Blog
CRUMBS AND VOTES…DEMOCRACY FOR DINNER. Athens. These past few weeks, I have worked to finish up a project about the food scene in the Greek capital, figuring that we’ll have a tourist season filled with people who will want to eat. For 20 years, I reviewed restaurants and wrote about food in this country of […]
Tea time with Hawthorn? Yes, if you have a sore throat, insomnia and heart problems. On Ikaria, hawthorn is also known to be good for dyspepsia and kidney stones. Goats love what the Ikarians call perikanthe — hawthorn. The rest of Greece knows this wild herb as Crataegus, which is its scientific name, too. Hawthorn was recommended to […]
Nuts are a basic ingredient in countless Greek recipes, from Ikaria and from Greece in general. Not too far from our village is a small mountain village called “Karidyes,” or “Walnut Trees.” We have walnut, chestnut and almond trees growing on our property; we pick the feathery blossoms of wild pistachio trees down the road […]
Let’s talk about tea and longevity. Not just any tea, but the wide array of herbal teas that Ikarians drink. “We drank herbal teas like sage and fliskouni (pennyroyal). Those were the ‘antibiotics’ of our time! Our mother would prepare sage tea, honey and a clove of garlic if we had a cold or the […]
On Ikaria, the island of longevity, where people forget to die, figs play an important part in the local diet. They are one of nature’s late-summer, nutrition-packed gifts and, dried, are an important food in winter. For a few short weeks, we enjoy them fresh. One of my greatest childhood pleasures was to scurry about […]
Purslane, a weed many of us have growing in our gardens, is one of the healthiest foods on the planet.
Promoting Greek cuisine in Tokyo.
Sea salt, which I harvested from Ikaria, is naturally rich in minerals, which make it so delicious.
Ikaria’s mineral springs at Therma have been known since antiquity for their therapeutic properties.
Take a peak at the first day of “class” on Blue Zone Ikaria, as we share Greek cuisine with a wonderful group of people from all over the US and Australia.