a true thirty minute recipe… 17 October 2008
Posted by brouhahahaha in cooking, Uncategorized.Tags: burnt butter, cooking, mizithra, pigging out
8 comments
This is my plate of makarOnia me kaftO vOUtiro that I made last night. Well, I must confess… I didn’t eat the entire plate. And, I had to make a separate version for JJ, but more about that later.
All this to say – this is, in my estimation, the best “less than 30 minute” recipe that one can have in their arsenal. So, I’d like to share it with you. I don’t want to turn you off, but the Greek literal translation is “macaroni with burnt butter”. However, read on… if you like butter and cheese, you’ll love this. And it’s quick and cheap.
Instructions
1. Get out your favourite Greek cooking beverage before you start, as you might get thirsty. Here are my recommendations:
Lux orangeade and/or Lux sour cherry pop. However, you can divert from this instruction and pick your own beverage, such as this one:
2. Put on a large pot to boil water for pasta, then find your pasta:
(Note: you don’t need this yuppified pasta to make the recipe with success. However, as much as I rail against consumerism, I do love my Italian pasta. This one is called “spaghetti alla chitarra”, meaning “spaghetti guitar-style” – meaning that it was double length spaghetti and was bent in the bottom of the package. I, of course, broke it in half. Go figure.)
For this purpose, use 250g (just under 8 oz) for two people or 500 g (just over a pound) for four.
3. When you have put your pasta in the boiling water (with lots of salt, and without any oil – you don’t need oil in the boiling water as long as you give the pasta a good stir while it is still boiling), get out 1/2 pound of butter (or 1/4 pound if you are making the recipe for two people).
You can use either salted or unsalted butter – but if you’re not a salt addict like me, think about buying the unsalted.
Put the butter in a heavy saucepan as you see above, on low.
4. Grate some cheese to put on the pasta.
You can use any grating cheese for this, to your taste – parmesan, romano, etc. However, if you want to be authentically Greek, try to get your hands on some dry mizithra.
You can find this at most Greek stores, and I imagine you could find something similar at any Middle Eastern shop. It is a dry version of ricotta cheese made with sheep’s milk. The closest easily available equivalent is romano cheese, but romano is a bit more tangy tasting. Still guid, though.
Anyway, grate up a bunch of your cheese – this is about the right amount:
Let’s say 120 g/4 oz worth.
5. By the time you’ve grated your cheese, the butter should be getting along. It takes about 10 minutes over low heat to get to the “burnt” stage. First, it will start foaming and look like this:
Then, it will start even more foam and look something like this.
Don’t get scared – let it foam. It needs to start looking something like this in order to be ready:
When you see the browned bits start to appear at the top with heavy foam, take it off the heat.
6. Drain your pasta (which, by now, has cooked). Put a bunch of the cheese on the bottom of a big serving plate. Grate some nutmeg over it:
…not very much, four or five gratings worth will do. Put some of your hot pasta over all of that. Repeat cheese/nutmeg/pasta until you’ve run out.
7. Pour over all of the brown butter, mix a bit and serve. Make sure you have some of this on the side, though:
Easy as pie!!!
Except, of course, that JJ had to complicate my recipe because today one of his girlfriends on the Food Network did spaghetti with burnt butter and a twist:
That recipe also included this:
… and this was the end result:
Not too bad either, if you can ignore the baguette buttered with margarine on the side (this being a very odd household, I bring in butter as needed and typically only for burnt butter spaghetti!)
The recipe for the variation:
- 4 T burned butter, as above.
- 1 heaping T balsamic vinegar.
- parmesan cheese to taste.
It was also quite lovely, I must admit. However, being Greek, only the original spaghetti with burnt butter recipe will do.
Anyway, try either of the recipes. You won’t regret it. I’ve put many people here onto the Greek burnt butter one and they have cursed me afterward because they are now eating too much. Always a good sign for a little Greek Canajan like me!
Happy weekend!
PayDay… a day late and… er… never mind. 16 October 2008
Posted by brouhahahaha in humour, knitting, shameless, shameless self-indulgence.Tags: harper bites the big one, knitting, one of a kind, PayDay, sea silk, shameless, stephen harper, super 10
8 comments
Yes, yes – I know, I know. The last time I was here, I said that I was in the midst of stashbusting.
