Dolmades

I used the Grape Leaves!

Back in July, on my parents farm, we harvested (prolly the last growth) of grape leaves from my mom's vines. While this was a little late in the season for the picking, they still looked really nice and I was very excited to have them in the winter to use with the large amounts of hamburger we tend to have in our freezer.

I rinsed the leaves in plenty of water to remove any salt from the canning (very gently!) I'd say 80% turned out with no rips or tears. The larger leaves work the best, so next year we'll have to make sure to pick the big ones!


To make dolmades you simply mix ground beef (or lamp or pork or a mixture!) with uncooked rice and spices. Wrap the mixture in the grape leaves, like you would an egg roll or burrito, it's about a table spoon per large leaf, don't overfill.

Then placing any ripped leaves on the bottom of a dutch oven, drizzle with a little bit of olive oil and place the wraps on top. Cover with about an inch of water, and then cover again with a bowl or large plate. You want the rice to cook and the beef to steam, but not in to large of an area, ideally with some weight on them. This worked for me with the dutch oven and a glass plate, but you could also use a small sauce pan with a tight lid I would think.

After about 30 minutes the water will have evaporated and the dolmades will be cooked.

I didn't add enough spices to the meat mixture, so make sure you make it very flavorful, with oregano, mint, dill or another green herb. Lots of things could be used as a spice.

The leaves were so tender and just fell apart with a fork. Can't wait to try these again!

Fresh from the Vine

Back in May when we went on our Greece trip, we had dolomades (stuffed grape leaves).
They were so amazing! we decided to try out some of our own from my mom's vines on the Wisconsin farm.

Here's the arbor view of them growing.

I read that the best time for grape leave picking is early spring (May - July) when the leaves a smaller, green, and fresh. So I went for those even though it was late summer....

We washed them, blanched them in hot water, wrapped them into packets of 25-30 (for one pound of meat), filled them in a acid (4 c water, 1/4 c kosher salt, 3 tsp citric acid) bath and then hot water canned them using a large pot (not pressure cooking) for 20 minutes at a boil.

They sure looked nice and I can't wait to use them!!!!

Greece Trip (Day 9 & 10) - Athens, then home

Church in the Square

Our last day in Athens was spent wandering around more of the shops. It was a sunday there and many of the stores were closed for the observed family day and church services. So we sat outside this church, listening to the singing of the service, and had some coffee and spinach pies.

Spinach Pies (Phyllo, Spinach, Feta, Dill, Olive Oil)

We then found a bakery we came back to later that had really amazing cookies and cakes. There was also this open market store that sold tons of nuts and fruit and treats. When we got in it was packed with locals all yelling and pushing through the small isles.

Market

We wondered around for a bit more. Looked through an antique map and picture store. Went to the Cine Paris, which is a roof top movie theater, and bought an old 007 movie poster labled in Greek.

Stopping into a market we got our Greek nessecities; Olive Oil, Ouzo, Honey, and Mastic. By luck we found an old street called Hill that I remembered was supposed to have a nice home style Greek restaurant. We wound up and around the kind of sketchy looking corner to find a huge building packed with locals and tourists. They served family style, bringing out a huge platter for you to pick 6 different items from. We choose the Greens, Meatballs, Fried Zucchini, Pork in Red Sauce, Dolomades stuffed with beef, and one other dish I can't remember.

INSERT RESTAURANT PIC HERE

It was a great way to spend our last night. We got up early the next morning, flew to Paris, were carted around CDG airport forever (it really is as bad as everyone says), were delayed a couple hours on the plane because of a medical emergency, finally making it back into the US.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed! ευχαριστώ!

Greece Trip (Day 8) - Parthenon

The ferry over from Santorini to Athens was much better than the one over from Crete. There was much less rocking and no one got sick thankfully. On our way down to the port we over heard someone talking about the strike that went on the day before. We didn't even know there was a strike!
Later we heard that the people waiting for the ferry the day before waited a full 3 hours before even finding out that there was a strike and the ship was not going to be coming. What they say is true, if you are on an island you won't even know there was a strike or a riot going on.

Which was a good thing in the end, because our hotel, the Grand Bretagne, is directly across from the Parlament.

But it also had an amazing view of the Parthenon and the Acropolis from the roof top dining room.
We toured the Acropolis, Historical Museum, Parthenon, Palace of Zeus, Ancient Agora, and the National Gardens.

We found a great Gyro place and had a mixed pork and beef dish, with really great dolomades (stuffed grape leaves)

Now I just need to figure out how to convince my mom to start growing grape leaves for me to make these....

