Around Nafplio ― A day off

We've been closed on Wednesdays for a few weeks to give ourselves a much needed break from working 7 days a week. When you open a café and are working it without any employees it gets very tiring. Not only for us but also for the kids whose lives have changed dramatically since we opened doors.


So, back at the end of March, when we had a sunny afternoon and the kids got home from school we got a picnic ready and went to a nearby spring at Kefalari to enjoy the sunshine and the sound of running water. The sun was glorious and we didn't need our jackets. There was one fat duck who the kids gave half their food to! No wonder he was fat.





Apart from the water source, there is a church which has been carved out of caves above and several seventies style tavernas which make you feel like you are in an old black and white film. You totally expect to see the old film stars of Greece like Aliki Vouyouklaki filming or something.


It's only about 15 minutes from Nafplio old town and great for a couple of hours entertainment.


The next day we had torrential rain so we were pleased we had taken the opportunity.

A whole month!

WOW! I can't believe it has been almost a whole month since we opened! Of course the saying goes: ‘Time flies when you are having fun.’

Truthfully, the days have gone by so quickly we've hardly had a chance to register what day it was! We're getting into the swing of things. I'm getting used to my kitchen and (for the most part) remember where I've put things! We've been bringing in new flavours every few days and I've been trying to use lovely local fruit for some of them. I'll keep doing that as the seasons change.


One of the most exciting things of the past month has been finally getting to meet in person so many of you, who have been following our story here as well as on facebook and twitter. I can't describe the thrill I get when I see a car pulling up outside the café and the people inside with excited expressions on their face that they found us and are actually here! In a small way it is as though they feel like our café is theirs, too, and it really makes me feel good! Thanks so much for coming and keeping me going even though I've been totally exhausted this month :)

I've been answering lots of baking related questions from my customers, too. Lots of people, it seems, love to bake.

Olivia's arm is almost better; just two days ago the plaster came off. Of course, now she is taking antibiotics for a nasty bug she picked up! It's been a busy month from that point of view, too!

We've got lots planned in the next few days and weeks. We'll try our best to keep you all posted. It's been a while since we had a little give-away, so I thought it's time. I'm going to give away 5 madagascan vanilla pods. These pods are about 20cm (4in) long and very supple and fresh. You can use your vanilla pods by scraping out the seeds and adding them directly to your cake batter or your frosting, then you can use the leftover pod to make vanilla sugar. Which you can then add to your hot drinks or baking!


To enter leave a comment answering who in your household likes cooking? Everyone? No one? And what's the thing they like to cook? You have until midnight Saturday local time (GMT +2) to leave your comment. Only the first comment will count for each participant. Please make sure that we have a way to contact you if you win.


Liz Cupcakes

Spring has sprung

It is well and truly spring. The weather is warm and sunny most of the time. The orange blossoms are still heavy with scent and the sides of the roads have wild flowers growing out of control! It's truly beautiful.

My lettuces have grown and we've eaten most of them. A few days ago, when I was gardening with the children, we noticed a few pea pods on the little pea bush so I pulled a couple off and gave them a couple of peas to eat each! Of course they thought that was great! We started off a few other seeds.


What's been cooking? Some kiddy cupcakes! Chocolate cupcakes with gummy worms!





And strawberry shortcake.



I hope the rest of your week is yummy!

Liz Cupcakes

Breadsticks

OK. I know I am totally late with this post but I just wanted to join the list of Kiki's fans! I received my copy of her lovely book "Little kitchen ― breads & doughs" as soon as it came out.


I quickly made the delicious recipe for cinnamon rolls but unfortunately they were so delicious that we ate all of them before we could take a photo.

Kiki's instructions are very clear and easy to understand (for those who don't read Greek you'll just have to email Kiki and ask her to translate a recipe for you) and I only had a minor problem making them, which was nothing to do with the recipe but rather the fact that my house was too cold to rise the dough and I had to put them in the oven on a low temperature. I should have thought of that at the beginning, but I was so excited about trying out a recipe, it didn't occur to me that it was really cold in the house that day!

So finally the other day I got the chance to make another recipe from the book. This time I made some of the breadsticks. I thought it would be a great thing to make with the kids, especially after watching Kiki make them in her TV debut the night before.


