Where Did the Money Go?

Πού πήγαν τα λεφτά? (Where did the money go?)

This is a phrase coined out of the Prime Minister Papandreou's speech and now we are using in a different context. Evidently many Greeks cannot even afford bread.

The bread used to be 0.80€ a piece (the normal Greek bread pretends to weigh 'half a kilo' at bakery, but actually is 350-400g) and now some bakeries selling it for 0.60€.



When I saw the news first on tv, it sounded like in a far world, but now I found the situation at just out of our door. I wonder if this cause domino-effect to the bread price in my neighbourhood.

The same night we went to Gazi.



It was Friday evening and was busy, but wasn't as busy as it should be. Cafeterias were full, but restaurants generally were struggling.

I would be surprised that there wasn't any change. I am afraid the majority of the Greeks are earning less than in the same time last year. A part might getting the same amount, but because of the recent inflation cased by increase on fuel tax and by higher VAT, they have less purchase power.

Where did the money go and where we are going?

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Cats photos from Gazi.



This one below was sleeping in front of a club/cafe. When I saw it, I thought it might be dead, as the club was quite noisy and busy. On being touched, he woke up and looked around surprised, but still sleepy.



How could he?

Καλή Ανάσταση και Καλλό Πάσχα

I have been a bit disorganised in time wise because of heavy church-going and have not had time to write on this blog.

I bought some meat and some cheese and milk for the week from tomorrow. Besides, I bought a Toureki from the usual bakery in my neighbourhood.



Tsoureki is Greek Easter bread. It is similar to Brioche, but has particular smell because of mahlepi and mastiha. Because of butter and egg content, it is suitable for the fat week ahead.

I wish all the Orthodox people happy Easter tomorrow.

Sourdough Bread from Alimos

The other day, I had a thing to do in Alimos and went to Marina Alimos by tram for the first time.

I did not have time to see the Marina, but I found a bakery with a large billboard "Ψώμι με προζύμι - Psomi me prozimi" (sourdough bread) and could not resist buying one. Maybe because I am slightly crazy.

The prices are generally higher in this shop than in Piraeus bakeries and 1 normal bread cost 90 cents against 80 cents in Piraeus. And the sourdough bread was sold by weight. I don't remember exactly how much I paid, but it was close to 2 euros; although it looked small, it was very compact and much heavier than usual bread.

See the density of texture?

The bread was well made, but, unfortunately, it was too sour for my taste. But it is not their fault, as some people like sourdough bread to be sour. It had also cinnamon like smell as well.

Although it wasn't the type of bread I like, it was nice to see a different type of sourdough.

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And a random cat photo of the day.

I disturbed him during the lunch time.

Greek Sourdough Bread 2

When I wrote about "Me prozimi" bread (sourdough bread) some time ago, California Cat commented that the Greek sourdough bread does not taste like as ones she used to have in San Francisco.

I agree with her. Sometimes I buy both "me prozimi" and normal horiatiko from the same bakery and they do not taste much different.

But in my neighbourhood there is one bakery that produce quite distinct sourdough bread.


Here it is. They say it is "1 kilo", but it weighs less than 1 kilo (it is so in any bakery; maybe it weighed 1 kilo before they baked it).

It is flatter than usual round bread.


The yellow colour suggests it is made with semolina flour. It smells slightly sour and sweet. The consistency is heavier, chewier, and less fluffy than normal horiatiko. Air holes are uneven and some are quite large.

This is similar to the sourdough I ate elsewhere in the past and I love it. However, my Greek husband prefers softer and less sour horiatiko or politelias (white) bread.

I want to recreate the sourdough bread at home; I will report when succeeded.

Kathari Deftera

This Monday was Katheri Deutera (or Kathara Deutera), Clean Monday, national holiday for the Greeks. If this name reminded you about the dangerous Mediaeval heretics Cathars, you are linguistically on the right track: Cathars took their name from the Greek adjective for clean - katharos.

This day the Lenten season truly begins. Actually the week preceding to it was Tyrini week, meaning the Orthodox Christians should start fasting except for milk and milk product, but it looks that not many people observe this.

It was a very fine day. The first activity of the day for us was to go to buy lagana (λαγάνα), which is a flat bread with sesame seeds eaten typically on Clean Monday. We went to the neighbourhood bakery I often go. In front of the shop there was this mega lagana, but as it was broken into three, it did not have desired effect.

We bought our stuff and went down to the seaside. This is how the lagana looks like. This year the minimum price for lagana seems to have set at 2.50euro in Athens, but our bakery were selling it for 3euros. It was nice, but not as nice as Hubby had insisted it was.

We bought also half a kilo of kritsinia, kind of bread biscuits. They are all-season stuff, but people eat more during the fasting periods. This one is multi-seeds variety that I like the best.

There were people flying their kites: this is one of the typical things to do on Clean Monday. This hexagonal one is the most typical Greek kite.

These guys had a kite shaped like eagle. Kite is called hartaetos (paper eagle) in Greek.

Then we went to Hubby's parents' house for lunch. Hubby cut lagana into pieces. This lagana is larger than ours.


The main dish was fried karamari. On Katheri Deftera, the Greeks eat kalamari (squids or cuttle fish), octopus, and/or prawns/shrimps. The streets were filled with the smell of frying or grilling these.

On the table there was a halvas - sesame based sweet, again, typically eaten during the Lenten period. I don't like very much sesame halvas and prefer semolina halvas, again typical sweet of the period.

