Your Own Paradise

It all began with the wisdom of “the grannies”.

On weekends children in Greece go to the village (mostly during Sundays) visiting their yiayia (granny). And of course, they cook the purest food one can ever taste. They have animals, a garden, a bunch of olive trees, grape and fig vines and they know all there is to know about wild herbs in their region. Everything on their kitchen table is made by hand – we realize now what a luxury that is. You can often go tomato and cucumber picking with them. They are especially very particular about their tomatoes; one basket would be for cooking and the other for eating – in salads. Also, yiayias are by far the best storytellers one can meet; you can sit mesmerized, listening to their fables for hours. Sometimes, you could even live with them all summer long.

Likewise, we would sit with our own yiayia in the kitchen at her vintage timber table covered with a plastic tablecloth and fake lace and watch her sipping slowly on Greek coffee, essentially with a piece of graviera cheese, whilst she was planning in her mind the family’s dinner. The whole area around her village was surrounded by the most incredible olive yards and factories for treating olive oil – some derelict nowadays and others still in use.

Nowadays, every time we return to our hometown, we go for a few days at her village called Skordalou and sneakily try to enter pappou’s (grandfather) abandoned olive factory. And every time, with light dusting of nostalgia, we think of how lovely it could be to restore it in a cafe one day to fill it with the sweetness and aromas of our childhood.