Cookies

Our week of house/kitten sitting has ended as our neighbors returned home today from their trip to central Greece. I took full advantage of the kitchen in the west house while they were away, baking cookies as well as zucchini bread for the rest of the students. I will miss the kitchen, but we have been asked to house/kitten sit again in December and I'm already looking forward to it. Baking in Greece has been a unique experience. It has forced me to learn a lot of Greek words such as sugar, butter, vanilla, baking soda, salt, etc. Also, it's a bit tricky to bake in different sized pans with an oven that operates in Celsius. Alas, my cookies were a hit and I'm feeling a bit more round today! :)

All Things Mastic

Mastic is a resin that comes from evergreen mastic trees that are primarily found on the North Aegean island of Chios. When it is extracted from the tree the resin hardens into a sap that has various uses throughout Greece. Most famously, Mastic is used in a liquor as a post dinner digestive. Recently, I found Mastic gum as well as Mastic flavored soda water. In fact, there is a store near Syntagma Square in downtown Athens that sells Mastic products such as chocolate, cheese, coffee, even cosmetics!

Yellow Oranges

It's been almost a month since I posted the first photo of the oranges growing in trees around the city. They are getting bigger now and some are starting to turn yellowish in color. A quick web search tells me that these bitter oranges are most likely Biondo Commune or "common blood" and grow throughout the Mediterranean basin.

Accident Prone

I must be accident prone in Greece. I usually don't have too many incidents in the US, but I've had three 'accidents' since being back in Athens. First, a few weeks ago while trying to core an apple I managed to cut right into my palm resulting in a desperate yell to Rob for lots of band-aids. Second, while walking down the street my arm was poked by a random piece of metal sticking out from an air conditioning grate. I was actually able to peal my skin off of the piece of metal (gross!). Finally, today I managed to shut my fingers in the bathroom window while trying to move the toilet paper roll that was holding the window up. Eek. I now have three bruised fingers. :( I sure hope we don't have a repeat of today's photo. It was taken just after I smashed my hand in a wall underneath the Acropolis nearly two years ago. I still have the scars...

Gnocchi

I've been taking full advantage of the kitchen in the West House for the past few days. On Monday I baked some chocolate chip cookies and gave them out after dinner. The next day my friends were all asking for more! Tuesday afternoon I decided to make use of a bag of potatoes by making gnocchi. I had never made them before, but I found it surprisingly easy. I didn't put in the effort to put the 'traditional' gnocchi marks on them but they still tasted great. Oh, and sorry for the late post...I was having internet connection problems yesterday.

Oliver

This week we're kitten sitting for our neighbors above us in the West House at Loring Hall. They rescued a little kitty a few weeks ago and while they are away on the Regular member trip we will be taking care of their kitty. They named her Oliver and she's definitely a cutey.

Syntagma

Rob and I took a walk over to Syntagma Square this afternoon to survey the riot damage from this past week. Just a few days ago the square was filled with thousands of protesters, but today is was business as usual. In fact, besides the broken metro signs and the chipped marble facades of a few buildings you may not have known that such violent clashes took place. Greece amazes me like that. One day all hell is breaking loose and the next day people are having their daily coffee like nothing is even wrong.