Then we went for coffee with friends and had coffee without milk. There was quite a lot of people abstaining from milk in the cafeteria.

At home, the dinner was octopus. This is one of they typical way the Greeks eat their octopus during the Lent. Octopus is slowly stewed with tomato and when softened, cooked with short tube-shape pasta.

The octopus was soooo good: it was tender and flavourful. It was actually too good for the Lenten table. Some people remove oil from their food. Maybe it is the only way to make the octopus unpalatable.

Snack Bread

This Saturday, while shopping in Aghia Trianta area of Piraeus, we felt famished and entered a bakery displaying various type of snack bread and pies. Look the variety; these are only a part of them.

One of their specialities is chocolate tsoureki (tsoureki is sweet bread with egg, sugar, and egg, consistency firmer than brioche). I was very attracted by toureki filled with chocolate and soaked in syrup; never seen this before. Did not buy, because it should have been too messy to eat on the hoof.




Instead, I got this: smoked turkey ham and mozzarella cheese in multi-seed nest (1.90euros). Hubby got a calzone with ham, cheese and mushroom tomato sauce (1.90euro).

Section made with my bites; I did not have any knife with me.

The bread was nice, but as a whole it was not satisfying. Mozzarella cheese turned out to be bechamel sauce and quality of turkey ham was rather poor (well, although I expected this). Hubby's calzone was OK, but tomato sauce was far too salty.

To tell the truth, we have already tried this bakery a couple of times, and, although everything looks very promising, it has never got as good as our expectations. It failed us again. As we have not found any other bakery in this area, we might well go there again, but I will try to explore more and find alternatives.

Greek Sourdough Bread (Me Prozimi)

As I probably mentioned before, I love Greek bread. When we lived in UK, we used to consume less than 800 grammes of bread a week, and now we eat easily 1200 grammes per week. Not because our diet pattern changed, but we are eating extra bread, as it is so good (and it is bad for our weist line!).

I like horiatiko bread and it is my first choice, but I buy also me prozimi (με προζύμι) bread. It literaly means bread with yeast, but in practice it means sourdough bread. The fascination of 'me prozimi' bread is that it is so different from one bakery to another.

Yesterday I tried this bakery for the first time; it is in Passalimani area of Piraeus, Greece. Evidently it in business since 1929.


Normally, the Greek bakeries give you the bread in prastic bag, but this one wrapped the bread in a piece of paper. As the freshly baked bread need to 'breath', this is the correct way to handle the warm bread (yes, it was still warm).




It had an intriguing shape, as if it was twisted. The shape of the bottom suggests that the dough was pretty soft when it was put into the oven.

Section. It is light and airy. The crust is cruntchy and the slightly yellow-ish white part is soft and moist.

It was fine, but I prefer heavier texture and I would have liked more deapth in taste. It is quite a matter of personal taste, but I have eaten the ones I liked better.

My quest for perfect Greek bread continues...

Olive and Tomato Pita

Greeks snack a lot and their favourite snacks are pies (pites), or, if you are British, 'pasties' might be a better word to convey the idea.

To give some examples, there are tyropita (cheese pie), loukanikopita (sausage pie), spanakopita (spinach pie, often including cheese), etc.

The other day, we discovered a barkery near our flat and decided to try, and to our joy they have some interesting pies.

From several interesting ones, we picked up one (well, actually Hubby picked up one, me not being pie lover). It was quite long; maybe near 30 cm.



Inside, there were olive paste and tomato (+ potato, I thought) paste in two individual lines.



Pie was fresh and fraky and the combination of fragrant olive and tangy tomato was a great idea.

Greeks tend to be very conservative and traditionalist in cooking and to find such a new / different things is often very difficult. We will be back to try some other things.

Mediterranean Koulouraki @ Grigoris

Yesterday, Hubby and I went to the Piraeus station area to look for drawers and bookshelves. I found drawers I liked for 200 euros (I liked better the ones for 350euros, but what can we do?), but not the book shelves. We will go to Ikea to search for alternatives.

Hubby did a great work to arranges our stuff from UK and threw away lots of empty boxes. But now that we do not have clothes drawers or book shelves, some cardboard boxes are destined to remain.



By the way, while looking for furniture, we had a break at Grigoris. With cappuccino, Hubby had Kasseropita and I had this Mediterranean kouloura.



It was semi-hard biscuit-ey shell housing feta, tomato and green pepper (?) mix.




Even if slightly too salty, it was nice, filling and unique. I will have that again.

Xoriatiko Psomi (Country Bread)

Generally I like Greek bread as all the other Mediterranean bread.

The one I like in particular is Greek yellow bread. I asked my Hubby what it was called, but he did not know. Although he is a Greek native speaker, his knowledge of food is very limited and it is not strange he does not know it.

So, when we go to bakery, we often end up in asking "please give us yellow bread" (said in Greek by Greek Husband). Usually bakers look blankly at him for a few seconds, and then give him the bread they think is yellowest.

The other day we tried the bakery close to our new flat and they decided it should be Choriatiko psomi, or Xoriatiko psomi, meaning Country bread like "Pain de campagne" in French.

They said it is "prozimi". It probably means "sourdough" in the sense that it is natural leaven.




Can you see that it is yellow?





The colour evidently comes from the semolina flour which gives an unique flavour as well as the colour.

This is not as good as the best ones I have tasted, but acceptable.

My quest for ideal yellow bread continues.