It was yet another rainy day in Larnaca but we all welcomed the rain even the ones who hate rainy weather ...including myself. Our dams are full and many of them have literally overflowed. Yesterday was the wettest day we've ever had in 4 years! And soon the snow will melt!! Oh my ! I've never seen so much rain before on the otherwise sunsplashed island of Aphrodite. Yet this weekend is a very festive one for Greece and Cyprus. It's the Carnival ...and samba dancing for a change and then on Monday..it's Kathara Deftera literally meaning "Clean Monday", that is Green Monday or the First Day of Lent (Sarakosti) for the Greeks.
Many Greeks will fast for the next 40 days (beginning on Monday) before Easter. And, according to tradition, on Green Monday we have a picnic outdoors consisting mainly of various greens but also grilled seafood such as cuttlefish, octopus and calamari. And , naturally, lagana - the traditional Green Monday bread which you can see in the photo above. We also fly kites on Green Monday- kids in particular delight in the sport. According to the weather forecast, Saturday and Sunday will be rainy but Green Monday will be warm and sunny over here - just the perfect day for a picnic outdoors.
I'll be away during our festive weekend but if I survive, I'll pop in to say hi ! I'll leave you and love you with a glimpse of King Carnival in Lemesos, Cyprus.
It's pouring right now as I curl up on the sofa enjoying a glowing fire and a glass of Saint Emilion. I don't like rainy days OR rainy nights, I hate grey,gloomy skies and I do have the fear of lightning and thunder! But tonight I'm listening to the rain while typing this blog feeling tired but content. I had a rough day - as per usual on Mondays! I begin to like this pitter-patter of the rain as I watch it run down the window pane more than the click-click of my keybord! After having known long periods of drought, my country welcomes this rain. It's gold to the farmer who will smile again and , hopefully, the water cuts will be suspended! I can hardly keep my eyes open but let me ask you one last question : Doyou like rainy days?
1. I'm not a hardened cynic. Life is too short to poison it with cynicism.
2. It's a break from routine amidst gloomy February days.
3. It's a breath away from hubby's birthday!
4. We celebrate birthdays, name days, national days, anniversaries, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Halloween..the list is endless. Why not love? After all no one can live without love!
5. I love teddy bears and red roses!
6. I love shopping the perfect gift for my Valentine ...such an agreeable occupation.
7. I look forward to a great aphrodisiac dinner!
8. People in love need a special day to celebrate as they're on the way to be extinct!
9. It's the time to say for the umpteenth time "I love you!" to the love of your life.
10. As my friend Laura said ....miracles can still happen on Valentine's Day!
This year, Alkis and I celebrated this beautiful day of Love with some of our closest friends.
We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love. ~Author Unknown
Love is missing someone whenever you're apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you're close in heart. ~Kay Knudsen
You learn to like someone when you find out what makes them laugh, but you can never truly love someone until you find out what makes them cry. ~Author Unknown
True love is when you put someone on a pedestal, and they fall - but you are there to catch them. ~Author Unknown
You know when you have found your prince because you not only have a smile on your face but in your heart as well. ~Author Unknown
Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart. ~Author Unknown
I ran up the door, opened the stairs, said my pajamas and put on my prayers - turned off my bed, tumbled into my light, and all because he kissed me good-night! ~Author Unknown
Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold. ~Zelda Fitzgerald
If I had a single flower for every time I think about you, I could walk forever in my garden. ~Attributed to Claudia Ghandi
Are we not like two volumes of one book? ~Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense. ~Mark Overby
Love - a wildly misunderstood although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise and the lips to pucker. ~Author Unknown
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. ~William Shakespeare, Mid-Summer Night's Dream, 1595
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière
When love is not madness, it is not love. ~Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Anyone can catch your eye, but it takes someone special to catch your heart. ~Author Unknown
For you see, each day I love you more Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow. ~Rosemonde Gerard
Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end. ~Author Unknown
First of all, let me thank you all from the bottom of my heart for joining in the fun of the game. I had such a good laugh while reading your comments!
Here is the result!
THALASSINA ME KOLOKYTHIA KAI AVGA
(Seafood with Courgettes and Eggs!)
