The Real Housewife of Molyvos

Kalispera!

It's hot. I'm exhausted. My feet look like little sausages. And if I'm totally honest all I want to do right now is take a cold shower and go to bed. But I worked really hard today and if I didn't share it all with you then somehow the day would feel unfinished. Not to mention the fact that I totally ruled Greek Housewife-dom today and I feel like I need to take some time to brag about it.

But first I have to tell you the gossip of the day! This is big!

So one of my mother-in-laws best friends is a lady named Stella. And Stella is Miltos' mom, our best man/best friend (are you with me? that was an easy one actually. I like writing those round-about connections, like "she's the cousin of this guy's wife who's also the aunt of my cousin's dad" type of connections). Anyway, so Stella came by the restaurant this morning to visit Olympia and have coffee. But Olympia wasn't there...I'll tell you why she wasn't there after this...so Stella went home. She doesn't really live that far from the restaurant, it's probably a 10 minute walk at the most, so apparently she was away from her house for less than 30 minutes. She opened the door and found 3 gypsy women robbing her house!!! From what I hear, they must have just gotten into the house because they didn't manage to take anything and as soon as Stella found them she started yelling and screaming and the gypsy's ran away....but holy crap!! A gypsy robbery?! That's not supposed to happen around here! The only robbery I ever worry about around here is when the stupid cat with half a tail sneaks into my house and eats my bread.

No one's been caught and actually I don't even know if she called the police or not but if I get any updates on this I'll let you know...whether those updates are just pure gossip or truth, I'll keep you updated because sometimes the pure gossip can be hilarious. Not trying to make light of the situation or anything, I'm so glad Stella's ok and that they didn't manage to steal anything but if I know Molyvos gossip...this story should take some interesting twists and turns in the next few days.

And I realize I'm not sounding very politically correct by talking about 'gypsies' like this. Who cares if they were gypsy's or Greeks or Canadians, robbing a house is robbing a house. The reason I even mention that they're gypsy's is because I just wanted to give you a taste of what local gossip sounds like. This is exactly how the story will be told again and again over the next week or however long it takes for a new story to replace it.

DISCLAIMER: I don't have anything against gypsy's.

Actually that's not true. When they walk through the streets at 8am on a Sunday morning screaming out that they are selling cheap clothes..."I HAVE PANTS, I HAVE DRESSES, I HAVE SHIRTS FOR MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN, ALL VERY GOOD PRICES!!"...then I despise them. But I despise anyone that wakes me up, especially at 8am on a Sunday morning. I believe in hating everyone equally. That being said, I also don't want to make the locals here sound ignorant or racist or anything like that. They're not. Well I'm sure there's a few but we have a few in Canada to unfortunately. I think the reason that it seems important to them to mention that it was gypsies that broke into the house is because it just makes people feel safer. Gypsy's travel around, they're here one day gone the next. So likely whoever these women were they won't be hanging around here long, which means they won't have the opportunity to break in again. If it was a Greek person or a foreign local, then it somehow seems scarier. This is a small community, everyone knows each other and everyone takes care of each other (for the most part)...it's just not nice to think that someone could do that to one of their own, SO that's my theory as to why the title 'gypsy' is getting thrown around in every conversation. Ok, I've gone off on a tangent. Lets move on.....

But before I get back to today's subject I have to tell you about Papou and the reason why Olympia wasn't in the restaurant this morning. Papous is Greek for Grandpa, and Antonis' Papou is a big part of our lives. He lives with my parent's in law, he just celebrated his 91st birthday last week and he is full of life. Everyday he walks down to the local kafenio (cafe) to have coffee with his buddies and talk about politics and farming and whatever else old guys talk about. Anyway, he hasn't been feeling very well for the past few days so Olympia and Yorgos had to take him to the doctor today and yesterday.

The diagnosis is he's having a problem with his heart and the doctor has said the only thing they can do to help him is fly him to Athens and implant a pace maker. So needless to say we're all really worried and hoping that he miraculously starts feeling better so that he doesn't have to go through all of this. None of us are really talking about it much right now, I think we're all just trying to process it. Personally, I adore Papou and he has to stay with us forever. But if it can't be forever, he really needs to hang on for a few more months so he can see his first great grand baby. Anyway, that's all I'm going to say about that for now. I'll keep you all updated on this and in the mean time, whatever any of you can do to send some good healthy vibes Papou's way would be greatly appreciated.

Ok, so finally getting back to today's subject...what has 2 thumbs and is the the housewife of the century??? Yeah that would be me (if you picture me pointing to myself with my 2 thumbs...ok that's a visual joke and therefore not so easily translated in writing but it's an oldie so I'm sure you all pictured it anyway)

I have a Greek recipe to share with you today, although I'm not exactly sure what to call it. I started out making Kokinisto (ko-kee-nee-STO) which is a Greek pot roast. But then at the end I added tiny pasta to the pot (something like orzo) which then turns it into Giovetsi (gee-o-VET-zee). Giovetsi is usually made with lamb though, and I used beef but it's not uncommon to use beef instead. So really what makes the difference is the pasta. If you just make the meat, then you've made Kokinisto which you can serve with mashed potatoes or french fries or rice or whatever you want as a side dish. If you make this by adding the pasta, then you've made Giovetsi. The base sauce is exactly the same, so we've got ourselves a two-fer!

So here we go!

Here's the butcher by the way, 2nd door on the left. I had to do a full shopping trip today which means a trip to the butcher, the bakery and the supermarket to get everything, and I actually wanted to take pics of all 3 because they're just so cute but I forgot after the butcher...what else is new...The owners are lovely, a very cute married couple. They decided today that they won't speak English to me anymore because they think it's time that we speak only Greek...they're right. I guess I better pull out my dictionary and start studying the Greek words for animal parts. I know the animals, I just don't know things like the specific cuts of meat or chicken parts, stuff like that.

