Let’s cook!
Wednesday, September 14th: Athens, Greece
We got up and had Greek yogurt (lactose free for Matt) with granola and honey… apparently it’s just called “yogurt” here as our Greek Kitchen chef mentioned later in the day
We walked 30 minutes through town and arrived at the Greek Kitchen. We mixed up the time and we’re 40 minutes early, so we sat outside and grabbed an iced Greek coffee (and randomly watched videos of test explosions over the ocean for nuclear bombs)
There were 14 participants in the cooking class, and Sonya was our instructor. We first followed her through the market to pick up ground beef, grapes, freshly made phyllo dough and olives. We learned that the market opens at 6:00 AM and prices start high and fall throughout the day and the product becomes less fresh.
We returned to the kitchen and began making traditional Greek dishes: dolmades, spanakopita, tzatziki, imam baildi and an orange phyllo pie. The red onion was strong and made the whole class cry. Sonya used A LOT of olive oil in everything… “One tablespoon, two tablespoons, a lot of tablespoons” she would say as she poured the bottle over the tzatziki.
We used very simple ingredients and methods of cooking. All of the recipes can be recreated at home and we intend to make them at Thanksgiving.
Our table mates were all from the U.S. - one couple was here for a friend’s wedding on Zakynthos, another couple had gotten married in April and took some time off to travel and hike the Pacific Crest trail and the last couple were lesbians from Washington.
At the end of the class, we enjoyed the fruits of our labor. Everything was delicious.
We left the kitchen and went to walk off all of the food we just consumed. We made our way through the city, stopped at the Academy of Athens to admire the architecture and then on to Lycabettus Hill. We went up a few short switchbacks and took in the view from the top where we could see the entire footprint of Athens, the Acropolis in the distance, the ocean and the mountains protecting the city.
We went back through the market and purchased ingredients to put our new skills to the test. We bought everything we needed for grape leaves, Greek salad and tzatziki.
Liz took a nap and Matt made dinner. Reverting back to Eastern time, we stayed up too late after getting sucked into the Netflix documentary on Lori Vallow - the woman that conspired to kill her two kids under the influence of the LDS cult.
Accommodations: AirB&B, Filopappou, Athens
