Amalia in Mykonos

On Saturday, May 17, Amalia landed in Mykonos at the beginning of her summer odyssey to Greece. On the plane from New York she learned to use ear phones.

Amalia and Mommy and Papi and Yiayia stayed in a friend’s house overlooking the sea, where Mommy and Papi slept in a bed under a turquoise tent. 

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Amalia and Grandma slept in another room where Amalia wore her Hello Kitty water wings to watch videos at night, just in case.

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Here she is sticking her toe in the ocean upon arrival.

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Her favorite thing to do on the beach is to stomp on the castles that Papi makes for her.  Sometimes he makes a big hole for her to sit in.

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During the week she wore all three of her bathing suits.

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She searched for Mykonos’ famous pelican on the harbor but couldn’t find him.

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And admired the seafood displayed outside Niko’s Tavern.  In fact she liked the black spiky sea urchins so much, she said she wanted one for a pet,

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but when Yiayia waded into the ocean and brought her a live one, Amalia changed her mind.

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She never did encounter Petros, the famous pink pelican who is the mascot of the island, but she saw cats, in a red door with lace curtains,…

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…and hiding in a niche of a church,

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One morning Papi and Mommy sailed on a boat to the nearby island of Delos, leaving Amalia and Yiayia on the harbor near the fish market.

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…Delos is uninhabited except for security, staff and a lots of antiquities.   Greek mythology says it is a very sacred island because Aphrodite and Apollo were born here.

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Several times in the late afternoon Amalia went to Veranda to watch the sunset and to take photos of Mykonos’s famous windmills.

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15.5  The windmills.

Here’s a photo her Mommy took of the crowds in Little Venice gathered to watch the sunset.

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And here’s a photo that her Grandma, Yiayia Joanie, took of the sunset.

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One day they went to her mommy’s favorite place ever—Aghios Sostis, which is the name of the church (once a monastery) overlooking a beautiful, uncrowded beach.

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Kiki’s Taverna nearby had just opened for the season.  They had their May wreath hanging by the window.

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Everything is always delicious at Kiki’s tavern, but by the time Papi was cleaning the grilled fish, Amalia had fallen asleep.  She was dreaming of sea urchins and cats and the pelican called Petros, and hoping that she’d meet him the next time she came to Mykonos.

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(Photos number 13, 14 & 16 taken by Eleni N. Gage)

Greece is Going to the Cats

Five years ago I published a book called "The Secret Life of Greek Cats" based on feline photographs I'd taken over the years, which told about Greek history, myths, traditions and superstitions from the point of view of the cats who are so much a part of the Greek landscape.  As I wrote in the book: "Everywhere you go in Greece you will find a cat...Cats are the punctuation in Greek life...During their catnaps they dream of the days when they were worshipped by the ancient Egyptians and didn't have to rely on the kindness of strangers for food." (The book is still available--for $10-- on Amazon or  by clicking on the book cover to the right.)

Many of the cats in the book were photographed on the island of Hydra, including Vasili, the cat on the cover, who dreamed of jumping on one of the boats in the harbor of Hydra and sailing away to see the world.

On a recent trip back to the island of Hydra, I was curious to see if the economic crisis in Greece had affected the island's feline population.  The harbor cats were there, as numerous as always.  They were gathered to greet the tourists, patiently waiting under the taverna tables for handouts, and agilely avoiding being trampled by the donkeys in the harbor, who are the only form of transportation on the island.

Every time I'd comment that the Hydra cats seemed thinner than before, daughter Eleni would point out a fat cat who clearly enjoyed a regular meal schedule.  (Some of the Greek islands, including Crete, have  organizations which collect contributions to help with the spaying and care of the island's feral cat population.  As far as I know, Hydra does not.)

On many Greek islands the cats have become so numerous and so popular that they are now featured on touristic items like carrier bags.

The  best fed and happiest cats on the island are, of course,  house pets and store cats.