We made the feta/beer breadsticks and the poppyseed sticks that she made on the show! The kids had a really good time. They were really fast to make and the kids had a great time rolling them out and twisting them into shapes. Not to mention the fun they had eating them when they were done. They cook quickly, too, which is another reason they're a great thing to make with the kids. Quick results with minimum effort. I deliberately made two recipes so there was no chance we could eat them all before we took some photographs.


We had a little pease pudding left that I'd made for lunch that day so we used it for dipping!


So if you read Greek and haven't already got hold of a copy, I strongly recommend that you do. You won't be sorry. You can find out more about how to get hold of a copy from Kiki's blog - Mikri Kouzina (Greek for "Little Kitchen").

Liz

Cupcake pops

I made cake balls last year and posted about them here.

The inspiration for them came from Bakerella. I'd been meaning to have another go so this time I tried cupcake pops.



Again I was limited by the availability of some ingredients which we can't get here but I thought they turned out quite cute.




I said it before and I'll say it again. A cake on a stick is much more appealing to a child than the same thing not on a stick!

They can be quite time consuming. I don't know if I'll be able to have them in the shop every day. They might have to go on the available for special order list!


STOP PRESS: Bakerella just announced that she is bringing out a book. I'm sure it is going to be filled with amazing cake-pop ideas. I for one want to get my hands on a copy as soon as it comes out!

Photos (for those with a sense of Moo-mour)

A few months ago back when we were still looking for a new place to live in Nafplio we made several day trips, and once or twice stayed over for a couple of nights.

On one such occasion we came across this on the road from Corinth to Nafplio.


In case you can't quite make it in the photo, here's a close-up:


The kids were highly aMOOsed. As were we, so much so that we slowed down for the cow-car to overtake us again and for Alex to take the photo.

Then, and I kid you not, after overtaking the pick up once again, a few hundred meters ahead, we came across this car!


Once again, just in case you missed it, here's a close-up:


Which we found even more aMOOsing. So much so that we slowed down again to be overtaken once more and take its photo.

Ok. Enough of the ridiculous MOO jokes. Some might say 'Only in Greece' and I admit I was rather tempted to title the post that, but then I am sure that if I did, people would tell me they had seen something similar elsewhere!

We survived! (part two)

Like I said... Friday dawned. I was pretty calm and not too worried; even though I had hardly slept, I was feeling good and raring to go. I had everything organized in my head. I had made rough calculations as to how long it would take. I'd start when the kids got off to school at just after 8 and whenever we got finished (I estimated by about 7 or 8pm) we would pack up the cars and head to my in-laws' in Faliro to spend the night. Saturday morning the cakes would go with Alex to the venue and I would relax and spend the day getting my hair done and fixing my nails and playing around with Olivia's hair to make it look very sweet for the wedding. All this with a lovely sense of satisfaction that the cakes were done and were all ready and in their place!

At least, that was the plan.

We sat down for breakfast at the table and while we were munching on our cereal, Olivia started saying her head was hurting. Actually, at first she said it was itchy so I didn't take too much notice. It was probably one of her elaborate reasons as to why she would like me to spoon feed her or not to eat breakfast at all, which she does from time to time. As the rest of us finished our cereal and she was still lagging behind I noticed that she was rubbing her head quite a lot and her eyes were a bit dull. Usually they are bright and sparkly not to mention cheeky. I touched her forehead and it felt just a little warm. Trying to be optimistic I thought that she was just warm because of getting out of bed. In the back of my mind I was thinking it could not be possible for her to get ill today of all days. Neither of the kids have caught anything at all for months and months.

As time for leaving for school approached it became apparent that she wasn't just a little warm from the bed covers. I went to the medicine cabinet to retrieve the not recently used thermometer to see what we were dealing with. Nearly 38! Oh dear. No school for Olivia.


For the first time I started to get concerned. It was 8 am. Not a cake baked and a child with a fever who is clingy at the best of times but really really needs cuddles when she isn't well. The only thing we could do was administer Depon and for me to hand her over to the capable hands of Pappous (Grandad). We spent the next half an hour or so trying to persuade her to drink her medicine by herself. We failed. We used other medicine which I won't go into on a blog about cupcakes.