However, this morning the gloom of the grey sky and the fallen dead leaves…
… plus the completely foreseen (but no less crippling) bad mood engendered by Tuesday’s election results…
…led me and my iron will (HA!) regarding PayDay purchases astray.
It all started off rather innocently. In light of my stashbusting goal – which involves the winding of approximately 5 kilometres of Super 10 cotton yarn – and a recalcitrant JJ (“Who do ah sue if ah get that carpal tunnel thingy from doing all these yarn balls??? Eh??? Eh???”), I decided to break down and buy a ball winder and swift.
A very economical purchase, really, considering all of the labour costs (which, at present Legal Aid lawyer rates, comes out to approximately… er, never mind. And which, at JJ rates, led to too many whisky empties!) I will save.
Or would have saved, had I not come across this at Romni, where I bought the ball winder, at the same time:
This is brand new laceweight stuff! It’s called One of a Kind (indeed!) and made right here in Canada. The price, at $7.95 for a 600 yard skein, was actually quite reasonable (it’s a wool/angora/nylon blend).
Plus, the colourway is called Kaleidoscope. How could I resist, really?
When I got back to the office after this little lunchtime foray, imagine my surprise to find this waiting for me!
This is the latest instalment in the Year of Lace 2008 club series which – horrors! – I had forgotten was on its way. And Handmaiden cashmere to boot! I must say the colourway is not one that falls within my preferred range, but I’m sure I’ll find someone who would like a shawl made with it.
I also rediscovered this lovely yarn that fellow blogger extraordinaire Clarabelle had winged my way from the UK back in the summer… (please do not think me ungrateful, C. – I had left it in my office to show everyone and it ended up as a decoration in my new office):
Now, one would think that all this largesse would have kept my @$$ in the tram seat on the way home instead of popping off to hit Lettuce Knit (notionally, in search of a swift). But no.
Why, oh why, Handmaiden, did you have to come out with silver Sea Silk yarn?!?!?
Sigh.
After all of this, of course, my former past true love Super10 looks…er, rather dull. But here is an in-progress shot of the Election 2008 Log Cabin quilt:
My goal: to finish it off before the US elections. Given that the finished size should be 60″ x 50″ or so, I may well have bitten off more than I can chew. Nothing changes, eh?
Well, off to make dinner… the easiest Greek pasta recipe ever. Stay tuned!
election day! 14 October 2008
Posted by brouhahahaha in cooking, knitting, rant.Tags: dictator, food, infused oil, mason-dixon knitting, more Super 10, obsessions, stephen harper, stock, super 10
8 comments
For some reason, as the 15th election day in the last two years (just kidding – but it feels as though we’re going to vote once a month up here) dawned, I started getting anxiety attacks about ignoring my Super 10 stash.
Don’t let the cheery colours fool you – the yarn itself looks very forlorn.
All my fault, I know – especially since I haven’t had it living in the best of conditions:
Too busy to knit?!? you frown, questioning my sanity. In fact, I haven’t even been out shopping for yarn in the past… um… since the early summer!
To be fair to myself, I’ve been busy with a number of things, including trying to start up an award-winning foodie company.
Actually, I’m just kidding about that. But don’t you love this lovely flavoured olive oil I made this weekend while at my mother’s? She gave me some fresh rosemary, and I just couldn’t resist:
It tastes as good as it looks, too – I couldn’t wait the two or three weeks for it to infuse, so I did a quickie hot infusion instead.
I’ve also been clearing out the deep freezer and the (rather appalling) vegetable (hah!) crisper by making chicken/pork/chorizo stock:
… and even more stock – duck this time. Fancy sounding, I know – but the duck, an impulse buy while doing some “shopping while hungry” at Loblaws (an ill-advised move):
And, of course, some more infused oil – using dried mint, which had, until recently, been growing until recently in my mother’s garden:
But the fear dread abject stupidity inevitability of another Conservative government…
(led by our Fearmongeringless Dictator Prime Minister, pictured here with yet another of his hapless – and choiceless – victims – and since when do you read to cats anyway?!?!?!)
