What to see in Larnaka

 For the first ten days of the month, we had some friends visiting: a couple we used to know well when we lived in Colorado Springs, back in the early 1990s.  We had not seen one of them for over thirty years! It was wonderful to spend time together, and also to show them something of the area. Richard took a week off (well, mostly off...) and took them on a few trips further afield. But we also liked showing them some of the sights and places of interest in and around Larnaka. 

On the first morning, we took a walk to the Salt Lake trail. We only went as far as the bird-watching platform, and it was disappointing: a couple of flamingoes in the distance, and not much else. There haven't been as many flamingoes as usual this year, and signs have been posted clearly prohibiting visitors from leaving the trail and walking closer to the lake. I didn't take any photos.

In the afternoon, we walked along Larnaka sea front, looking at statues and shops, and eventually reached St Lazarus Church. This is where Lazarus - sister of Mary and Martha - came to be bishop, and where he was buried, according to tradition, when he died for the second time. 

There's often construction or repair work going on, and sometimes hordes of pigeons in the grounds. But we didn't see many birds, and the church was open for visitors. One has to dress appropriately - no shorts, or bare shoulders. But it's February; we were all dressed in long trousers and more than one warm, long-sleeved layer. 

I've been inside the church several times previously, and am not a huge fan of the ornate decorations found in many Greek Orthodox churches. But it's an interesting place to see, and visitors always seem impressed with the interior. Here's just one image (taken by one of our friends).

I didn't go down to the crypt, although our friends did. 

Not far from St Lazarus is the Larnaka mosque:

We didn't go inside - I'm not sure if it was open to the public. But it's also quite an impressive looking building. It was closed down when we first moved here, but there's a growing Muslim population, including some of the asylum seekers and refugees, and so the mosque is now refurbished and used. 

Walking back to the sea-front, the third imposing building is the old fort:

We didn't go inside that, either. It was near to the closing time, and we didn't want to have to pay for just twenty minutes or so inside.  From past experience, it's not all that extensive or exciting anyway. But we could see through the entrance:

It's nicely renovated, and although I haven't been for some years now, I understand there's an indoor mini museum as well as the uncovered area, and information about how the fort was used, many years ago.

On Tuesday afternoon, we had thought of going to Cyherbia. But when Richard checked the location on his phone, we learned that it was closed during February, other than at weekends. So instead we drove to the Oroklini bird-watching platform, hoping to get a better view of flamingoes. We had never been there before, but other friends who visit go there regularly.  I was quite surprised at the impressive view of Oroklini lake:

The platform has a display showing different kinds of local birds, and our friends were able to identify many of them. We did see flamingoes, although not many, and not very close. 

Then we went to have ice cream on the Makenzy promenade, and walked around the fishing 'village' - really a kind of mini harbour for fishing boats. 

On other days our friends went sailing, and we drove to Curium, which I'll write about in a separate post at some point. We had a couple of take-away evening meals, and were treated to a meze at our favourite restaurant, Kyra Giorgena. 

We decided, after all, not to visit CyHerbia this time. On Saturday morning - when it was raining - Richard took our friends to see Angeloktisti (the church of the angels) in Kiti. Then they went to the Sultan Tekke mosque near the Salt Lake. All worth seeing, but I had seen them before and needed to do things at home. 

There are several museums in Larnaka, but we decided against going to any of those - we didn't need to fill up every minute of time with places of interest. Just walking around the block, seeing typical Cypriot homes, is something of an adventure to people new to the country.

But we did do two more fairly local things: we drove to the top of Rizoleia hill to see the view over Larnaka (and to have some hot drinks).

And on our friends' last afternoon, after a morning trip to Nicosia with Richard, one of our friends and Richard went to Salina Park, for more hot drinks, and time to chat.

It was good to have places to visit and see that were within walking distance, or a short drive, rather than taking up a whole morning or day out.  The weather was mostly dry and sunny, but not over-warm, so we didn't have ice cream more than once. Nor did we go to the beach. Since there were no children, we also didn't go to any of the many playgrounds that can be found within Larnaka and nearby locations. 

Conclusion of the January shopping challenge

As mentioned in the earlier posts this month, I aimed to do minimal food shopping in January: mainly fruit and vegetables, as we had a lot of food in the freezer. I did also buy some minimally processed other food, but wasn't sure how long that could continue. 

