Early stages of Summer in Cyprus...

So.. a few weeks ago, I switched to our thin duvet at night.

Then, we started using the ceiling fans a little in the evening.

Then I started making sure I did any household chores/cleaning and shopping first thing in the morning - before about 8.00am if possible, while it was still pleasantly cool.

Then I started keeping my study door open and the ceiling fan on, most of the day.

On Friday I cleaned the air conditioners.

On Saturday, I made our first smoothies of the year:

Watermelon, peach and pineapple. A slightly odd combination, but it worked and they were very refreshing.

On Sunday, I found our frappé maker, gave it a quick wipe, and put it out in the kitchen to use over the next few months:

I had my first frappé too:

I felt hot on Sunday. I was out late morning for the first time in a while, at a group baptism including our young friend Marie... only half an hour or so in the sun, but I felt quite migrainey later.

Still, the sky was blue and I think the sea is beginning to warm up.

In the evening we went to the end of Jacob's 13th birthday party, and stayed on for a game.

Today is a public holiday, for Greek Orthodox Pentecost Monday, also known as Kataklysmos. Richard is out sailing, and I'm having a peaceful day on my own at home. 

Oh, and I finally put on some shorts today. For the first time this year.

More signs of summer

I might sometimes give the impression that Summer in Cyprus is a lengthy period of intense suffering, relieved only by air-conditioning and general aestivation.

To be sure, I don't do well in high temperatures or high humidity, and don't particularly enjoy July or August in this country. But, not everything about the approaching season is negative. A week ago I decided to abandon my jeans in favour of shorts - well, my shorts are mostly below-the-knee, so they're not really short, but they're a bit cooler, anyway. The ceiling fans give a pleasant breeze - it hasn't yet got hot enough to need air conditioning. This morning when I made the bed with clean sheets I put away our thin duvet, to be washed at some point in the next few months, and just put a top sheet as a bed cover.

Early mornings are pleasantly cool, and I've moved to my summer schedule of doing any housework or shopping, as far as possible, before 8.00am. I feel more lethargic in the winter, somehow; less inclined to get moving first thing. But in June, 6.00am or even earlier is an energising time of day.

Best of all are the opportunities for iced drinks. Soft fruit is abundant in Cyprus in the summer - peaches and apricots are just starting to appear inexpensively in the Froutaria, and watermelons have been available for a while. On Monday evening I made our first smoothie of the year:


It was watermelon and mango, a combination highly recommended in my Smoothie book; unfortunately we couldn't really taste the mango as the predominant taste was watermelon, but it was quite pleasant anyway.

Today I got out the frappé maker and after lunch we had the first frappés of the year. I'd forgotten just how much I enjoy them!

New blender in the house

It's nearly three months since I wrote about our blender problem. Our trusty (and very good) blender had broken; the one attached to the food processor simply isn't as good. And somehow, fruit lumpies aren't as appealing as fruit smoothies.

Still, the rest of August passed us by. Then we went to the UK in September. I suppose we could have brought a blender there, to bring home; they're rather less expensive in the UK. But they're very heavy, and we were about at our limit of luggage.

October somehow passed us by. Suddenly we discovered that it was November. And, without thinking, we arranged for people to come here on Sunday, and I said I would make some soup....

Then it struck me, a few days later. Soup needs a functioning blender that produces purée rather than lumps. But Richard was in Egypt for a few days. So it wasn't until Friday that we were able to go and look for a new blender.

We went to Orphanides. I don't much like it as a supermarket; it's too big, and the displays are too high, and I don't like the lighting. But for electrical goods, it's not bad. And, indeed, they had about eight different blenders on display. One made by Bosch, one by Black and Decker (both of which I thought were power tool makers, not in the market for kitchen gadgets). One by Philips, if i remember rightly, and the rest by Moulinex.

We rejected one that was really a smoothie maker only, and one that had a huge base, and was remarkably ugly. As we were pondering, an assistant came up and asked us if he could help. So we told him what we wanted, and he said he recommended the big ugly one. Not that he said it was big and ugly... he said it was long-lasting, and any customers who bought it were very satisfied.

We said we liked the Moulinex, so he told us which one he recommended. It was the most expensive, by about twenty euros. I had been looking at one which looked rather smarter than the rest, with a black and silver-grey base (which would match some of our other gadgets), and a button for ice crushing. I suspect it was the ice in the smoothies that proved too much for our last blender, so the idea of one with a feature of crushing ice seemed like a good plan. The assistant shook his head somewhat, but in the absence of any other factors we decided to buy that one. I had tried looking online for reviews, but with no idea what would be available at Orphanides, it wasn't very helpful; and we needed the blender as soon as possible.

Then we found that we could use some of our accumulated Orphanides bonus card points, and get a twenty euro discount. Even better.

As we unpacked the blender at home, I did wonder if we'd made a terrible mistake. The manual said that the ice crusher was 400 watts, implying (though not stating) that the basic liquidiser had less power. Some of the blenders were powered at 500 or even 600 watts. Would it be enough to do what we wanted? I also realised it was glass, so that while it certainly looks attractive (for a blender) it's quite heavy:


That evening, I made us some fruit smoothies. And they were smooth. It's getting a bit chilly for ice-cold drinks, but we enjoyed them anyway.

Sunday evening, I liquidised the soup, after making it in the slow cooker and then cooling (the blender has dire warnings not to put in liquids hotter than 80C). That, too, worked very well. And wasn't as heavy as I had feared, even when full.

So, all in all, I'm impressed.