…has caused me to break out into a perpetual cold sweat. Which, in turn, has caused me to start knitting again!
For now, no lacy fripperies for me, though. My goal is to get through all of the Super 10 stash pictured at the top of this post by 28 November, our moving date – making log-cabin blankies.
(Originally, I had thought about trying my hand at a fabulous mitered-square blanket, as inspired by Amy’s fantastic work-in-progress. But hell. I’m just too lazy.)
Think I’ll manage?
At the very least, it will give me something simple to do during the five or so hours tonight while we’re crying in our beers hurling the vegetables which were too rotten to put into the stockpot at the television watching the election returns.
Now, off to exercise my patriotic duty at the polls (and, in case you’re wondering why I’m posting at 1 in the afternoon, I always feel that election day is worth a day off and a few pints – in memory of the days when they still closed the bars on Election Day, if for no other reason.)
Happy Tuesday!
I’m back… 27 September 2008
Posted by brouhahahaha in Uncategorized.Tags: duckies, greek, new place, update, vintage crap
11 comments
… with a new member of the Brouhaha family!
This is JJ Junior (JJ was getting worried that none of the duckies were named after him, given that he has another son from a past life, also called JJ). Isn’t he lovely?
Although he is an adoptee, he is still a very welcome member to the Family Brouhaha.
I come back from my absence with some news. Everything being equal, JJ and I be moving to a new location in the next couple of months:
I hate to say it here, but it’s a condo. I know I’ve bitched and bitched about condos – but this one was built 20 years ago before I even moved to Toronto, so I feel OK about it.
Plus… this will be the view from our balcony:
This view, coupled with being able to stop paying out some $1,600 a month to THE LANDLORD, convinced to me get into the not-so-wonderful world of homeownership. And, not to blame anyone else, but part of my absence from here in the past couple of weeks has been due to getting into the realm of dealing with banks, real estate lawyers and so forth. It is far more time consuming than I would have thought, frankly.
When we move, we will be moving close to Greektown (for Toronto denizens, our new place will be at Pottery Road and Broadview, close to the Danforth). So, I’m holding off on displaying these inheriritances (I don’t know if this is a word, but anyway)… from my father Ted’s apartment until we move:
This is a bottle of brandy, covered with a female form. There was also a male version which looked somewhat like Takis here:
…but I’ve left that bottle in Kingston for my brother.
Here is another vintage bottle:
He went and drank all the ouzo out of it. Probably a guid thing, as any ouzo left would probably be 200 proof and would have killed me.
And finally, my favourite, given my new avocation as half-assed chef
This is a pepper grinder from Greece. And I love it. I’ll wait to use it, though, until we’re in our new house.
As for knitting? Funnily enough, I’m still not back at it. I have been hacking away at my never-ending mosaic project… and I’m hoping to start a simple squares knitting project with my scrap yarn soon. Amy is working on a mitered square project which I’ve found inspiring in its simplicity.
As for the two lace projects I was working on… they’re on the shelf for now, and I probably won’t start up again until after the move in late November and settling in. Sorry to my knitter readers – my energy is focused elsewhere right now (and if you want to tune in later in the week, I’ll bore you either with work crap or political crap or both).
Hope all is well with you!
Kristina
gone for a bit… but not forgetting 12 September 2008
Posted by brouhahahaha in Uncategorized.17 comments
Hello to my baker’s dozen of dedicated readers:
I feel I must apologise for my uncharacteristic absence both from my own blog and from visiting others’. My time of late has been taken up with the following:
(a) settling into my new vaunted managerial position;
(b) looking at real estate (JJ and I have decided that it is time to stop paying $$$ to THE LANDLORD);
(c) trying to keep up with the political news up here – we have a rather ridiculous federal election coming up on 14 October – huge rant potential except the landscape shifts so quickly that by the time I start to write a rant, it’s out of date. Sigh; and
(d) getting Tedplaced into a more comfortable home for him. He moved to Toronto this morning. Although he has some complaints about the service in the restaurant (“wwhhhy don’t the rrestaurrants een Dorondo geeve you menus to look at”), he’s already made a friend and seems comfortable. And since he’s decided he is the top guy intellect-wise in the place, he feels right at home! 
