Food

I'll break my month down into sections so that I don't overwhelm you all at once. The first topic I will address is food, mainly because I am hungry after refusing tonight's dinner of a french-fry omelet. French fries should be their own food group here with the amount they are served--in the salads, on the gyros, with the pork--however, since they are only lightly fried in olive oil, they are supposedly better than America's "trans-fatty fries" direct quote, I couldn't make that up. I noted that french fries are in salads, gyros, and pork, because those are the other staples in the Greek diet.

The traditional Greek salad is a bed of lettuce, mixed with rocket, tomatoes, olives, and feta cheese. Oh, and we best not forget the olive oil that it is swimming in. If you ask for salad dressing, you will receive olive oil, and if you are really lucky, they slosh some vinegar on there as well. This however, has made me truly appreciate the taste of the actual vegetables, as I have a "naked greek salad".

Perhaps I fill overwhelmed with pork because I didn't have it for my time in Turkey. Then I realized, no, it was months before Turkey that I had my last piece of pork. I do find it very interesting that Turkish is 99% Muslim on a few hours away, and pigs are nowhere to be seen (and no, not because they killed them in fear of Swine Flu like Egypt) and you jump the boarder to the hog house. Fortunately, they over cook their pork, which means it not only tastes like chicken, but I love it.

These little piggies are also the main ingredient in Greek gyros. I somehow managed to go through 22 years without even taking a nibble of a gyro, which is a sad story. They are delicious packed with nutrients, protein, and your daily calorie count. They are cocooned in a warm pita, filled with pork (not lamb or beef like in the States), vegetables, McDonald's secret sauce, and heavily flavored with tzatiki. There is no good phonetic way to spell that word, I apologize, but what tzatiki is is a yogurt based salsa mixed with cucumbers, garlic, and mint. I would equate its use to ranch dressing in America, some like it for vegetables, others for pizza. It seems fairly multi-purpose.

Lunch is hands down the biggest meal of the day here, and eaten around 3:00pm. No snacking between breakfast and lunch either. Though ironically enough, they will snack before dinner which is often as early as 8:00. Somehow, I have managed to acclimate to this schedule, so long as I am busy in the mornings. However, if I have any downtime, my American 10:30 snack time calls me. Overall, I’ll rate the Greek food system better than expected.