Since the previous post I did three more trips to the fruitaria: last Friday, Monday and yesterday.  On Friday last week, I bought what has turned out to be my normal fruit and vegetable selection, with minimal variation, plus some packets of passata and a few tubs of tomato puree. 

I know I could make those at home, and did attempt to do so at one point. I regularly stew and freeze tomatoes, to use instead of canned tomatoes, and that's well worth doing. But to simmer them down to puree level without letting them burn is a task that I found almost impossible. And I had to use so many tomatoes that it was barely worth it financially. 

So this was what I bought on Friday 23rd:

I made tuna pizza (with a scone dough) one evening that week. Usually I would have bought and grated some commercial vegan cheese. But, keen to keep using 'real' foods, I made a recipe for vegan 'mozzarella' using almond meal as the base. It worked pretty well, and melted nicely.

On Sunday a week ago we were entertaining in the evening so I made the dairy-free version of our favourite brownie recipe, which turned out very well. 

But that used up the last of the eggs which I'd bought at the end of December. So on Monday's trip to the fruitaria, I bought another dozen free-range eggs, in addition to the usual oranges, bananas and other produce.

We still had some processed food in the freezer, as well as meals I had previously prepared. Richard really likes meatballs in sweet and sour sauce, so I cooked some Lidl brand meatballs for him. Usually I would buy ready-made frozen falafal for me, but we didn't have any of those left, so I made myself some lentil-balls, which turned out well:

Of course, I made the sweet and sour sauce from regular ingredients, but I would always do that. 

And so to yesterday, my final grocery shop of January. For the first time in the month, I bought some meat: about 1100g chicken, to make into a lemon chicken dish in the slow cooker for tomorrow. We are expecting some guests arriving early evening - friends we have not seen in nearly thirty years - and I want to have a hot meal ready for them.  Most likely there will be at least three two-person meals left over to freeze for the future. So although this is all for February I bought it in January since I try not to shop on Sundays. 

So, to summarise the whole of January, in addition to plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, I bought:

- 60 euros' worth of nuts, seeds and dried fruit
- eight toilet rolls
- six litres of pure grape juice
- 800g frozen peas
- 1 litre olive oil
- 1 litre sunflower oil
- 2kg flour
- 1 litre Greek yogurt
- 1 pack greasefree paper sheets
- 1 bottle of dried parsley
- 3 packs passata 
- 4 small tubs tomato puree
- 12 free-range eggs
- 1100g boneless chicken thighs

All those extra food products count as 'minimally processed', in my understanding, as none of them have anything extra added to them.  The entire grocery bill for the whole of January came to just over 212 euros. I'm quite pleased with that. 

It was possible to do this because I had so many meals made previously in the freezer, and leftovers from Christmas, as well as some products bought previously.  And we didn't do much entertaining. In February I will be buying rather more meat and frozen fish. I'll also be buying cat food, something we stocked up on in December.  

But I hope to continue avoiding ultra-processed foods. I won't continue posting photos of what I buy, but will try to update the results at the end of each month. If I remember... 

Chilly weather, central heating... and yet more about shopping

As I sit here, wearing three warm layers, with a cooling wheat bag on my lap, it seemed like a good idea to mention our current chilly snap in Cyprus. Among other things. 

Central heating

I don't remember, now, when it started to feel cold out. Maybe a week ago, maybe more. When we're in a cold spell, it somehow feels as if it's always been this way, and probably always will. I know, of course, that it will warm up again soon. We don't have long winters here. Summer - which lasts about six months - is much more difficult for me to deal with. So I'm not complaining. Truly. 

We have a large gas canister outside, and have to phone the company when it shows less than 25% full. At least, it appears to be a percentage, but we're not exactly sure what it refers to. We last had it filled in March last year, after a chilly period in February. If we weren't using central heating, it would probably last us several years as a supply of gas for the kitchen hob.

We finally replaced our old, inefficient boiler almost two years ago. The new one has to be serviced annually, ideally before we start using it. Because November was so warm, we hadn't got around to calling the engineer, but in December he came and did a thorough service. It wasn't very cold, but sufficiently cool that we wanted a bit of heating to come on in the evenings. 

We're very thankful that we have central heating. It's not normal here; houses are built for the summer, not for the winter. We have double-glazed windows, too. But with tile floors and quite high ceilings, it's not easy to stay warm when the temperatures outside drop below 15 degrees Celcius, as has been the case for the past week or ten days. It's been down to 5 or 6 degrees, sometimes less, overnight. 