Having Pappous here saved the day. Thank goodness he had decided to come the night before, or goodness knows how many hours we would have lost. Hours we didn't have! Pappous offered plenty of distraction and nice warm arms to cuddle into. We noticed that the fever stayed down for around 6 hours at a time and since Olivia didn't seem to have other symptoms, was eating and drinking well, we decided to just keep observing her. I made a mental list of persons who might be able to babysit for us the night of the wedding, should she be not well enough to attend.

I finally got the oven switched on shortly before 9.

I had decided the night before that I was just going to use my hand mixer since I didn't have time to really get to know the stand mixer and didn't want to lose more time, even if that meant I would arrive at the wedding with one arm more muscular than the other!


We started on the lemon cakes. We soon got a little production line going. With one of my happy helpers, breaking 6 eggs at a time into a bowl, grating the rind off the lemons, measuring flour and sugar. Another happy helper was lining the muffin trays with the paper cases and then transferring the warm cakes to the cooling racks and filling them up again. Even though we were baking 36 cakes at a time and they only needed about 15-17 minutes to cook, we soon found we were getting ahead of the oven and we managed to sit down here and there to give our feet a break.

Shortly before noon we had completed almost all of the 30 batches of lemon cakes. I started piping the frosting which I had made the night before. One happy helper added the sugar flowers and the other placed them carefully into the little pink cups and into the boxes. All the time keeping count. My other happy helpers, Alex and my Father in Law, had their own assignments.

Pappous volunteered to go to pick up Fin from school and together they went in search of food. By the time they returned we had switched off the oven. Half the cakes baked and quite a few of them frosted.

We took a much needed break for lunch...

Wedding cupcakes preparation

Things are working out well so far. Liz is half-way through the second flavor of cupcakes, and our guests are having the out-of-body experience of their life in a working vacation!

Here is a shot of the Army of lemon cakes with Madagascan vanilla.


Some are waiting to be frosted, while their little comrades are ready to ship.


What we are carefully not showing is the mess in the house, and the ways we are working around each other and keeping our daughter (who after a stretch of many months decided to have a high temperature today) happy and occupied. But you can imagine all that, can't you?

Olivia happily sat with her grandad for ages playing and watching TV. A real mission saver!



At 6pm all the baking was done.


Time now for the final frosting session.


And now, after a full 12 hours, the whole lot is ready and packed. Tomorrow morning they will have to be loaded in the car and taken to the wedding venue. Hopefully they will look equally as nice as they do now.

Goes without saying that photos will be posted.

Alex.

Lots and lots of sugar flowers

Thanks for all the kind words and wishes for the couple! Hopefully we will get some nice photos of both the bride and groom and the cupcakes to share with you next week!


Yesterday morning I started on the sugar flowers for the wedding cupcakes. They are small sugar paste flowers and I dusted them with edible gold dust just to take away the stark white color.

It didn't take too long to make them with the little tool you see in the picture. Cutters like this are available from most cake craft supply stores on the internet. It is best to get the kind with a plunger so that you just cut and pop them out in one move. Then use the ball tool to make them a little more three dimensional.


Only 350 of the wedding cupcakes will have sugar flowers on. My shoulders are only aching slightly! Actually, it was quite a pleasant job since I had peace and quiet with the munchkins at school. My favorite time of day.


Later on I will be going shopping for the rest of the ingredients. This morning I nearly bought twice as much butter as needed. Oops!

I spoke with the wedding planner a little while ago and we discussed how they will be displayed and whether or not to keep a stash of cupcakes for the dinner guests to enjoy later on too. Sounds like a good plan :P

Sorted out what we will all wear.

Liz

Our latest

It's been a while since I wrote a proper entry with our news. It's been a busy time. We still haven't completely settled in. Still got some curtains to put up. Not a picture on the walls yet! How pathetic are we?

Of course there has been plenty going on. My parents came for a visit and we spent a few days going to the beach and generally doing not much really. It's hard to get going again after the summer. We needed the rest (and still do) but it has left me feeling like we haven't really got everything done that we needed to.