Oh, and I’m still scheming about knitting, especially because my log cabin blankie:
… and the recent felted clogs which JJ kindly sacrificed:
…have been a big hit in the nursing home.
“what do ye mean ‘sacrrrrificed’, lassie!!! Ye telt me ye’d mek me another pair rrright away. In fact, ah notice ye didn’t want to get rrid of the gaudy lime grrrreen ones, but only the classy ones ye made fer me. Tek a guid long harrd look in the mirrrrrror…” etc. etc.
Well, perhaps by the next time I post I’ll have made a new fancy set of felted clogs for JJ!!
I’m going to try to get back to my schedule next week – because I miss it – and I’ll be checking in on the regular blogs as well once the dust settles.
In the meantime, I hope that all is well with you and yours out there.
Cheers,
Kristina
bubble bubble toil and… yum! 2 September 2008
Posted by brouhahahaha in cooking, food, preserves, shameless self-indulgence.Tags: avarice, food, food network, greed, infused gin, infused vinegar, infused vodka, jelly, obsessive-compulsive, preserving, salsa, Shepherd peppers
8 comments
OK, OK, so it’s not a direct quote, and it doesn’t even rhyme. But it reflects how I spent a good part of the Labour Day long weekend…
Yup. The Mad Princess of Preserves is at it again, folks.
You see, I made the mistake of going to Loblaws on Saturday for…oh, toilet paper and other boring things. But for once they had some local Ontario produce going!
So, I had to buy about 20 pounds of plum tomatoes and 10 pounds of these Shepherd peppers. I’ve never really noticed these before – they taste like red bell peppers, but sweeter and better. So, my first thought was to try for some flavoured booze:
This, in about three weeks, will be Shepherdised Tanqueray gin. I have no clue whether this one will taste like anything you’d wanted to drink, but I had a bunch of Tanqueray left over from the recent party, so thought I’d give it the old college try.
This, on the other hand, I can hardly wait to crack open:
Iceberg vodka with Shepherd peppers and ten jalapenos with the seeds left in. Better stock up on those ulcer meds… I love pepper vodka!
I also decided to make some infused rice vinegars, one with the peppers and one with lemon and lime:
Then I decided to roast the hell out of the rest of the Shepherd peppers:
…and start making some real stuff. First, I made a whole lot of tomato sauce with roasted pepper, roasted garlic and onion puree:
That took care of about half the peppers. So, what to do with the other half?!?
Initially I wanted to try to make some tomato/roasted pepper low sugar jam. Unfortunately, however, I made the mistake of musing about this aloud, at which point JJ overheard and suggested very reasonably that I not make any more jam until some of the stuff I made some weeks back was gone.
When I say “reasonably”, I mean this of course in the Scottish fashion:
Ye daft wee lassie, what on God’s grrrrreen airrrrth would possess ye to make more jam?!?! Every time ah open the cupboards, ah almost get murdered by a flyin jar of jam. And ye doan’t even eat the stuff! Ye should go tek a long harrrd look in the mirror…
He did, however, have a point. So, instead I made…
… salsa! Three bloody litres of the stuff. It has tomatoes, the peppers plus a third major secret ingredient. I first premiered the secret ingredient salsa at my party to great accolades (I must say I was shocked – I had only come up with it at the last minute when I realised I had 5 million bags of nachos and no salsa as I had dumped all the salsa into the slowcooker with IKEA swedish meatballs in a panic…). That version, however, did not have roasted peppers.
If it turns out at all good, perhaps I will post the recipe here. Or, perhaps I’ll just send it to the Food Network and wait for the telephone call offering me my very own programme.
I also made a V8/coriander jelly:
… and rehabbed some former jellies I had made which hadn’t set properly, including this bell pepper one:
So, I think that was a guid weekend’s work, don’t ye?
Off now to premiere the fabulous new salsa with the colleagues work.
Happy Tuesday, all!
