That was the month that was June 2024
And what a month it has been. Full of Sun, Sea, Greek Food and Drink with work in between.
Hello my friends
Welcome to my monthly look behind the scenes. I’m back home in London, and for this month, I'm looking back at my gloriously hot month in Greece. After recovering from the jet lag and the shock of arriving from a cold and wet Canada at the beginning of June, life settled down into a simple and gentle pace.
Our home for the month was a traditional stone built house in a quiet lane between olive groves and leading to a long sandy beach just 200m away. My days soon slipped into a routine along the lines of:
Get up and have a coffee; Swim in the sea; Have breakfast in the shade of an olive tree: Do a bit of work on the terrace; Sip a coffee over ice at the local cafe; A bit more work; Salad or humus dips for lunch in the early afternoon; A bit more work (or snooze on the extremely hot days); Another swim in the sea; Dinner in the village; Walk slowly home and sleep; Repeat!
Very different from my days back home and very pleasant. Even work didnt seem too much of a chore as I did it when it was almost too hot to do anything else.
We soon realised it was only marginally more expensive to eat out than in. Unlike at home, wine in a restaurant only added a couple of euros a head to the cost of a meal, so given the house kitchen was poorly equipped, we tended to just eat lunch at the house and go out most evenings, which meant lots of lovely Greek food including many Greek salads, feta cheese, tzatziki, and the occasional giros. Yum!
A couple of days a week we took time to go out and about. During the first week, while we were still adjusting, we stayed local and set about exploring the nearby delightful town of Aeropolis and the nearby beach at Scoutari where we found a fabulous fish restaurant cooking the fish from the mornings catch in the bay.
A couple of times we went up into the mountains for lunch in small mountain towns combined with visiting monasteries. We came across two, both clinging to the side of mountain cliffs and both with spectacular views.
We discovered the not-so-well-known medieval town of Geraki, which has nearby the remains of an abandoned fortified town dating back to the 12th Century. We were given a guided tour of the churches on the site by the ticket lady, who ran out to greet us in the mid-day heat as we were the first visitors of the day. On another trip, we took refuge from the heat by visiting a cave in the far south of the peninsula, which was again almost without visitors, and we were joined by a Greek couple for our tour of a most spectacular and colourful cave.
Perhaps the highlight was having a one night stay on Monemvasia a medieval town carved into the base of a large rock just off the mainland which was reached by driving along a narrow causeway. Inside the walled town itself, the streets are so small everything has to be carried in and out by hand or on trolleys. Popular with day trippers and even cruise liners, it comes into its own when they have left, and we enjoyed a lovely meal in this pretty and unique town.
Unfortunately, during the night and the next day, it became extremely windy (Gale force 8-9), so we gave up trying to explore the remains of the upper town on the top of the rock, and instead enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before slowly wending our way back to our base at Gytheio, leaving as the first of the day trippers were arriving.
Work on the blogs consisted of compiling some new recipe collections, Blackcurrant and Redcurrants Recipes on Only Crumbs Remain and Salads on Recipes Made Easy. As well as updating some old posts and the never-ending back-end tech side of running a website. Oh how nice it would be if I could just write, publish and forget.
I also decided to look into trying to increase Pinterest traffic to the blogs, which seems to be having a resurgence of popularity. Do you Use Pinterest?
Before I was a blogger, and in the early days of Pinterest, I used to save website links to recipes I wanted to try. It was a great way to find them again, as you can set yourselves up boards rather like chapters in a book, such as main courses or desserts. I also used it to save information when researching an area I was travelling to and for home decor ideas.
As a blogger, I use Pinterest in a very different way now, saving pins from my websites in the hope that more people will discover them. If you want to follow me on Pinterest, you will find me here.
Well, that’s about it for this month. I fear July’s review will be far less interesting as life settles back to normal. Now where is my jumper? It is so cold here in London 😂😂.
Greek Salad
My version of this classic salad it was a staple at our lunch times.
Beef Stifado
We didn’t eat many meaty stews as it was too hot. But given the British summer so far this year this Greek dish may just appeal.
Easy Tzatziki
We love this dip, so we had it both when eating out and eating at the house, served with toasted bread slices brushed with garlic and oregano flavoured oil. Out there, we got some really good quality shop-bought tzatziki; at home, homemade is much better and easy to make, too.
Raspberry and White Chocolate Tarts
A quick visit to the allotment the day we came back and we’ve discovered that the raspberry canes are producing a very good crop this year. I can feel a raspberry dessert or two on the horizon.