A tale of three blenders

When we first came to Cyprus, we probably had a second-hand blender (or liquidiser. One word was originally British, the other American, but I've entirely forgotten which is which. We use the words interchangeably) from the Thrift Store. I really don't remember. Such details have vanished in the mists of time. Possibly we didn't have one at all.

I do remember, however, that we acquired a nice Moulinex liquidiser (or blender) at some point during 2003, or thereabouts. We didn't pay much for it. Perhaps we didn't pay anything for it. As far as I recall, it was on special offer at Orphanides supermarket, but whether it was free with so many bonus points, or on discount, or simply a special offer is another of those minor details which has vanished from my mind.

It was a good liquidiser. The boys used it to make fruity milk shakes in the summer, and I used it to make breadcrumbs. We thought about making soup, too, and blending that, although in our old rental house we didn't get around to that kind of cooking very often. It was a most uninspiring kitchen.

And while it was a good blender, it slightly worried me that the lid did not lock. I hoped nobody would be stupid enough to have fingers inside when it was working, but it was entirely possible to switch it on full power with the lid not on firmly enough, and have the contents fly everywhere. That didn't happen, thankfully. But it could have.

Then, early in 2004, after much contemplation, we acquired a Moulinex Ovatio duo 3 food processor. From the thrift store, inexpensively, in excellent condition. It came with a liquidizer (or blender) attachment, which sat above the motor. It was as powerful as the blender we already had, but safer because it only worked if the lid was locked in place.

That was a photo taken in the kitchen of our old rental house. The small amount of tile showing in the background might give a clue as to why the kitchen was so very uninspiring to work in. It was also taken on our very first digital camera, which wasn't very good resolution, which is why the photo is rather grainy.

But I digress.

In the interests of saving workspace, we packed away the first blender. It sat in the cupboard for about a year, and then was moved to the office. Someone staying there wanted to use a blender... and was very pleased with it. It moved from the office to the office guest flat a while later, and there it stayed...

..until, in (I think) 2006, the Ovatio 3 food processor breathed its last. The motor became noisier, and less powerful, possibly because we made bread dough in the food processor and it wasn't quite strong enough. Or maybe it was older than we thought when we first bought it. Whatever the reason, the Ovatio duo 3 was no more.

So, not expecting much, we went to the Thrift Store again. And there, to my amazement, was another Moulinex Ovatio duo food processor! It looked almost new (though it evidently wasn't). It was a bit smaller, but it had extra attachments, such as a fruit juicer. And the liquidizer (or blender) had an extra white attachment that sat on the same base as the main processor bowl. It was an Ovatio duo 2 rather than 3... but I didn't think that would matter. The price was good, so we bought it.


Possibly it was a mistake. The bowl was too small for bread dough, and it didn't work so well for pastry. Worst of all, the blender really wasn't powerful enough for anything much. On the rare occasions I made soup, it ended up with too many lumps.

But we didn't make soup very often, and it worked for milky fruit shakes... except that by then Daniel had left home, and Tim soon after discovered that dairy products made him go deaf, so he stopped making milk shakes.

We moved house in the summer of 2006. And the kitchen is so nice, both Tim and I felt inspired to do a lot more cooking. So, in the winter, when we didn't much like our lumpy soups, we had the brilliant idea of rescuing the Moulinex liquidiser from the office guest flat , where it hadn't been used for some months.

And, for the past two and a half years, we've used that blender a fair amount. In the winter, I make soup at least once a week and freeze several portions. In the summer, we make fruit smoothies with peaches or apricots, and soft fruit (frozen). And ice cubes.

Possibly I added too many ice cubes a couple of days ago. Maybe I added them too early. Or maybe the liquidiser had simply come to the end of its natural life. These days, six years old is pretty good for kitchen gadgets, or so it seems. Anyway, it started to make a loud graunching kind of noise, and felt as if it were not quite balanced. When I poured the smoothie into glasses, I noticed a piece of metal (fortunately still whole). And the inside of the liquidiser, after being washed, looked like this:


Note the absence of one of the metal pointy bits. It had broken off completely. It's clearly not mendable. I did wonder if it might work anyway - if the loud noise was due to the broken bit in the machine - but when I made yesterday's smoothies, there was still a horrible noise, and despite leaving it on for longer than usual, they weren't very smooth. They were more like lumpies. Still tasty, but not what we've come to expect.

We did think about going to Orphanides last night to see if they had any more special offers on blenders. But couldn't remember what time it closed. And I knew I wanted to go to Metro today anyway, to do a bit of regular shopping. Some very important items, such as Weetabix and almond milk, since Tim will be arriving back in Cyprus for a few weeks on Sunday evening.

Unfortunately the only blender in Metro was a 'super-power' one, at 80 euros. Ouch! We're not going to pay that much for a liquidiser. And then I remembered the other part of the food processor. Did I even have all the parts?

The food processor part was on the work surface - I do use that occasionally. The container part of the liquidiser was in a cupboard. And the white part which it perches on was in another cupboard... and it all went together to make a working blender:



I even had the lid, although it's not shown in the picture.

So I made our smoothies. It worked without making much noise.. but the result wasn't much different from yesterday's attempt. Roughies rather than smoothies. Too many bits. It will do for a few days, but we have to get to Orphanides early next week to try to find something better. Or one of the electrical shops. Or possibly even the Thirft shop.

We can't go tomorrow, however, since tomorrow is a one of the big religious public holidays in Cyprus. I'm glad I remembered that, as we were thinking of doing our shopping at Metro tomorrow rather than today... but thankfully remembered in time.