easy protein

Once again, I have reached a time of year I don’t eat meat. When you’re Orthodox, there are many times of year you cannot eat meat. The priest’s wife at our old church did the math- it’s like 180 days.

However, I like to think of this (the current one is the Apostle’s Fast, for anyone who’s interested) as an opportunity to get in more creative protein sources. Plus I started my  new internship on Monday (yay for new jobs with jet lag! x_x) so creative protein in a hurry is a good thing.

Quick n easy lunch number one, made easy by weekend prep:

Take awesome Thai brown rice

 

Chop up tofu (of which we currently have a glut)

Take some favorite veggies, and green onions for flave:

 

Combine. Season with seasoned rice vinegar, soy sauce, maybe a bit of sesame oil, and copious quantities of Sriracha. It’s no beauty in the looks department (and thus no final picture) but it’s soooooo tasty and easy and well balanced for lunches. Also, unlike some lunch salads incorporating protein, there’s no mayo, so fewer food safety concerns if it’s out of a refrigerator for your commute, etc.

Another good one:

The hums. Can o’ chickpeas, juice o’ 2 lemons, the equivalent of 2 small cloves of garlic, dab of tahini, 1/2 T or so of olive oil, 1/4 cup so of water, COPIOUS amounts of harissa (Middle Eastern chili paste… mmmmmmmmm), cumin, parsley, paprika to taste. Drizzle with more olive oil and paprika, admire.

Easy fish:

A rather luscious recipe, courtesy of recipezaar. The sauce is like craaaaack.

Accompany with a simple salad:

And a quality, protein packed snack:

 

Apple and peanuts in the shell (so fun! they were an impulse buy by my mom because they were on sale, but I have gotten a ridiculous amount of enjoyment from peeling peanuts!)

And of course, the greatest protein source, the chocolate peanut butter brownie, courtesy of this Cooking Light recipe.

Ze dry:

 

Ze wet:

Ze batter:

Ze brownies:

Nothing like warm gooey peanut butter n chocolate. I slightly underbaked them. This is really not at all a bad thing!

buffet bonanza

The trip to Greece was unusual for its plethora of hotel buffets.

Our hotel in Crete had a particularly dazzling JAM BAR!

It was a riot, watching all the French and German people in our hotel go crazy on the carbs. Skinny, skinny, skinny women grabbing literally 6 pieces of bread at one time, and, just for good measure, a few croissants and smearing them with jammity jam.

Seriously, America, they are thin and we are not! The carb phobia is just not working!

Here’s what my typical Crete buffet breakfast looked like:

Whole grain toast (whole grains were few and far between, which is fine and what I expected, but I was happy to get some in to start my day) with seriously yum apricot preserves; dates (THE BEST EVER! They had the pits in but SO WHAT?! Mmmm they were great); oranges (there were orange trees all over Crete. These were probably from literally down the street. You cannot get more local); a nice hard boiled egg; and my usual yogurt bowl, in which I’d typically combine (full fat, thus the smaller portions) plain and cherry yogurt, a bit of milk, and bran twig cereal. DELISH! To drink, grapefruit juice because I neeeever drink juice at home but it’s a fun indulgence on vacation, and fabbbbb coffee. I did not drink any bad coffee, from the Lufthansa flight over to anywhere else in the country. It was so good I just usually drank it black. Why dilute the flavor?

Our hotel in Athens also had a nice breakfast buffet. Can we tell I have a problem narrowing down selections?

Starting at the top, that’s HEAVENLY dried figs, a wee taste of pastry just for fun, beautiful fresh fruit (honeydew, orange, strawberry, and what they call carpusi- greatest word ever!- watermelon), scrambled eggies, pickled red pepper (SO GOOD!), some almonds, mushrooms, and whole wheat bread. One of those lil pieces is a “rusk”, which are basically toasts they make out of old bread, topped with yummmy goat cheese. The other is whole wheat bread topped with wunnerful sour cherry jam. Finally, a wee bit more yogurt, topped with honey.

I wouldn’t necessarily FINISH these buffet plates, but I’d sure load ‘em up!

Here’s breakfast on my last day in Greece, when we stopped in Athens just for one night after Crete. Obviously I’d been indulging for awhile, so breakfast was a little calmer:

Carpusi, honeydew, bread with sour cherry preserve, and a wee bit more eggs and shrooms.

I’d also typically end up going back for something along the lines of this:

THE FRESH FRUIT IS JUST SO PERFECT! That’s nectarine, honeydew, and CARPUSI! Along with wee tastes of rice pudding (which yes, they did have at breakfast x_x) and yogurt.

