get away with paying your electricity bills once every four months. But food is a daily cost - you have to eat every day, and you really do need to eat at least three times a day.

The sauce can be prepared the day before eating: I don't need to provide a newer recipe than Laurie's original recipe, suffice it to say thatI prefer fried over roasted eggplant. To fry eggplant with as much oil as you would have used to roast it (which uses a lot of electricity), allow the eggplant to fry on one side in only a little oil. When the oil disappears, let the eggplant continue to dry-fry. When it eventually darkens, turn it over and fry the other side in the same way.

If I had to buy all my food needs, my coffee at breakfast would not be accompanied by a ladokoulouro and my pasta a la norma for lunch would probably have no eggplant.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it is generally only skin deep: our pomegranate tree produces albino pomegranates.

My leafy green salad would contain no pomegranate, and my evening meal of fruit and cheese would probably contain one or the other ingredient (not both).

Once derided (in our recent past for that matter), living in the countryside is now coveted.

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