The harbor cats have a harder life, but they regularly greet the fishing boats as they come in in the morning, hoping for scraps when fish are cleaned.  They also keep an eye on the private boats anchored in the harbor-- to the point of mastering tightrope walking, if it will win a tasty bite.

Even the wildest of the feral cats, when the sun begins to set, have to stop a moment and wonder at the beauty of their island, and take a moment to wish for good hunting and a full stomach tomorrow.

Eating My Way through Greece

I always say that on our annual summer vacation in Greece, as soon as I get off the plane and take a deep breath of the air, I instantly put on five pounds.

Eating is just better in this country—a Greek tomato is a thousand times tastier than an American one, and I’d be happy eating nothing but Greek salad as long as I can sop up the olive oil from the bottom of the bowl with crusty Greek bread.

I’ve been four days in Athens eating at some world-class restaurants.

As soon as we arrived at the Grande Bretagne, our favorite hotel, which overlooks Constitution Square and the Parliament building, with its skirted Evzone soldiers in their pleated skirts doing their hourly dance in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, we found in our hotel room a bottle of wine, a bowl of fruit and a white-chocolate figure of one of the Acropolis’s caryatids overlooking a half dozen handmade chocolates. (In my photo you can’t see the chocolates because somebody ate them!)


Lunch was often shared lobster risotto from a restaurant called Passajes in the courtyard of the shopping mall behind the GB Hotel. (Below is the view from the BG roof where we ate breakfast)



One night we walked to a nearby restaurant called Epta Thalassas (Seven Seas) nearby. The tabletops there are made of river stones and the ceiling lights are enclosed by woven fish traps. They feature exotic dishes like fresh sea urchin eggs (Aristotle Onassis used to send his sailors over the side of his yacht to harvest them by the light of the full moon. ) Also on the menu are “smoked eel sautéed with white wine and mustard”, “grilled Santorini sprat stuffed with tomato and coriander “, “hard roe from Mesolongi with blinis and fig pie”, and cockles. I had the “Dogtooth grouper filet cooked in the oven according to a Mt .Athos recipe.”



Thursday night we were invited by a friend to Spondi—probably the finest restaurant in Greece and the only one (he said) with two Michelin Stars. The peculiar thing about Spondi was that nothing you ate looked anything like what it was. For example, the chef sent, as an amuse-gueule, the tray of appetizers below: the round things on a stick like lollipops were foie gras rolled in popcorn crumbs (that’s what the waiter said). The cone-shaped things had a sliver of cheese in some savory cream sauce inside a pastry cone, and the cubes on the bottom are made from fruit with a Jello-like consistency.



I ordered sea bass which came topped with what looked like black caviar but was really some kind of grilled toast topped with black squid ink. Then, after the main dish came another surprise—meant to cleanse the palate before desert. It was a cool drink in a martini-shaped two-part glass containing a delicate a liquid of tomato and fruit juice (I think) with green sherbet in it, and underneath the goblet part of the glass, in a hollow stem, was dry ice (not meant for consumption) so the whole thing seemed to be smoking. For dessert I ordered the famous chocolate sablé mousse. If you look carefully, you’ll see the cigarette-shaped cookie (for want of a better name) has gold leaf on one end.



I knew that gold is edible if it’s pure –so I ate it. I first encountered eible gold at another Athens restaurant called Boschetto’s (now closed for renovation) when a black risotto made with squid ink arrived with a square of gold on top. Divine decadence!


Dinner Friday night on the roof of the Grande Bretagne, with a fabulous view of the Acropolis, was a lobster linguine. Saturday night at Alatsi, behind the Hilton hotel, we had Cretan food, including a traditional wedding dish featuring both chicken and lamb in a risotto, followed by three ice creams—rose, sage, and yogurt with honey and walnuts.

Now you see why I put on weight every time I get off the plane at the Athens airport.

But today, after getting up early, lugging my bags to the flying catamaran, and inhaling a cup of coffee (which basically saved my life), we arrived in Hydra.


