COOKING .. WITH THE CROZIERS

The flies, the heat, those native drums - will they never cease?

… Or our version, the mozzies, the cost to run the air conditioning and that dog next door, will it never stop barking?

It's hot. Even hotter than the UK at the moment … we are keeping tabs!

Remaining grapes after distribution

Teenie, tiny water melon ... at the moment

As it is Summer harvest time in Crete, this will be a bit of a cookery blog. Grapes, tomatoes, melons and cucumbers are all in season at the moment, so the computer has been red hot while we look for recipes to preserve everything that we can't eat straight away. Our grapes, were fabulous (and even more so because we did so little to care for them really) and we picked one bunch which K took down to the kafenion/bar/hairdressers while the menfolk of the village sat around in the shade chatting over a little Greek coffee. Predictably, tasting the grapes caused disagreement. “Very nice, but you need to wait until Friday before cutting them.” “No, Thursday”, said another. Being new kids on the block, we waited until Thursday, wobbled across the stones and ground cover to the vine with our scissors and picked 25 or so bunches which were growing all along our front fence. These were distributed to as many of our friends and neighbours as we could. It was so good having something to give back for a change; they are lovely desert grapes, with a sweet flavour and no pips. We couldn't eat the remaining bowlful left over and they were too good to waste, so we found a recipe to preserve them in vodka! This sounds a bit dangerous, but we will wait for the specified six weeks and take a taste from the small jar to give you our verdict and hope we sufficiently upright to blog afterwards! I opened the dark cupboard and discovered some Christmas pickle and oranges preserved in syrup which I had forgotten about from last year, so we have interesting tasting sessions to look forward to.

Nearly finished.  One of the last, smaller bunches!

We found out last year how to make delicious cucumber pickle from an American recipe and have become adept at making this with the cucumber glut and also Boston Baked Beans from scratch. All these projects are fine, except our freeze box/fridge isn't large enough to hold everything. I also promised to preserve Ian's tomatoes because he had to spend some time away from home, and the bottled tomato recipe to preserve fruit looked a little tricky for safety. If we do not see him soon, we will have to eat them anyway, but we will be sure to take lots of photographs first, just to add to the agony of his having planting dozens of tomato plants and then having to leave them to our tender mercies.

Swimming is bliss at the moment. The sea water at Panormo is very nearly warmish bath temperature but this means that the seaweed starts to build up at our favourite beach. We have also discovered a nice place at Bali, renamed by us as the Banana Bar because they have so many banana trees planted in the garden and it overlooks the beach for the loveliest swim. Much cooler than Panormo but we think that mountain streams filter into the sea there and keep the sea temperatures much cooler than elsewhere.

After much thought, mild bickering and earnest creativity, we devised another Crozier Mark XXVII Awning for the terrace. We keep spying woven canvas strip awnings for pergolas on other people's houses but have no idea where to go to buy them. So Ma Crozier got the sewing machine out, found some strips of bamboo, sheeting material and devised “something that could be got down easily in case of a storm ..” It shades the upstairs terrace very well and has lasted a fortnight, so this is progress of a sort. People who live in Crete will recognise all the false starts made in the initial months of living here until we learn about the weather from bitter experience. Summer days are usually hot and calm but things can change without warning very quickly with overpoweringly strong winds – so all our devices need to be designed to collapse easily without injuring anyone!

There was another wedding on this Saturday with all night music, but it seemed less noisy and there was no gun fire as far as I could tell. It took a while, but I eventually found my box of silicone ear plugs which have been a wonderful investment for a peaceful night's sleep. The music is usually lovely but loses its appeal when it goes on all night. If we could eradicate biting insects from the house, we would be even happier!

Kalinichta!