Onto the dinner buffet in Crete. Initially I thought this would be kind of lame, and it really was not our intention to stay at the same place for dinner every night, but it was included in the hotel. However, it turned out to be seriously convenient. We’d go out all day, on our various adventures, and come back tired and sweaty and lazy, and there’d be dinner right there! The hotel also made a real effort to include Cretan style specialties, so I was happy to have it.

Here’s a nice lookin’ plate of, starting from the top, Cretan style zucchini in a stew with tomatoes (vair nice), rice pilaf, stuffed grape leaves (again, aeons better than any in America), taters, a wee sliver of cheese (Crete is famed for its cheese, and rightfully so. IT’S REALLY GOOD! There was one that was like a Gruyere, shown here, and another that’s like an un-salty feta that’s also out of this world), lemon and fish, along with some tzaziki, which I was glad I got because the fish was on the dry side, and of course, more carpusi!

Here’s another:

Fresh Cretan beans (!); BEETS! THAT WERE SO AMAZING AND HEAVENLY! Just roasted with TONS of garlic and herbs and then chilled; vair tasty rice pilaf with raisins and walnuts and herbs; calamari; chickpea and tomato stew in the middle; a bit more fish (this time not too dry at all but unfortunately not totally devoid of bones).

The buffet was very adorably decorated with vegetable art:

Aw!

For temptation purposes, the Crete buffet also featured this evil/amazing thing:

Ice cream bar! It may have even been gelato, actually, because it was suspiciously LUSCIOUS!

Here’s what a bowl of mine might look like:

Honeydew, pistachio gelato (droooooooooooooooooooool), and SOUR CHERRY PRESERVES ON TOP! I’m going to do a whole separate ode to sour cherry preserves, but suffice it to say they’re the love of my life.

lunch in thissio

Thissio is where the cool kids go in Athens. We went there for a fabulous dinner with the fam, and also hung out there during our last day in Athens. It’s a neighborhood not far from the Acropolis and the ancient Agora, and there are a lot of fun places to hang out, as well as a seriously lively flea market with an eclectic mix of beautiful antiques and fake Ray Bans. Oodles of fun!

There are a lot of fabulous outdoor cafes like this one:

Our last day in Athens was a particularly scorching one. It gave us an opportunity to see the ingenious way charming outdoor cafes like this one have figured out to battle the heat:

Misters! It’s like the things they use for vegetables at the grocery store! Probably the design is like a hose attached to an electric fan, but it is soooooooooooooo refreshing to get misted by that every once in awhile.

Onto the food!

We began, of course, with psomi (bread), which I ate copious amounts of and- gasp- DIDN’T GET FAT FROM THE CARBS! Being in Europe was a refreshing reminder of the utter irrationality of American carb-phobia.

EAT BREAD WHEN YOU WANT TO! IT’S DELICIOUS!

And this was an especially fab loaf- SUPER crusty, and soft on the inside.

I wanted something on the light and refreshing side, given the heat of the day, so I suggested beginning with a salad. Since we had the traditional khoriatiki salata more or less every day, we decided to mix it up with this guy:

A salad of fresh lettuce, green onions, and FENNEL <3<3<3. Vair delicious, especially with more of that lemon squeezed on top.

Next we got what the waiter strenuously recommended (incidentally, whenever possible in Greece- get a recommendation!), which was the imam bayildi. Really it’s Turkish in origin (duhhh just look at the title- it’s so delicious the Imam fainted!). It’s pretty funny, the Greeks are NOT fond of the Turkish, but it doesn’t stop them from borrowing a delicious recipe or two.

I have a hard time even describing the lusciousness of this dish. Clearly they had a quality oven back there, because the vegetables were teeeeeeeeeender and luuuuuuuuuuuscious and caaaaaaaaaaaramelized. I NEED to make this again. Also, this picture is really not showing the massiveness of this dish. Just believe me when I say it was huge, and I left this meal STUFFED.

Finally, a quite uniquely delicious dish.

Saganaki traditionally refers to hot cheese, sometimes theatrically flamed. This on the menu was called “mussels saganaki”, but what it really was was mussels, tomato, feta, garlic, herbs, and ouzo (! I actually never got around to drinking ouzo in Greece, but this cafe was actually an ouzeria, so I was glad that I got to at least try it in a recipe). Those simple ingredients, skillfully cooked in that same fab oven--- soooooooooooooooooooooo luscious! The sauce was like CRACK, I was so glad I had that yummy lovely crusty bread to soak it alllllllllll up!

overnight in Delphi

My mom’s dad’s family came from Aia Ephthimia (spelled atrociously, I’m sure, but that’s how it’s pronounced), which is a small village overlooking Delphi. We went to Delphi to see the ruins, which were spectacular, and also got to meet my grandfather’s cousin Tommy and his wife Maria. Of course, great eats were involved.