But just plain Greek food is better than any haute cuisine covered with gold leaf. For lunch in Hydra’s harbor we had the classic, simple, and perfect Greek meal, which is best when eaten at an outdoor taverna near the water: Greek horiotiko salad with heavenly tomatoes, feta cheese and lots of olive oil for dipping, pan-fried red mullet fish (barbounia), and ice-cold local white wine from the barrel. We threw the fish heads to a half dozen happy taverna cats (who may be featured in my next Greek cat book) and then took a stroll around the harbor.

When a Pet Dies

I saw this poem two days ago on the blog of Nicole Tadgell who is a really excellent artist and illustrator of children's books who lives in the Worcester area. I don't know who wrote the poem and I apologize for taking it from her blog and posting it on mine, but I thought it was a good poem to share, because it might be comforting to those who have to cope with the very painfulexperience of losing a beloved pet.

I am also posting a photo of our cat, P.S. who had to be euthanized after 18 years of life on May 3, 2007. She now rests in our garden under an azalea bush and a metal figure of a cat just about her size.


"If it should be....

If it should be that I grow frail and weak,
and pain should keep me from my sleep,
then you must do what must be done,
for we know this last battle can't be won.
You will be sad, I understand,
but don't let grief then stay your hand,
for this day, more than the rest,
your love and friendship must stand the test.
We've had so many happy years,
what is to come can hold no fears.
Would you want me to suffer? So,
when the time comes, please let me go.
Take me where my needs they'll tend,
only stay with me until the end,
and hold me firm and speak to me,
until my eyes no longer see.
It is a kindness that you do to me,
although my tail its last has waved,
from pain and suffering I have been saved.
Do not grieve, it should be you,
who must decide this thing to do.
We've been so close, we two these years,
Don't let your heart hold any tears."

I Know I'm on Vacation When.....

(click on the photos to enlarge)


The other day, while driving from the harbor of Igoumenitsa to the ferryboat that would take us from Lefkada to Cephalonia, Eleni started making a verbal list:

“I know I’m on vacation when I ….
--eat bacon for breakfast
--drink wine at lunch
--wear my bathing suit all day instead of underwear.
--read books by Ruth Rendell and Agatha Christie then leave them at the hotel and pick up others from the left-books shelf.”

I added a few of my own.
“I know I’m on vacation when I:
--do the NYTimes crossword puzzle on weekdays as well as weekends (in the International Herald Tribune)
--take lots of photos of cats and windows and bicycles and the food I’m eating
--don’t check my e-mail every day (because I can’t find wifi or an internet café)
--can’t remember what day it is.”

When traveling in Greece, my perfect day includes eating outdoors overlooking a body of water. (Ideally the meal includes fish and a Greek salad with tomatoes, feta cheese and olive oil and there is a cat under the table begging for scraps.)

Eleni’s perfect day includes watching the sun set into a large body of water while drinking rosé wine.

We’ve been having a lot of perfect travel days lately and eating outdoors with stunning views and lots of sunsets and rosé wine and cats -- everywhere from Athens to Mykonos to Ioannina to Corfu to Lefkada to Cephalonia, where we are now. Eleni is researching a magazine article about “Secret Hotels of the Ionian Islands” so we change to a different (budget) hotel nearly every day. We were supposed to leave this afternoon for Zakinthos on the ferry but the wind and waves were too high so we are staying overnight at our friend Vicky’s house in the town of Kourkourmelata and leaving early tomorrow morning (we hope). And if we can’t get off Cephalonia, we’ll watch the sunset from here.

Here are some photos of our perfect sunsets and seaside meals. The top row are all about watching the sunset in Mykonos with a view of Little Venice and the famous windmills.

The next row shows us in Corfu Town—we always go to the roof garden at the top of the Cavalieri Hotel to enjoy the view of the Venetian fort below as the swallows go crazy right at sunset, swooping low over our heads chasing bugs. One night in Corfu we ate at the waterside in the Sailing Club restaurant hidden deep in the fortress where the sail boats are tied up.