We have one or two teething problems with the house, too. It's a new house so it is to be expected that some little problems would surface when things were used for the first time. We had a dripping pipe under the kitchen sink which caused a mini kitchen flood. It seems like the weather suddenly changed with September coming in. We have had some amazing storms. The kids have been thrilled watching the lightening and listening to the thunder from their loft bedroom. The other night was one of the loudest and most violent storms I have seen in Greece for a long time. The basement flooded! Alex happened to go downstairs for something and spotted the muddy water pouring in. I had a small carpet down there which was floating! We had some nice books which we hadn't unpacked yet. Lovely Architecture and Design coffee table type books. Fortunately the card boxes held up quite well and we managed to rescue most but not all of them. Just as well Alex went down for whatever it was. If we hadn't noticed until the next morning we would have lost lots more. All my picture frames with paintings and prints were still in boxes as well. Phew!

The vacuum broke. The washing wouldn't dry because of all the rain!

Anyway, all these things are getting worked on and it still doesn't put us off living here!

The kids are back at school. That took a bit of looking around and searching. The first week is always hard. Getting back into a routine of getting up early and getting breakfast and out the door by a certain time. Next week will be easier.

As far as the shop is concerned, we have been busy with that, too. Scouting the area for locations, while doing our research about costs and permits and grants etc. It takes a lot of time and will-power. Not so easy when you are already tired! We've also been reading guide books on starting a successful business.

No matter how tired I feel or how many little hiccups may have happened so far, I am still so pleased that we made the decision to move to Nafplio. I am so glad I don't have to face the apartment block across the street in Palaio Faliro when I look out of the window or the traffic in Athens while dropping my daughter off at nursery. Out of my window I see an orange grove and on the way to nursery I look left and see the different shades of mountains as the sun comes over them. They look like they have been cut out of enormous pieces of card and placed to make the set for some beautiful show at the theater. Out of the right side of the car I see the Palamidi. In the evening we get beautiful views of the sun's rays beaming out from the clouds and then heading off behind the mountains.

Update September 21, 2009: The basement flooded again on Saturday night! As I write we have got workmen outside trying to make sure it doesn't happen again!

Liz

PS My mother brought me this lovely new book. I have tried one or two things in it. I am sure you can gain a kilo or two just by reading it.

"For the kids"

One thing I love about living in the country is the lovely local produce available.

Typical Greek hospitality means that if someone has something to offer you from their own garden or shop or business, they absolutely will. Especially if you have young children.

"Please take this...it's for the kids."

We've been here less than two months but we have already been on the receiving end of such gifts. On one side of our house there is a gentleman who has 6 chickens. The kids were looking at them over the verandah one day when he was tending to them and we got to chatting about moving here. He told us that he keeps chickens for eggs for his three grandchildren and also raises about 3 sheep a year for meat for them, "because you don't know what you are buying from the shops these days", a valid point. He then proceeded to give us the eggs laid that day. Five beautiful large eggs. You can't get much fresher than that! My son absolutely loves eggs and promptly ate one for his supper.

Then the other day the owner of our house came by. With a crate of beautiful organic lettuces. So tender and delicious. "You can give these to your children without fear."


I love it. It's not that you don't get this in the city but not many have the ability to give you freshly grown things in town.

I guess you could say we are enjoying ourselves since we moved here. There are of course some things which take getting used to. I'll write more about that soon!

A week already

WOW! We have been living in Nafplio for a week now! It's been so much of a blur of activity that I don't think we have really taken it in! True to their promise, OTE got our internet arranged within a couple of days with only a few technical difficulties. Finding the time to come on and post has been more difficult!

The move went fairly painlessly, I suppose (there was quite a bit of muscle and back pain!) We had lots of helpers at both ends. It is so nice when you have relatives and friends who are willing to put themselves out to help you when you need them. Two Fridays ago, the 7th, the truck came and loaded all our stuff, which only just fit in! We slept for only a few hours and then set off Saturday morning for THE journey to Nafplio. Of course we have been so many times before but there was something more exciting about this trip. As we left the city, I told the kids to call out "Bye Athens, we'll see you when we come on holiday!" in an attempt to get them to realize the magnitude of it all. Our son definitely understands but I am not so sure about our daughter. I think maybe she has the impression we are on a long holiday.

The unpacking is coming along quite well. It is a hard job while trying to keep the kids entertained and do cooking and laundry like usual. The first couple of days my SIL cooked for us all. That was so kind of her, since there were lots of us! I owe her some cupcakes for sure! The house still needs a fair amount of cleaning as well. It was cleaned of the building dust but the windows and floors, as well as the insides of the cupboards, all needed and still need some work. Yesterday the tiredness finally caught up with us and we were both incapable of getting much done.

