{"id":2404,"date":"2010-10-03T12:56:03","date_gmt":"2010-10-03T12:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/?p=2404"},"modified":"2011-04-12T16:08:15","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T16:08:15","slug":"a-feast-at-vanna-and-romas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/?p=2404","title":{"rendered":"A Feast at Vanna and Roma’s"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Vassilis, his wife Litsa and I at Vanna and Roma's in Kastelli, Crete<\/p><\/div>\n

Carrying\u00a0a Gardenia (Costas’ favourite flower) plant\u00a0I had bought at the local garden centre,\u00a0yesterday morning I\u00a0made my way up the hill\u00a0to the local cemetery where Costas and other family members have been laid to rest.\u00a0 Together in the family tomb with Costas who died on 16 November 1996 (aged 39) are his father Vassilis who died on 5 January 1971 (aged 62) and Costas’ brother Yani\u00a0who died 9 March 2001 (aged 58).\u00a0\u00a0Recently Katina commissioned a porcelain photograph of our three men which now sits proudly\u00a0at the grave.\u00a0 After filling and relighting the small lamp and watering the plants and flowers\u00a0surrounding the tomb\u00a0–\u00a0having payed my respects,\u00a0I left feeling more at peace with myself over\u00a0our loss of Costas at such a young age.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Katina had made Yemista for our lunch – not just stuffed tomatoes and capsicums but also vine leaves, courgette flowers, courgettes and eggplants –\u00a0stuffed with rice and herbs\u00a0and far superior to anything I have\u00a0tasted elsewhere on my travels.\u00a0 With the weather continuing to entice me, I left the house soon after 1300 hours to spend the afternoon on Kastelli beach, returning late afternoon to await Anna’s arrival home from Hania.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Being Saturday evening, of course, there was to be a Table at Vanna and Roma’s – with\u00a0emphasis last night on the fact that Roma had just had\u00a0his Name Day on Friday and\u00a0I was expecting to leave Kastelli today.\u00a0\u00a0Katina telephoned for a taxi and on our way, we stopped at the Zaharoplastio where\u00a0a bottle of Russian Vodka was bought for Roma.\u00a0 As friends continued to arrive at the house bearing gifts, soon\u00a0Roma had received\u00a0five bottles\u00a0of\u00a0his favourite spirit, by which time I had given up counting.\u00a0\u00a0 Vanna had been working in her kitchen all day and as is always the case on such occasions, we sat down to a table with so much food – I ate and ate until I could eat no more and still I had not tried many of the dishes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because our friend\u00a0Jillie never eats meat, there is always fish on offer.\u00a0 Last night Vanna had made a\u00a0dish from Glossa (sole\/plaice\/flounder) fillets which are coated with a mixture of grated carrot, parsley, onion, yoghurt, a little mayonnaise, salt and pepper, rolled up and baked in the oven\u00a0which\u00a0everyone loved.\u00a0 A wonderful accompaniment to the dish was a salad of lettuce, a\u00a0little rocket, spring onion and\u00a0red onion, tossed in a balsamic and olive oil dressing, topped with parmesan, pine nuts, cashews and slivered almonds and decorated with cucumber slices, cherry tomatoes and sliced capsicum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dear Anna was so tired, after our meal she came home\u00a0with Katina, however, I stayed until around 0200 hours and was\u00a0the last to leave.\u00a0 Vagelis borrowed Roma’s car to drive me home – Jillie and Rick stayed the night at Vanna and Roma’s.\u00a0\u00a0An excellent idea since the drive to\u00a0their house in Keramoti\u00a0in the mountains, along a precarious stretch of road, is not a journey to be undertaken late at night after\u00a0the consumption of alcohol.\u00a0 I always enjoy drinking Roma’s wine\u00a0but I think most of the men drank vodka.\u00a0 A memorable evening for us all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By the time my friend Antonia telephoned me today, I had made a decision to stay one more night in Kastelli.\u00a0 With Anna only returning from Hania yesterday,\u00a0I want to spend a little more time with\u00a0her before I leave.\u00a0 Also, Katina’s daughter Joanna is visiting\u00a0from Hania with her boyfriend Antonis and her cousins Rula and Rena.\u00a0 The house is full and noisy, there will be no beach nor siesta for me today but never mind, such is life here with my Greek family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carrying\u00a0a Gardenia (Costas’ favourite flower) plant\u00a0I had bought at the local garden centre,\u00a0yesterday morning I\u00a0made my way up the hill\u00a0to the local cemetery where Costas and other family members have been laid to rest.\u00a0 Together in the family tomb with Costas who died on 16 November 1996 (aged 39) are his father Vassilis who died […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2404"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2582,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2404\/revisions\/2582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}