The next row shows the terrace of our Corfu cousins’ house where we are always treated to a magnificent meal including vegetables from their garden. Another day we went to the west side of Corfu to watch the sunset at a bar called Petra.

The photos below show other views of Corfu, including a taverna called Le Grand Balcon. Sometimes the best view is from the balcony of our own hotel room.

The next row of photos shows where we ate last night and at breakfast this morning on the terrace of our villa in Lourdas, Cephalonia, including apricots right off the tree. Finally, photos of the tavernas in Lefkada (two days ago) and Argostoli, Cephalonia (today at noon) where we picked out the fish we wanted for lunch.

Next—Greek cats—the sequel.

Why I Love Thanksgiving (and Shortcuts)

I love Thanksgiving because you don’t have to buy and wrap gifts and it’s non-denominational – any religion can play. Even vegetarians like our son can find plenty to eat at Thanksgiving.

I used to make vegetarian gravy to go with our traditional stuffing – just take Pepperidge Farms Cornbread stuffing , and prepare as directed with water and butter but first throw in sautéed mushrooms, a little sautéed celery – you get the idea. (Trader Joe’s even sells a Tofurky roast made from tofu with gravy , although we go the free-range fresh turkey route.) Put a cut-up orange and/or onion inside the turkey’s cavity. If you put the stuffing inside, the turkey takes forever to cook and the stuffing comes out soggy.

My doctored-up corn bread stuffing always wows the Greek relatives who have spent days making stuffing involving sausage, pine nuts, chestnuts, etc. My stuffing takes five minutes. Theirs takes three days and must have a thousand calories per spoonful. Don’t tell them that, and also don’t tell them that, after years of failing at gravy-making I just jazz up canned turkey gravy with some chopped cooked gizzards and a little of the maple/bourbon glaze that I brush on the turkey near the end of the cooking time to keep it moist and a nice color

When I was a newlywed in 1970 I made Duck a l’Orange for our first Thanksgiving. The next year there was a baby at the table – smaller than the turkey -- and then two and three, and for 38 years we’ve celebrated the full catastrophe, often inviting foreign college students who have no place to go.

We still do it the traditional way, from cranberry/orange relish and wild rice (which comes from my native state of Minnesota) to apple and pumpkin pie (which is wicked easy to make, but now I make a pumpkin roll — like a jelly roll with cream cheese in the middle. You can freeze it and serve it centuries later, just defrost and slice and sprinkle with powdered sugar.) Somehow Chocolate Kahlua Pie has also become a family “tradition.”

I used to keep the kids busy making place cards for the table… for instance turkeys out of popcorn balls wrapped in red cellophane with heads made of lady fingers or Greek kourlourakia. The turkeys stand on three toothpick legs stuck into some large flat cookie with a person’s name on it.

Over the years I developed more and more shortcuts because cooking is just not my thing. Decorating is. By now I’ve now got it so streamlined that I’m going to write a book next year about "Holiday Shortcuts". Trust me, you can do a Thanksgiving and Christmas worthy of Martha Stewart and be cheating every step of the way. That’s the thesis of my upcoming book, which has the working title "Acing the Holidays". Stay tuned.

This year I’m plugging my photo book “The Secret Life of Greek Cats”

which costs only $10 and is perfect for the cat people or going-to-Greece people on your list. I’ll sign it and wrap it in cat-themed paper for free if you order it off my web site: www.GreekCats.com .

I’m also going to be selling it at Border’s, 476 Boston Turnpike, Shrewsbury on the day after Thanksgiving and on Sunday, December 7 at “Start at the Station” – Worcester’s Union Station — from noon to five p.m. along with 80 other artists and craftspeople.