We started with hotel buffet breakfast in the early hours, then hopped the bus for our overnight stay in Delphi. On the way (while traveling through the GORGEOUS Greek countryside) they made a stop at 10 am or so, which coincided with the traditional Greek coffee break.

I was actually feeling queasy—I haaaaaaaaate sitting still on long bus rides- but my Mom got a frappe.

I drank many, many, MANY frappes in Greece. Other than, obviously, Greek coffee, they are the most popular beverage (though portucalata, fresh orange juice, is also up there). They involve Nescafe and an espresso machine frother. I WILL figure out how to reproduce them at home, because the foam… oh the gritty coffee-y ever so slightly sweet foam. HEAVEN!

Ma and the sis also got a pastry to share, of which I had maybe two bites.

Then to Delphi! We saw the museum, which was both seriously impressive in terms of the statues and frescoes, and also seriously packed in terms of tourists. Still, seeing the bronze charioteer in person was seriously amazing.

Then we romped around the ruins themselves.

There is a reason the ancient Greeks thought Delphi was the center of the universe. The mountains are crazy awe inspiring.

You could also get really really up close with everything- the temples and so on- in a way that we couldn’t at a lot of the other sites, like the Parthenon and whatnot. So cool!

The ancient sports arena mandated dorky tourist pictures of my sister and I “boxing”.

Following the trip we were hot and sweaty and just wanted to hop in the hotel pool, which is precisely what we did. The view from the hotel pool, incidentally, was one of the most glorious things I have ever beheld. Massive mountains, olive groves, all sloping down to the Gulf of Corinth. Heavenly!

We didn’t feel like a real lunch, so we just had tiropitas (cheese pastries!) we grabbed at a bakery and fruit poolside.

  

The fruit in Greece was uniformly perfectly ripe and delicious. After recouping for a bit, our family came to pick us up. We met up with my grandfather’s cousin, who he had always referred to as “little Tommy”. Hahaha, here he is now, on the far right.

Where that picture was taken was actually a really sad place. Tommy’s wife, Maria, was born and raised in Greece (Tommy was born in America and went back) in a village called Distomo. When she was 3 years old, during World War 2, the Nazis came through and massacred almost the entire village. Men, women, children, BABIES, the old, pregnant women. It was brutal and senseless and horrible. They’ve built a memorial now, and just had the 65th anniversary, and there was a huge event with German dignitaries who came to formally apologize for what happened. It was a sad place, but it was kind of amazing to see the resilience of the people who’d lived through it, and all the hardship in Greece after World War 2.

Then we went to Aspra Spitia (“White Houses”), the town where Tommy and Maria live for part of the year (they go back and forth to California. Sounds like a pretty sweet life, eh?). This is the view from their back deck.

My little sister promptly passed out in the deck chair, and the rest of us caught up and chatted. At a certain point I realized Maria had been gone for awhile, and went to check up on her in the kitchen. She’d been making a “little snack”. Here’s PART of it:

Homemade kalithopita (spice cake), 3 different kinds of cheeses, watermelon, honeydew and oranges. There was also paximathia (like Greek biscotti), fresh squeezed orange juice, and coffee. Hahaha, oh “little snacks”.

Then, yknow, they took us out to dinner.

Here were the APPETIZERS (sorry the picture is terribly dark, we were eating at 9, which is EARLY by Greek standards. The place was just beautiful, outdoors, next to the bay, with happy families walking by).

From left to right, that’s fried eggplant (oh my GOD it was good- not greasy at all), khoriatiki salata (otherwise known as Greek salad. The American version is such a bastardization of the real thing, it’s horrible! Real Greek salad has no lettuce- it’s just perfectly fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions of some kind, and a few olives, with a SLAB of feta on top- none of that crumbled rubbish- with lots of oregano, oil and vinegar. It’s HEAVEN!), grilled octopus (soooooooooooooooooo flavorful! I don’t know what they did to it but man it was great), and calamari.

Then our entree (sorry for the flash).

Cause, yknow, in case we didn’t get enough food already, each person got their own FISH. This was no sardine, either, it was like 8 inches long. I can’t even begin to describe how good it was- the blistery skin, the perfectly fresh fish (it had likely been caught that morning- Tommy and Maria say a lot of mornings they’ll just go down to the harbor and buy the fresh catch). They gave us, on the side, a dressing for it, which was mostly olive oil and oregano. HEAVEN!

At this point we were stuffed. STUFFED. And it was late. But my adorable, spry relatives, despite the fact that they  must be in their 80s, were just getting started. We went back to Destomo, to the town square, and hung out in an outdoor cafe.

