We are always delighted that Crete
seems to pass by the hectic lead up to Christmas that happens
elsewhere in the world and we enjoy the
peaceful laid back shopping and instinct to keep things simple. I
wish I had remembered this in my preparations for Christmas Day. There are a few disadvantages, though, and being so far from family and friends is just one of them.
In the village, it was lovely to hear the children who came round the village carol singing on their
last day of school wearing Santa hats and bashing triangles. Greek
carols seem a bit odd to me without much of a melody except when I
managed to identify jingle bells, but the children's excitement was
lovely!
So, far from home and resisting the
feeling of it being 'always winter and never Christmas', we tried to keep our
spirits up by planning a traditional lunch and listening to lots of carols and the sort of Christmas
songs which drive everyone mad when Christmas shopping in the UK.
One drawback here is that Greek postal workers don't have the same
urgency to deliver Christmas parcels by Christmas as the good old UK
Post Office. Christmas is just another Church festival to them so
all our Christmas packages were still “somewhere else” until well
after Christmas and some have still not made it. Primed by the
family in the UK and NZ who had made a special effort to post things
in good time, I toured all the courier and post offices locally to
see if any were lurking behind desks somewhere, but no joy. On the
30th December, this lovely garland turned up from New
Zealand in cut out and glue together form, which we set about
immediately. It did our hearts good.
After a couple of years of flunking off
(or being otherwise occupied), it was our turn to host Christmas
lunch. This is quite an enterprise for 10 in the UK, but serving up
Turkey and all the trimmings in Crete is anything but simple and
needs organisation. Things like stuffing, gravy mix, sausage meat,
custard powder, mincemeat, shortcrust pastry and ground ginger,
parsnips and brussels sprouts, for instance are not readily available
and have to be ordered from a UK shop (fairly distant) or brought
back from the UK in bulging suitcases along with the teabags and
marmite. As for crackers … a lovely friend arranged for the
delivery of these via a UK to Crete van delivery. Therefore the
build up to the festive meal was a bit frenetic in the making of
mincemeat, Christmas puddings and pies all done from scratch without
the option of Tescos, if all the culinary arrangements went astray.
The vegetables came back in my suitcase and were blanched and frozen
late at night on my return. My pastry has always been suspect, so I
tried three dry runs with different recipes and in the end not many
people touched the mincepies anyway and they would have been a feast
for the birds unless Rik the Builder hadn't taken a few away for the
family. We waited until Christmas eve when the Christmas lights
eventually made it via Amazon and everything was a bit stressed
getting the house ready and large scale veg prep.
On Christmas morning, three of us
ex-pats from Skepasti danced round each other stirring sauces, making
starters and heating gravy a good while before the other
guests arrived. In the end, the feast itself cooked well in spite of
the power going on and off all morning and no means of keeping 10
plates warm simultaneously or everything in the oven at once.
However, the Crozier Christmas pudding which had been steaming in the
slow cooker upstairs turned out beautifully without a trace of suet
available – thanks to the NZ Emunds-Sure-to-Rise-Cookbook recipe!
K and I had a duvet day on Boxing Day
to recover. We will think about a completely different menu if we do
it again – more buffet style and less of the roast
dinner - as we were on our knees.
Since Christmas day, the village has
been very quiet. I crept out on Christmas eve with a small gift for
each of the little children in the immediate neighbourhood and left
an enormous tray of Thornton Chocolates for our lovely friend
Angeliki and Kostas at the little kafeneon as “English chocolates
are her favourite”! True to form, Kostas appeared half an hour
later with dozens of eggs and an enormous bag of oranges from his
garden and we are struggling to think how to use them all up as Ma
Crozier can't face marmalade making yet awhile … after all the kiwi
fruit from before and still being on the one egg per week diet.
Clearing up after the party, we seem to
have been left with a large supply of home made chutneys and
marmalade brought as gifts which will need to be redistributed when
we next get together along with 4 leftover crackers and a lost
earring!
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| We were all a bit blurry by this time ... |
Kalli chronia! Have a good year!
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