Last night, youngest child Marina came back home from LA. On Wednesday night Eleni’s coming home from New York. As soon as Marina got here, her cousin Efro came over and the two girls sat at the kitchen table looking at photos on Marina’s computer of her new life full of beaches and sunsets and new housemates. The girls were laughing so loud you could hardly hear the phone ringing. “You see,” said the Big Eleni, who is Efro’s mother, “The minute children come home, the house is filled with joy.”

That’s what I love about Thanksgiving. Hope you have a great Turkey Day! The photo above is last year’s feast with Nick about to carve the turkey.

Street Artist Banksy and his Peculiar Pet Shop

On the same weekend in October that I visited the CFA – IAMs Cat Championship in Madison Square Garden and the Van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, I also went with two fellow crones down to Greenwich Village to view an exhibit by anonymous British street artist Banksy.

No one knows who Banksy really is, including the young men and women who were keeping watch over his Greenwich Village exhibit. (I asked them. They said they’ve never met him) According to Wikipedia Banksy is "a well-known pseudo-anonymous British artist believed to have been born in 1974."

His street art usually combines graffiti and a stenciling technique — leaving political statements on walls -- but in New York he opened a realistic-looking "Pet Store and Charcoal Grill" at 89 Seventh Avenue between West 4th and Bleeker Street. (Love the irony in that title…It was only there from October 9 to Halloween and we crones felt privileged to see this street art in action before Banksy folded it up and took it away. It was the first time Banksy has used animation to create exhibits that moved.)

From the outside, the Pet Store featured what appeared to be a large leopard sitting in the window with a twitching tail. (“Do not tap on the glass", said a sign.) But when you went inside, the "leopard" turned out to be a strategically folded leopard coat. With a moving tail.

In another window was a white rabbit applying lipstick while looking in a mirror. There was also a hen with several "chicks" --- really animated large chicken nuggets -- drinking out of a dish of barbecue sauce. Inside the store were fish sticks swimming in an aquarium, sliced sausages and hot dogs eating out of dishes and a chimpanzee watching a TV video of chimpanzees having sex.

As you've probably figured out by now, Banksy is making an ironic comment about how we turn animals into processed food and torture rabbits, for instance, to test cosmetics. What I liked about the exhibit (which some bewildered folk mistook for an actual pet store) is that it's good-natured and humorous piece of art that gets the artist's point across more effectively than a diatribe, or throwing flour at Lindsey Lohan or paint at Sarah Jessica Parker when they wear furs.

There was a book inside the “Pet Store” where people were encouraged to write their reactions to the art. Someone who was there before me had written: "Banksy totally gets it! This is why I don't eat meat." But the children passing by outside with their parents were delighted with the moving exhibits in the "Pet Store and Charcoal Grill." Perhaps it would start them thinking, the next time they saw a chicken nugget or a sausage, perhaps not, but it was more engaging that an exhibit of calves being tortured in cages, and so was probably more effective in making people think about where their food comes from.

Another artist who is referred to as a “guerrilla artist” or street artist (because he paints his political statements on walls and then runs away before he can be arrested) is Sheperd Fairey, who is the hot young artist of the day ever since he designed the terrific red, white and blue poster of Obama for his campaign. Sheperd Fairey, Banksy and their ilk have had a huge influence on young artists.

It was fun to watch passers-by the Pet Store do a double take and then come up and study the exhibits. This is the best kind of interactive art. It reminded me of walking through a snowy Central Park on the last day of Christo's "Gates” in February 2005 and watching hundreds, maybe thousands of people--some who had flown in from Europe --touching, discussing and interacting with the 7,500 saffron-colored fabric panels which transformed Central Park on a cold winter day into an open air museum where everyone had something to say about the art.

(If you want to see more photos and a discussion of Banksy’s pet store and grill, follow this link:)

www.woostercollective.com/2008/10/the_village_pet_store_and_charchoal_gril.html

And if you want a copy of The Secret life of Greek Cats” for an animal lover on your holiday list:

www.GreekCats.com