The best greek village salad recipe ever… and cross-stitch! 28 August 2008
Posted by brouhahahaha in Uncategorized.Tags: bifocals, cooking, cross-stitch, greek salad, horiatiki, opa, takis
10 comments
I wanted to share with you all a recipe which you should try if you like Greek salad. I know there are millions floating around out there – but this is the best. My cousin G. reminded me of it quite recently. Actually, this is always how I’ve made “village” salad but I’ve diverted of late to the Nigella Lawson watermelon version. So, G., thanks for the reminder!
Here’s G’s version of the famous salad:
… whenever I make greek salad (the authentic Horiatiki kind with just tomatos, onion, cucumber, green pepper (sometimes), feta and olives with lots of oregano) I always make it as your Dad taught me. Make sure the veggies are a room temperature and put salt on the tomatos and let them sit of 5 minutes or so before you put the olive oil on. That way they release their juice and the “sauce” that is left after the salad is eaten is the greatest thing in the world to dip bread into.
I have only the following to add: do not use any vinegar on this version. It’s not needed because the liquid that comes from the tomatoes provides the acid. Most greek salad recipes call for an olive oil and wine vinegar dressing, but this is over the top if you just let the tomatoes sit for a few minutes as G. says.
And if you don’t believe me, these guys give the salad two thumbs up!
I feel I should sign off on a crafty note because I’ve been derelict on that front of late. When researching photos for this post I came across this snazzy one from a tote bag:
Now, if anyone comes across a pattern like this, please do let me know ASAP because I would take up cross-stitch again if I had something like this in hand. This, by the way, is saying a lot – given that at the age of 37… oops 38 … I blame the fact that I need bifocals on this little piece that I made for my mother one Christmas:
Let me just say that it was actually a LOT bigger that this photo will belie, and that the canvas was not preprinted. She ended up getting it for her birthday in June the following year. And now I’m half blind. So, Mom, this is the evidence that I do really love you.
I should just, instead, have stuck with something like the minimalist art that my brother V. had come up with some years previously:
But no. Instead, I turned myself off cross-stitch forever – aside from a little piece that I made for Holly the Zombie Fighter Extraordinaire a while back:
Now, when Takis
saw the zombie hankie, he started to give me a speech about proper Greek female behaviour.
However, his wife Spiroula’s feedback?
She said “You go, girl!!!” with a strong grik accent. Or rather, “gggheeeeeiou ggggo, gkerrrrl!”
I think that this is enough rambling for now. In observance of the Labour Day weekend, I will not be posting this Friday or on Monday. So – see you Tuesday!
my new hat 27 August 2008
Posted by brouhahahaha in photos.Tags: hat
7 comments
Fancy, eh?
I can only hope that JJ doesnae thieve it from me.
Heh heh.
an open letter to Maple Leaf Foods and Michael McCain 26 August 2008
Posted by brouhahahaha in rant.Tags: avarice, bulls**t, corporate greed, gluttony, maple leaf, schneiders, thieves
12 comments
For those of you who do not live near me and have not been subjected to seeing the man’s face on your television screens about 25 times a night or reading his open letters in all the newspapers, Michael McCain (no relation to the guy south of the border who is running for president, as far as I know) is the President and CEO of Maple Leaf Foods. As such, he is currently busy dodging flak dealing with the fact that several people have died eating meat from the Maple Leaf factory which had been tainted with listeriosis.
Dear Maple Leaf:
I do hope the families who have lost people find your recent messaging about the bacteria crisis which arose at your plant 97B comforting. For my part, I find Mr. McCain’s “heartfelt” expressions of sympathy combined with legal @$$-covering to be disingeneous and… well, rather annoying. A prime example of this new “we’re a corporation but we still care about YOU” trend.
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Given all of the talk in the media that it’s going to cost Maple Leaf at least $20million in reimbursements for product recall and God knows what else hush money for relatives of those who died eating some precooked pot roast other expenses related to this crisis, I was flabbergasted to see on CTV News last evening that experts predict there will be no long-lasting damage to you at Maple Leaf – partly, apparently, because of your crisis-management skills.
