Ouzo Beans?

I hate to repeat myself for the hundredth time but OH MY GOD IT'S HOT!! Now it's not just me saying that, everyone is starting to get a bit run down from the heat wave. I'm sitting at the restaurant right now writing this because it's just way too hot at our house. This time of day it's like an oven there because the sun shines right through the balcony doors into our living room. At least here at the restaurant we have a small terrace with some shade. There's a slight breeze too which is helping. 

Actually today I had intended to come down to have breakfast and coffee with Antonis because he started at 9am this morning. His parents are off to Athens with his grandfather for his surgery so Antonis will be opening the restaurant every morning until they get back (Good luck Papou! Come home soon!). But now it's 1:30 so my breakfast plan has turned into lunch...I don't know how I did it but I slept until noon! I didn't even hear Antonis get up and get ready for work at 8:30. I've been sleeping in a bit lately but I've never managed to sleep all the way through until noon. I usually wake up at least every 10 minutes to pee (yes I'm exaggerating again...it's usually about every 2-3 hours) Oh well, I'm not going to feel guilty about it because everyone's been telling me I'm supposed to be getting as much sleep as possible these days anyway. 

It's starting to get a bit busy here right now. I guess the tourists have decided it's lunch time to so maybe my breakfast turned lunch plan has now turned into a late lunch plan...or maybe I just need to get off my butt and go make my own lunch. It might come to that actually. Well I'll tell you about last night first and then when thinking of food becomes unbearable I'll give up on blogging for the day and go eat something.  

Our plan last night was to get some friends together and have a typical Greek meze and ouzo, but the restaurant was too busy last night to make that happen, thankfully! We're always happy when the restaurant is busy of course! Antonis, Lefteris (our waiter) and I did end up having meze and ouzo together after everyone had left but that was around 11:30pm last night so of course that was a little late to be inviting friends to join us. Although Greeks do typically eat late at night so it wouldn't be totally weird but we figured everyone would have eaten by then so we just went ahead the 3 of us. 

While the boys drank ouzo I had sparkling water in a wine glass...I pretended it was champagne. Although you wouldn't normally think of pairing fried fish with champagne, in this case it worked nicely...

So meze is the Greek word for appetizers or tapas basically. This is how Greeks usually eat when they get together with friends, lots of small plates of different things like salads, vegetables prepared in tons of other ways, usually you'll have some kind of cheese but we didn't last night, fish or grilled meat or beans if you want to go vegetarian (the gigantes recipe from yesterday is a nice meze dish). Usually whatever is in season and whatever is local is what you'll find on the table. And of course you need to drink ouzo, or wine or retsina which is kind of like wine but with a slightly herbal scent and taste. People who don't like it usually compare retsina to Pinsol...those who like it don't notice herbs at all and say it's just like white wine.. so it's a matter of taste. Ouzo tastes like black licorice because one of its main ingredients is anise seed. It's usually the drink of choice for Greeks, especially with the people of Lesvos because this is where ouzo is made. Some drink it straight...the hardcore old guys usually...but the common way is in a small glass with a couple of ice cubes and a bit of water. 

I titled this post Ouzo Beans? because my first winter here a guy from another village was having meze with us one night and he looked at me and said what I thought was "Ouzo beans?"....there was ouzo on the table and beans on the table so I pointed to them and said "ouzo...beans???"...I had no idea what he was talking about. But suddenly everyone burst out laughing! I was totally confused! "What's so funny??" Antonis said, "He said, ouzo peines, which in Greek means do you drink ouzo. But he's from Stipsi hahahaha"...and they laughed some more. I still didn't really get it. Anyway, after living here a little while I came to understand that there are a ton of different dialects of Greek on this island and one of the most prominent, and most made fun of, come from the people of Stipsi. So the fact that this guy from Stipsi said "peines" (you drink) but it sounded just like "beans" to me was some kind of hilarious proof that people from Stipsi don't talk properly. I guess. It's not very nice but honestly I just tried to have a conversation with this same guy yesterday and I STILL couldn't figure out what the hell he was saying....and of course, this was still funny to everyone else.

We had a typical salad (tomato, cucumber, olives, green pepper, onion) with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Actually this isn't that typical. Usually it would only be dressed with olive oil but I'm slightly obsessed with balsamic vinegar these days so that means when a craving strikes in the company of others, they have no choice but to follow along...I swear I'm not difficult about it, it just seems that no one ever argues with a pregnant woman....
The fish is salted tuna with a little bit of fresh lemon juice and olive oil over it. My 'champagne' and fried fish may have worked nicely together but the best pairing is salty fish with ouzo...I can't have either right now but I've already told Antonis that as soon as I'm able to do it, my first night out after the baby's born MUST involve salty fish and ouzo. I'm not sure if all salty fish are prepared in exactly the same way but tuna anyway is stored in salt for 3 days and then it's ready to eat. It's not technically raw since it's been salted, so I could eat it actually but I prefer not to take any chances...and it's really just not worth it if you can't wash it down with some ouzo anyway so I'll wait...

We also had horta...that's the Greek name for it and I honestly don't know what it's called in English. It's a dark green, leafy vegetable, slightly bitter taste, and it grows in wild in fields. Some varieties look something like the leafy greens you'd find in bags of mixed green salad back home but there are so many different varieties. Maybe it can be compared to something like a collard green? I'm not sure, if anyone else has any ideas let me know. Anyway, I've never heard of anyone actually planting horta in their vegetable garden because it's grows like crazy in the wild, so we just go off into the forest or the mountains or where ever we find a field and pick it. The goal is to get it before the sheep do! We steam it and then cover it in lemon juice and a bit of olive oil. Greek people always tell me it's really good for you, full of vitamins and minerals...I believe it. It tastes healthy, but in a good way.

The fried fish were sardines and a few small mackerel. YUM! I had told Antonis earlier yesterday that during the third trimester of the pregnancy the baby's brain is developing in more detail now so if we want her to be really smart, and if he wants her to be the future president of Greece that finally gets us out of the mess this country's in, then we should give her 1-2 servings of sardines and/or anchovies a week (because of the healthy fat, DHA, found in them). I prefer grilled fish over fried but anyway, he clearly listened and is looking forward to being the proud father of the future president.

Yamas! (cheers)