We had a vast selection of wonderful food made by our charming hostess Caroline, who as an artist (painter of marvelous things!) is also a terrific cook!
We made several new friends as well as renewing links with old friends. It's fascinating to me how, though the island is a small community, never the less, the expat groups shift and change and you constantly meet new people, who have lived here for ages - know MANY of the people you know- yet you never encounter them but by chance at a convivial dinner party!
I also resolved a personal great mystery of the "Gardener's house in Gastouri". Gastouri is a lovely village and the site of the beautiful white Achilleon Palace and its lovely gardens! This particular house is in the village and it is the house of the original gardener of the Achilleon Palace. We had looked at the house many years ago (14 or 15?) before we bought the one we're living in, and though I fell in love with it the charming house needed a lot of tweaking to make it actually work for us, as for instance, it needed a kitchen. And a bathroom. But, oh my, it had charm. And it had an incredible garden, sadly much neglected, and we were told there was even a marble pool under all the overgrowth!
Well, last evening we met the charming people who eventually did buy the house, redesigned the house and built the kitchen and obviously a lot of other things (and found the marble pool in the garden!) and generally from the sound of things set out to make the house all that it could become.
I was glad to know the house wasn't stuck in some downward spiral, but had been related to and revitalized. Some places deserve to sink into oblivion, and some do not. This house did not.
Anyway, the barbecue was great. Yummy food, great conversation, the moon rising up over the grape arbors.... all in all it made for a magical evening.As David, grill master, presided over the flames well into the evening, the scene resembled some eerie barbecue ritual!
(well at least that's what this blurry picture made me think of! For some reason, my pictures got blurrier as the evening progressed. Possibly because I wasn't wearing my glasses?? That or the Prosecco...)
[Banoffee Pie, Summer Trifle, Caroline's special Peach Cake, and my humble chocolate cake (showing up again: this time with courgettes and walnuts- STILL deliciously moist- with a cream cheese frosting).]
All in all a wonderful evening with wonderful people.
Oh what a lovely evening. And desserts to die for it would seem. I really have to have a go at your chocolate cake.
ReplyDeleteIt was a nice evening, Ayak, and like I said it always surprises me that I encounter people I've never met before- who live within a couple of miles from me, know people I know, and go to the same places I go!! I mean it's an island!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, yes, you DO have to make the chocolate cake. It's really tasty and I know that it would go over very well with Mr. Ayak. (use good cocoa tho, like Dutch cocoa... when I lived in Turkey, I could never find it and always had to have someone bring it for me!)
x/j
sounds lovely, especially with the moon rising over the sea!!
ReplyDeletebtw do corfiots grill chicken the way they do on other ionian islands? on zakynthos and kefalonia they bbq a chicken 1/2 flattened on the grill under a brick....it actually tastes wonderful-
dear amanda,
ReplyDeleteNo! The Corfiots (that I've observed so far) do chicken pretty much simply over a hot grill the way they do it all over Greece: after soaking the chicken in a marinade of usually varying degrees of olive oil, oregano and lemon.
But the brick sounds like a great idea!