Colour me stupid, but I really don’t begin to understand how the world of high finance works. However, I do understand that most Canadians will not be buying anything made by Maple Leaf any time soon because of fears (whether justified or not) of contamination – and so it didn’t make sense to me that Maple Leaf would not take a hit.
Until, that is, I had a look at your website (http://www.mapleleaf.ca/Aboutus/default.aspx) and learned that you have some other holdings. And – lo and behold! – one of those holdings is J.M. Schneider’s Foods!
If I sound catty, it’s because I detest all those Schneider’s Ads featuring an actor playing long-dead Old Man Schneider yakking on about how really Schneider’s is just like a family business, bla bla bla. However, I had also assumed that Schneider’s was actually your biggest competitor – given that they seem to sell the identical line of meats, bacon, frozen foods, etc. to you guys. (Oh – and it was also interesting to learn that you own Dempster’s breads – so you’ve really got the baloney sandwich market covered here in Canada, eh?)
But instead, I guess that many of those people who want cold cuts but do not want to buy from Maple Leaf any more will end up changing to Schneider’s instead – especially in smaller centres where they lack the choice of goods that I enjoy here in Toronto.
So – and again, I’m rather daft about things financial – it seems to me that you might well end up with more money in your collective pockets as a result of this food scare at Maple Leaf. But then again, I’m no economist.
I am, however, someone with a relatively high bullshit meter. So, phrases like the following, which I read in Mr. McCain’s open letter to the world his customers this morning, make me see red:
This is the toughest situation we’ve faced in 100 years as a company. We know this has shaken your confidence in us. I commit to you that our actions are guided by putting your interests first.
As long as “your interests” involve tossing out everything in the deep freeze from Maple Leaf and replacing it with Schneider’s, I guess, eh?
Well, my interest now officially include never buying anything produced by your various outfits again, quite frankly – not because of the bacteria but because I find your approach to the situation rather cynical and calculated. This might mean I never get to eat cold cuts or bacon again, given that you seem to control the supply. Given my addiction to fondness for bacon in large quantities, this will be not be easy. But I will survive, I’m sure.
And, I would suggest that you, Mr. McCain, amend your little “open letter” to make the link between you and Schneiders a tad more clear. Something like “Our biggest competitor, whom we own, will be happy to take care of your ongoing food needs” would suffice.
Yours very truly,
Kristina M. Brouhaha
Ted 25 August 2008
Posted by brouhahahaha in rant.Tags: alzheimer's, my father, Ted
20 comments
A WEE DISCLAIMER: although those of you who read this blog regularly have gathered (I hope!) that I don’t really talk about intensely personal stuff here. However, in the past couple of weeks I’ve been quite occupied with settling the affairs of my father, who is currently in acute care a couple of hours north of here suffering from Alzheimer’s. So I hope you’ll bear with me for a bit of a personal story – it will be long and photo intensive, and I hope it’s not too maudlin.
I was too young at the time to remember the day that this photograph of me and my father was taken. However, the other day when cleaning out my father’s apartment in Kingston, I came across a bunch of stuff that helped me remember his story.
My father’s name is Theodosios B. Brousalis. In English, they call him “Ted”. I’ve never quite been sure why, except that in the days he came to Canada it was not a good idea to have an ethnic first name.
He arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1960 from Greece on a boat called the Queen Frederica:
His passage cost $285.30 US and the boat took 14 or 15 days to arrive here. He had no real plan about what to do when he got to Canada. By that point, he had served in the Air Force in Greece and then worked as a cigarette delivery person for some years. He hadn’t done very well in school, probably because he was a smartass who didn’t take direction well. The Air Force experience didn’t really change this, either.
So, he decided to leave Greece. His original plan was to join his mother’s father in Alton, Illinois to get work there. (Ted had never actually met his grandfather, who had left the village when Ted’s mother, Kristina – yes, I’m named after her – was still in the womb. The grandfather came back once more to Greece, impregnated the grandmother once more and then went back to Alton, Illinois, never to return to Greece).
However, in order to get to the US, it was easiest to come to Canada first and apply from here at that point. So Ted came here on a landed immigrant permit having promised to marry someone here – this was something that had been set up as a sham for him to get here in the first place.