Greece Trip (Day 7) - Red Beach and Fira

On our final full day in Santorini we took the public bus from Oia to Fira to the Red Beach near Akrotiri. It was a really pretty beach, but the walk down was a bit treacherous. No gaurdrails, no stairs, barely a trail. Just over the hill, along the cliff and down to the beach.


On Santorini, because of the volcano, there are many different types of sand and rock. There is a red, black, and white beach.


We only made it to the one beach, but it was still fun. Not too many people that early in the morning and lots of pretty smooth stones along the beach.


We took the bus back to Fira where we walked around and shopped a bit more. The cruise ship people were out in full force, so we took refuge from the throngs of people in a restaurant.

We ordered a really fantastic meal and enjoyed the view down to the port.

Stuffed Eggplant with Feta

Baked Lamb with Potatoes and Gyuere cheese

Pastichio

Greece Trip (Day 6) - Volcano

Map of Santorini

Our first full day in Santorini we decided to take the trip we were most excited for. The volcano! We've been to the volcano on the big island of Hawaii and were interested to see how different this one was.

We took a bus down to the small sea harbor just below Oia and waited for the motorized pirate (yes i said pirate) ship.

We sailed past the harbor, past Fira (Phira) and onto the volcano.

Hiking up the volcano was really fun. It was surprising to see how many silly girls wore sandles and thongs instead of tennis shoes. Silly people :)

The view from the top of the volcano ridge was amazing. You could see the whole island of Santorini and the little islands around it. The island was once a whole stretch, but an earthquake/erruption split the island over time and now it is in little sections.

We really enjoyed the volcano and then afterwards they tooks us to a sulfur spring which flowed into the ocean and you could swim in. Then we went to the island of Therasia. We got a seafood mix which was nice and freash.

They grilled everything right there on the porch next to the ocean.

Very yummy!

We hiked up the steap 160 steps to the top of the island. Where there was a beautiful view of the bay. The stairs were pretty difficult to navigate up and the donkeys that were walking up and down did not make it any easier :)

Taking the pirate ship back to Oia we walked up the 260 stairs there and were finally back. Time for a nap.

And then some more picture taking.

And the prettiest sunset we had all week.

Greece Trip (Day 5) - Oia

The next day we woke up in Crete and got on a catamaran to go to Santorini. I won't say much about that trip. It was really really windy on the ocean and the boat rocked so so much. A lot of people got sick and we were very close. We met a couple who were also traveling to the town of Oia (pronounced EE-ah) so we asked to split a cab with them. Which was a very good thing because the port was crazy and we would have been there for a long time trying to figure out a ride.

We drove from the port, through the town of Fira and then on to Oia. Took about 30 min max. It was very cliffy, and mostly rock with a few feilds down below. We drove into Oia on the back side (since there is only one or two roads for cars) I was honestly getting a little nervous because we couldn't really see any of the white houses that you see on post cards or the volcano caldera. I was begining to think I'd made a big mistake.

Then we got to our hotel, tramped up the stairs and were led to the most beautiful view I could have asked for. This was our room right under the windmill at Golden Sunset Hotels. The sunests were so amazing. The bright yellows fading into pinks and ending in bright purples. We didn't even think about getting a different seat with the surrounding crowd that comes in to see the sunsets.

Everynight we went and bought a bottle of wine (Nico was our fav) and watched the sun go down from our hotel balcony. Then we'd get dressed go out to dinner and finish up at the bar down the street with Yani our bartender. He had some great stories and gave us tons of lemon juice marinaded carrot slices with our ouzo and Alfa beer.

The only down side to taking the ferry was that it was so windy that the waves washed up on our boat and soaked our suitcases. Mike's got the worst of it. He barely had anything dry for that first day. We laid everything out in our cavernous room and crossed our fingers that it would dry.

We had some decent meals and some really good dishes in Oia. This is a very big tourist destination so a lot of things were over priced, but we found some nice non-sunset view places later on that were pretty darn delicious.

Stuffed tomatoes
Mousaka, amazingly light and fluffy! We went back here on our last day and both ordered it as our meal because it was so good!

Yellow Fava bean spread

One thing I've been forgetting to mention about Greece is that there are dogs and cats every where! Not stray, but with collars and very friendly. The funniest part is that the owners just let them run around, so there is constently a poochie snoozing on a shops doorstep or flat out dead asleep in the middle of the pedestrian street. They must be so used to people because not much would wake them up. The only time I saw a dog wake up was when a scooter would shoot by or this one time that a guy actually tripped over a dog that was in the middle of the street sleeping.