This was the point that I started to really realize that the Greeks, at least in the summertime, really start living once the sun sets. During the day, it’s HOT. You have to work! At night, it is cool and perfect and you go out and hang out with your friends and neighbors and linger over meals (the way waiters hustle you out of a restaurant in America is absolute heresy in Greece). We had so much fun talking to Tommy and Maria’s friends, and of course, there just HADN’T been enough food, according to Tommy (who liked to  tell us we had to bring some of Greece home with us and pat his stomach). So they brought out the loukomades.

    

Crispy and doughy, dipped in honey cinnamon syrup. YUM! I was soooooo stuffed so I could only have one.

The hilarious thing is, because the food in Greece is so freakin’ good, the group we were with thought the loukomades were sub par! They made a comment to the waiter! The Greeks are sooooooo laid back about everything else (like, uh, punctuality, and stop signs), but when it comes to food, they are PERFECTIONISTS. My oh my are the results wonderful.

So yes, we stayed out with our 80something year old relatives til the wee hours of the morning.

The next morning, we slept til 11:30, hahahahahahaha. OOPS! The hotel had a free breakfast buffet, but we missed it. However, an incredibly sweet hotel employee brought my Mom and I (my sister was still asleep!) breakfast, which we ate on the deck with the spectacular view.

How BEAUTIFUL and PERFECT is that?!?!?!?!?!?

More DELICIOUS coffee. The milky stuff I wasn’t quite sure what it was (other than seriously yummy)- my mom’s guess was evaporated milk.

The orange juice was fresh and heavenly, and that bready stuff turned out to be sponge cake, DEFINITELY homemade, and so moist and tender and PERFECT! Between the quality of the food and drink and the experience of being on the deck overlooking the spectacular view made it one of the more special breakfasts of my life.

It was absolutely nothing like my normal gotta-pack-in-the-fiber-and-watch-the-sugar breakfasts, and it left me perfectly, perfectly saaaaaaaaaaatisfied.

summer in sumeria

I’m home! And man oh man I am OVERWHELMED with delicious food pictures and stories and… GOODNESS!

I don’t know exactly what order I’m going to do things in, but I want to get posting already, so this will likely be a little spastic, due to EXTREME jet lag!

One of my favorite days in Greece took place when we stayed in Crete. We woke up at 5 am to get picked up by a bus for a fun, multilingual trip (Rhethymno, the town we stayed in on Crete, was PACKED with Germans—tour guides spoke German and restaurants served schnitzel. Very odd).

Our bus driver drove us through windey, cliffside, really sort of scary roads to the Sumeria Gorge, the longest gorge in Europe at 11 miles.

My it was beautiful:

Along the way, we were able to refresh ourselves at the beautiful, clear natural springs along the trail. There are so few places left in the US where it’s clean enough to do this, and it’s SO COOL to do it in Greece and think about all the other people who’ve reached their bare hands in to drink from this spring.

Speaking of OLD, look at this tree:

    

The gorge is used by nearby farmers, and they let their goats sort of ramble through. The ruins are totally open for exploring for passersby, and also means that some privileged goats have their own front porches.

The whole hike was very dramatic—look at the cliff to human ratio!

At the end, we were pooped. It was hot.

Buuuuuuuuut… here’s what was waiting for us!

With this overlooking it:

At the end of the trip, the tour we were with gave everyone free time to refuel in the tavernas in the little town and enjoy a swim in the beautiful water. And no, we didn’t have to hike the return trip to the start of the gorge- we had a ferry to take us back! So we could eat up with no anxiety for another long walk. Yay food!

As we did for virtually every meal in Greece, we got a bunch of mezze for sharesies.

We began with octopus, for which Crete is well known. We went for it in salad form: 

Look at those colors! This octopus was very tender and not rubbery at all!

We also got some horta:

  

You just cannot go wrong with fresh gorgeous greens (haha, on the menu this was referred to as “local weeds”) dressed simply with olive oil and lemon. My grandmother used to make delicious horta… made me think of her! Everything on this trip made me think of her.

We also got stuffed vegetables. Again, a Cretan specialty.

GOD they were good.

I actually always thought I was not a huge dolmathes (stuffed grape leaves) person, which is basically heresy for a Greek, but I had been eating the canned stuff in the US, and the real deal in Greece is not even comparable. HEAVEN!

Finally, we got taramasalata, which my sister was craving:

Don’t the red peppers look like another octopus? Presh!

Everything wiped up, as we got with every meal, with luscious bread.

Perfect refueling!

Then we went for a dip in the Libyan Sea, which is the clearest, cleanest, most perfect water I’ve ever been in.

Doesn’t even look real, does it?