We've managed to go swimming a couple of times since we arrived. It was more a necessity than a pleasure. The kids needed to get out. Still, it's good to dip aching muscles in the sea! The area is absolutely packed with foreign and Greek tourists, so I suppose this is going to be a busy period when we get the shop open. I keep trying to anticipate what it will be like when we finally open doors. My latest thoughts are that we will have to take our own vacation at some other time of year!

That's all for now. I have lots to do and I'll be having visitors today and others later in the week. I hope to catch up with everyone as soon as possible!

Liz

Illness and Acropolis

It's all go here. Sort of. The moving van is coming on Friday. The apartment is full of boxes. I'm ill.

Yes, I caught a virus. I don't know if it is something I have been incubating for a couple of weeks or something new I caught when I took the kids to the Acropolis museum last Friday but I started with a sore throat and excruciating headache on Friday evening and it went downhill from there.

Actually, I feel a lot better today. But I am still feeling the effects of whatever it was. I could hardly see straight over the week-end and certainly couldn't write any posts! Still it's 2 days of packing time out the window! I suppose catching something is to be expected when you are burning both ends of the candle. That's why I am not going to write much now. Just stealing 5 minutes with a cup of tea to catch up (hubby does not approve of cups of tea near computers; electronics and liquids are a bad mix, he says).

So, last week I decided the kids couldn't handle the boredom of not going anywhere much more and I arranged to go with a friend to the Αcropolis museum. The kids are fairly young to really appreciate the exhibits but it was a trip for them to experience the atmosphere of a museum and maybe pick up a fact or two along the way. We only paid 1 euro each to get in and all four kids ranging from 3-15 years old got in free.

Excerpts from the comments of my 6 and 3-year-olds.

"Oh look, a broken bowl"

"Oh look, a broken leg"

"Oh look, a broken horse"

"Oh look, a broken arm"

and perhaps most amusingly...

"Oh look, he's got a ..."

We had a drink in the café/restaurant and, I have to say, the prices were very good. We had one coke, two iced teas and three freshly squeezed juices for 11 euro. I was being nosey and looking at what everyone else ordered and I'd say the cold salads and sandwiches looked very good value and tasty, too. My friend and I worked out that for a couple to go around 6 or 7 pm, pay the entrance fee, browse the exhibits and then have a glass of wine and a salad or sandwich, sitting beneath the Parthenon, it would cost less than 10 euro. Not per person... altogether!

Of course, both of us have small children, so it's nice for us to dream of doing civilised things like that, knowing all too well that we will in all likelihood not do it ever.

So, I am winding it up here. I doubt I will be posting again until I get to Nafplio. We are assured by OTE that we will have a phone line before we even get there and will have internet two days after that. So I will be seeing you all again in about six months!!! Just kidding. I'll be checking in on Alex's iPhone.

Ciao.............

We survived the party!

The kids had a wonderful time.  Even though we had to have it completely inside the apartment with the air conditioning blasting! It was rather hot this past week-end in Athens!

We had games with prizes like bubbles and those blower thingys! The kids seem to love those most of all! We did a treasure hunt, too, the prize being lots of chocolate and sweeties (for added hyperactivity).

The whole thing was fairly simple, so I didn't get too tired. For the food I made a shallow pasticchio which I cut into child-sized portions, some small tuna sandwiches, cucumber sticks and, to supplement it, we got a couple of large pizzas for the older kids and adults. I make a nice pizza but this time it was just too much to think about! For the sweet I made some simple vanilla cupcakes with pink frosting and this Kit Kat and m&m ice-cream cake!

Inside it was a basic 2 layer chocolate cake which I filled with homemade chocolate ice cream and then decorated with the Kit Kats and m&ms. It looked very impressive and exciting to the kids and tasted wonderful, although I have to admit, it was total chocolate overkill! You definitely have to cut small portions with this one! The Kit Kats made it easy to divide the portions though.

We started around 6 and by 10 all the little munchkins had gone and half an hour later my two were showered and in bed! They really sleep soundly after an exhausting afternoon like that! I do, too!!!

Now, it's back to the packing. The countdown has really begun now!