INGREDIENTS
10 eggs (Andy)
green peppers (John)
4-5 long courgettes (Lucy)
some feta cheese (Lucy)
the juice of 2 lemons (Emma)
2 ripe tomatoes (Emma)
1 kilo (2lbs4oz) calamari (Constantinos)
3 cups of flour (Walid)
1 teaspoon of baking powder (Walid)
1 cup of finely chopped dill or parsley (Walid)
5 medium - sized potatoes (Lakis)
some mint (Lakis)
1 cup of pasta (Jeff)
some feta cheese (Jeff)
cinnamon (Jeff)
water (Haruko)
5 cups of finely cut onion (Haruko)
some torn (Tina)
kale leaves (Tina)
some more salt and pepper (Tina)
6 cloves of garlic finely diced (Nikos N)
6 king prawns (Constantinos)
1 glass of red dry wine (Alexia)
some kaseri cheese or any yellow cheese (Stefania)
DIRECTIONS
1. Sauté the onions in the oil (Anastasia)
2. Add 10 eggs and mix them with the onions. Sauté till golden brown. (Andy)
3. Top and tail 4-5 long courgettes, add them to the onions, eggs and green pepper. Add some feta cheese. (Lucy)
4. Add the juice of 2 lemons and 2 ripe tomatoes. (Emma)
5. Remove the tentacles and the fine inner bone of the squid and add it to the lemon and tomato juice in the courgette mixture. (Constantinos)
6. Add 3 cups of flour, a teaspoon of baking powder, some more salt and pepper to taste and a cup of finely chopped dill or parsley. (Walid)
7. Cut the potatoes in thick slices, add ...some more salt and pepper and add them to the rest of the ingredients. Add some parsley and mint. (Lakis)
8. Add the pasta, some more feta cheese and some cinnamon to the squid-courgette stuff. (Jeff)
9. Then add some more water and 5 cups of finely cut onion. Allow to boil for about 9 minutes. (Haruko)
10. Add the torn and the kale leaves and let them simmer in the pot for 5-7 minutes. (Tina)
11. Add 6 cloves of garlic finely diced. (Nikos N)
12. Let the garlic simmer with the rest of the ingredients for about 6 minutes and in a separate pot boil 6 king prawns in salted water. (Constantinos)
13. Clean the prawns and put them in the main pot. Add 1 glass of red dry wine and let the food simmer for 10 minutes over low fire. (Alexia)
14. Add some kasseri cheese or any other yellow cheese of your choice. Remove the food from the fire and let it rest for 30 minutes. (Stefania)
15. Serve with a ...traditional Greek Village Salad! (Anastasia)
Not everything is on the Internet. You’d think so with a billion pages, but no. Only about 8% of all journals and even a smaller fraction of books are on the web. No matter which search engine you use, you can drown in the web’s ocean of materials trying to find the right answer because only about 17% of the search results will apply to your question. Search engines are not regularly updated, so you may not be getting current data.
Quality control doesn’t exist. Amid all the great web-based information, lurks a kook with a conspiracy theory and a pornographer with a camera. Abandoned sites, urban legends spouted as truth, and advertising, advertising, advertising. What you don’t really know does hurt you. About 70% of the Web is "hidden" – accessible with passwords only (for the select few). Countries can now buy one book and distribute to every library on the Web. Of course not! Copyright restrictions make only a couple of thousand titles available this way. Most vendors offer the book to only one user at a time, too, so there may be a long waiting list for the book you want today.
Hey,what about e-books? Reading on any e-reader is a chore. The technology will undoubtedly improve, but it’s still more than a generation away.
"Aren’t there library-less universities now?" , you may ask. No. Institutions that tried to open with paperless libraries, quickly built traditional ones because books they needed weren’t available on the Internet.But a virtual public library would work, right? Work at bankrupting the community! Digitising the number of books for an average sized public library would cost tens of millions of euro just in copyright releases.
The Internet is everywhere but books are portable. Try curling up by the fire with a laptop, or stopping by the woods on a snowy evening with a handheld. The future may bring this, but for now the vast majority of readers – even online readers – still want books. I know I can't do without them. What about you ?
- I know, you've been sulking for quite some time now. I really do not like the expression on your face ! I haven't been neglecting you at all. It's just that I had other things to do!
- This is not an excuse, Anastasia! What other things? Like talking to people you have never met?
- Don't be unfair! Be grateful for small mercies! At least, you're still here on Typepad! You used to be a poor, miserable notebook, you had a silverplated key and a lock and silly, perfumed pages. But I've upgraded you, I've made you electronic with all the great advantages that this entails.
- Yes, advantages! And I won't go through them again! But, it seems that you refuse to move with the times. Instead of counting your blessings, you're venting all the time. You could have at least wished me a speedy recovery!
- Oh really? Why should I ? If I were still a notebook, you'd be able to write to me just as you are able to write on the board and mark your students' homework! What kind of technology is this? You even used to draw on my pages!
- Enough is enough! You'll never appreciate what I've done for you. Never! And you know why? Because you'll never get over your paper-minded paper-oriented nature. You have a sort of ...paper complex!
- OK! OK ! Calm down. I promise I'll make a better effort to improve my electronic nature. Any suggestions?
- Now you're being wiser! Which is not like you at all, but anyway. Here are a few tips for you to follow:
1. Stop venting all the time. I'm here for you when I have some more free time.
2. You need to become more aware of your electronic nature. I have many other friends now and not much time online.
- You didn't use to have many friends over here. I used to be your only good friend.
- See what I mean ? You are interrupting me! I changed my comments settings. Sorry for not having asked for your permission first!
-Why can't I comment?
-Because you are only a diary! You are not human and because messages from automated machines go directly to Spam!
- Oh dear ! Am I an automated machine?
- I wish you were! At the moment you still remain a silly paper-minded diary! And as for drawing...I can draw anything here. I don't need to be a talented artist to do so.
-OK , you showed me once. What's tip number 3?
3. Behave yourself or else ....remember ONE click just ONE single click can send you directly to the recycle bin!
- But I'm not made of ....paper any more to be recycled! I thought you said I was electronic!
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