Here's our ingredients. You will need:

olive oil

about 1lb beef, cut into chunks

salt

1 large red onion

1/2 cup red wine

1 can crushed tomatoes

1 tbsp tomato paste

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (THE ingredient)

2 tbsp chopped parsley

pepper

pinch of oregano OR 3 sprigs of thyme 

Optional:

1 1/2 cups orzo pasta

I WOULD ALSO RECOMMEND ADDING:

garlic - not a lot but it's to your taste

2 bay leaves

1 whole stick of cinnamon, but don't grate it or break it, keep it whole

Step 1:

• Preheat the oven to 350
• pour about 3 tbsp of olive oil (or whatever you want really) into a pot
• brown your meat until on all sides so it looks all deliciously golden...I know this looks grey but trust me, I had some serious golden brown meat happening 

Step 2:

• set the meat aside
• pour some more olive oil into pot
• chop the onion and saute until it's soft
• then you want to add your red wine (it's important that you use red wine instead of white because kokinisto actually means reddening, kokino is red in Greek...although we're using tomatoes anyway so the sauce is still going to be red so if you only have white wine on hand I'm sure that would be good too)
• once the wine is almost completely evaporated add in your can of crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, parsley, garlic, bay leaf, cinnamon, salt and pepper
• let it boil for a few minutes and try to squish any of the big tomato bits 

Step 3:

• Put your meat into a dutch oven or baking dish like this one. I actually had to google dutch oven because I wasn't exactly sure what it was...the first definition was actually the act of passing gas under a sheet and then holding someone's head under. Thanks Wikipedia! The answer I was looking for was that it's just a heavy, cast-iron type pot that you can put straight into a fire if you wanted to. Anyway, I don't have one of those so I put it in this and it worked just fine.
• Pour your tomato mixture over top
• Fill the tomato can with water and pour this over top as well
• Put it in the oven for about 2 1/2 hours, checking it every now and then to stir the meat around
• if you're planning on adding the pasta, add it at the 2 1/2 hour mark and cook for another 30 - 35 minutes, you may find you need to add a bit more liquid at this point. I added about half a cup more water

So since we're waiting a super long time for everything to cook now, I decided to fix my tomato paste problem. My problem is that no matter what recipe I use, usually it only calls for about a tablespoon or 2 of tomato paste...but I can only buy it in this honking big can. So here's my solution.....

Take tablespoons of tomato paste and put them into an ice cube tray (this is an old one I don't use that much because I was worried about dying the tray red...but after I washed it it was perfectly fine so don't worry about staining). Freeze this for about an hour or 2, or just until the tomato paste globs are frozen enough to maintain their single portion shape. Then take them out of the tray, put them in a Ziploc back and VOILA! You have 1 tablespoon portions of tomato paste ready for next time!

And I just wanted to show you this. This is actually homemade pasta. I didn't do it, so I don't have a recipe for you unfortunately. That's why I've suggested orzo pasta because it's basically the same thing as this. I'll eventually get a recipe for homemade orzo, but so far I've only helped in the 'shaping' phase. Basically you take the ball of dough, a vegetable peeler and a big pan. Using your vegetable peeler you take tiny nicks out of the dough ball so they look like little bits of rice, and let them fall into the big pan. Then it's cooked but I don't know for how long or at what temperature...actually they might just be dried? I don't know. And I have no idea how to make the dough ball....let me know if you know if you can fill in any blanks!

Sorry this is blurry, wish I noticed that before but it looked good on my camera at the time. Anyway, I'm still waiting for the food to cook so now I'm making a lemon juice-olive oil solution for dusting. Yes, dusting! Who the hell dusts?? I do! We get so much freakin' dust around here it's unbelievable. But if you use lemon and olive oil you don't have to dust as often because somehow it repels dust. Now I only have to dust every 2 weeks instead of every 2 days which is awesome! So just mix it at a 1:1 ration. I did 1 tablespoon each because I just wanted a little bit. Last time I did 1 cup each and I didn't use it fast enough so I ended up with moldy olive oil/ lemon solution. By the way this olive oil is from our olives, so the olive oil is homemade too...I'm not bragging about all this homemade stuff, I'm just saying. It's just how we roll....

This really isn't important but I was bored waiting for the Giovetsi to cook...this is what I put my olive oil-lemon juice solution in. It was the only empty container I could find in the house. If you have a nice container that you know is super clean before you put the olive oil and lemon juice in, you can use it as salad dressing too....not kidding...little salt and pepper and you got yourself a salad in a dust free room!!  If you're using an old sun tan lotion bottle like me, I would not recommend pouring this over your garden greens...but that probably didn't need to be said.

So now it's been cooking for 2 1/2 hours, I added the pasta, stirred it around and decided I needed some more liquid to cook the pasta

And this is our end result! 

Just so you know, you have to serve this with feta cheese. You have no choice. The Greek Gods will come down from Mount Olympus and smite you if you don't put at least a little bit of feta cheese on the side.

So now the whole house is perfectly spotless and completely dust free, there's enough food to feed us for at least a couple days (depending on how hungry Antonis is today) AND I did all of this with perfectly straightened hair in a super cute sun dress...rocked it!

Antonis rating for the Giovetsi....2 big thumbs up!! YESSSS! I always get nervous when I make Greek food. There's just so much pressure! But he hasn't disliked any of my Greek cooking yet so that feels pretty good.

Now it's time to take that cold shower I've been looking forward too, cover myself in stretch mark cream (which is working fabulously by the way...or maybe I should just thank my mom for good genes) and go to bed.

Good night!!