However, once Ted got here, he decided he liked Canada. I’m not sure why as he had a bunch of crap jobs in his first few years here. He ended up in Montreal working in a nylon factory for 50 cents an hour – the factory was hot and the workers had to buy water from the boss to keep going.
He then ended up in Kingston, Ontario – where I grew up – when he was offered a job with some friends from his hometown. He had to teach himself English and in this regard went to night school while working six or seven days a week as a dishwasher.
From there, he ended up in the restaurant and bar industry. At the time he came to Kingston, there was no liquor service in Ontario. The photo above with the snappy red jacket is the first photo taken of anyone in the place he worked serving liquor when they made that legal. He was always very proud of that (people who wanted to serve liquor had to take a two week course) and still had the snazzy red jacket hung up in his apartment.
After that, he bought his first business with a partner. It was a burger and snack shop .
Ted introduced the souvlaki to Kingston. At the time, Kingston was a very “English” town. Ted said this to me in 1986 when I interviewed him about his life for a high school project:
I think this… this mixture of multi-nationalities has created some culture in Canada, which no other… not too many other countries have. If is wasn’t for this mixture…well, the first I came here in Kingston, in the restaurants, you could only eat… hot beef, one type of steak, club sandwich, liver… it was limited, the menus in the restaurant… and all these people they came from overseas, and they just brought some of the ideas here which they adapted and started working, and that’s why you have such veriety here… I don’t think you can go too many places in the whole world where you can find this… like, you go to Greece and that’s all you find, some Greek food… everything, and you go to China, you find Chinese food… here, name it, you… whatever type of food you want, you can eat, specially in the big centres…
When I was growing up, Ted was a very hard worker. I didn’t see all that much of him, and usually he was either asleep…
… or handing out rules. Some of the Greek father rules and superstitions can be quite strange, as you will know if you have ever watched “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”. Ted could have played the lead role in that movie quite easily. Ted also had weird beliefs, such as that white vinegar on french fries would give you leukemia.
But I digress. Ted ended up having some other restaurants which were successful for quite a long time.
He and his business partner then ended up falling on hard times due to the recession and other problems, and lost everything.
However, Ted ended up working as an upholsterer and refinisher after that:
He was still working until a couple of years ago, at which point his health started to go downhill.
This is the most recent photograph that I have of Ted, taken in December of 2007:
There will probably be no more photos taken of Ted – at least not by me. At present, he is not looking all that well and his brain is about 20 years in the past, the best we can tell. Before he went to hospital he was not eating or cooking for himself and lost a lot of weight. This makes me quite sad as one of the good things I remember about him while he was living alone is that he loved to cook big meals for people.
AN ASIDE: Like me, Ted liked to experiment with cooking techniques. These either worked out brilliantly or not at all. I remember one Christmas some years back when he had me and my brother over and had decided it would be a good idea to try to cook a 15 pound turkey in a paper bag. This theory originated from a cooking method called “kleftiko” that some Greeks use for lamb chops. It originates from when some Greeks a long time ago were hiding either from the Turks or some other invaders in the hills and buried meat in the ground in paper over coals and cooked it that way to avoid detection. It works very well with lamb chops, but not at all well with turkey. The bag caught fire after two hours in the oven. I forget what we ended up eating, but it wasn’t turkey!
Because I won’t be taking any more photos of Ted, I will leave you with the best photo I ever took of him:
This photo was taken in 1996 in the apartment I lived in during law school. Ted was just leaving on his way back to Kingston from Toronto and had asked for some coffee. I had no coffee mugs in the place and gave him the coffee in the beer stein you see him holding. So, I got a little speech about my hostessing abilities. However, he then asked me to take the photo of him with the coffee in the beer stein and told me he was pretending that I’d actually served him Guinness before letting him make the three hour drive back to Kingston. He then said:
I would have thought that if you only have beer mugs that you would actually have some beer to give an old man before sending him back on a long trip. But no. I guess you drank all your beer even though you knew your baba was coming to visit. Next time, have some beer here for me, plis. And – (raising the coffee/beer mug) yassou! (cheers in Greek).
Yassou, Ted. And I hope that wherever you are living right now in your mind, you’re happy.