When we checked the gas levels shortly before Christmas, it was still showing 55% full. We used the heating sporadically over the Christmas/New Year period. We kept checking, and it seemed to go down very slowly. It wasn't until about ten days ago that the levels were approaching the 25% level, so Richard got in touch with the company, and the truck came just over a week ago. 

And yes, the sky was blue, and the sun was out, so it didn't feel all that chilly outside. But the clear sky meant that the nights were very cold.  At least, very cold from our perspective, and cold enough that we needed to wear extra layers in the house. Yesterday the heating came on even during the daytime, when it has to be lower than 15C to click on. We haven't checked the level recently, but I expect it will be going down rather more rapidly than it did in December. I'm sure we'll need at least one more gas delivery this year.  Maybe more. 

Shopping, continuing from previous posts

Early in January, I wondered how long we could go without buying anything other than fresh fruit and vegetables. We still had quite a lot of food left from Christmas, several frozen meals from November and earlier December, and plenty of other things in the freezer. I quickly realised we also needed nuts, seeds and dried fruit, as well as packaged fruit juice... so changed to thinking about only buying unprocessed or minimally processed foods. Which is what I prefer anyway. 

However, until the end of last year, I would buy - without really thinking about it - products such as wholewheat pitta bread (from the fruitaria), and I regularly bought commercial coconut milk (both the drink and the canned versions) and oat milk. I wrote about starting to make my nut and oat milks at home again in my last post, as well as vegan 'cheeze'. 

While I mainly use fresh fruit and vegetables, there are some which (in my opinion) are a whole lot better when bought frozen. And we were running low on frozen peas. We have tried many different brands, and have come to the conclusion that it's well worth paying a bit more for the Birds Eye variety. The fruitaria stocks this, in their freezer section, rather less expensively than the supermarkets. 

So this was my fruit shop purchases on Friday: 

And yes, it does look remarkably similar to the previous photos, albeit with the addition of frozen peas.  Taking photos each time has been an interesting exercise, demonstrating that, although we do eat quite a lot of fresh produce, there's not a whole lot of variety from week to week. The large number of carrots is so that I could make carrot soup for guests on Sunday evening. 

Having said that, in the summer there are many more fruit choices than there are now; peaches, plums etc are quite seasonal. And although I've seen some early strawberries, experience tells me that they're usually a bit tasteless at this time of year. 

In addition, we were given a couple of aubergines by a friend. I do occasionally buy them, but don't often think about it. We had one, simply sliced and roasted, a week or two back. With the other, I made ratatouille, something I had not made in many years.

I had noticed that our supply of sweet chili sauce - bottled - was getting lower. This is something we've only discovered fairly recently. There are a few different brands available; obviously I avoid any with chemical-sounding additives. But even the best brands are, essentially, sugar water with a bit of chili and garlic. Surely, I thought, I could make some myself. 

I had browsed many different recipes before finding one that used apple cider vinegar, and which gave the option of using chili flakes or powder rather than small hot chili peppers. This was a good thing, as the fruitaria doesn't have any hot chilis. Cypriot food doesn't tend to be highly spiced, and even supposedly 'hot' food at restaurants or fast food places is, to our tastebuds, quite mild. 

So I experimented. The result was surprisingly good, similar to the bottled variety in texture. I was concerned about making it too hot - chili powder is a bit unpredictable - so erred on the side of caution. Next time I'll use a bit more chili powder. But as it's so quick and inexpensive, I don't suppose we'll buy the bottled variety any more. 

On Saturday I realised that we had run out of wholemeal pitta bread. We usually have that with our weekly curry - and I was still using up curry portions that I had frozen last year. So I decided to make naan bread, something our son used to do regularly when he lived at home.  The breadmaker deals with the mixing and kneading, so all I had to do was divide the dough into eight, rest it for a while, roll it out thinly, and then cook in a pan. 

Last time I made naan, I used a tortilla press instead of rolling, but it was a bit messy. Rolling was quite strenuous, but the dough was stretchy, and I could roll each one as the previous one was cooking. And they were pretty successful. We used two, and froze the rest in twos for future curries.

By Monday morning, I realised that we were getting very low on wholemeal bread flour, and also the lighter wholewheat flour which I use for cakes. I did have some white bread flour, and also white cake flour, but didn't want to have to make fully white bread, though I use a small amount of white flour in bread, and about 50/50 in pastry and cakes. I had started my reserve bottles of both sunflower oil and olive oil, too, and I hated the thought of running out of either. And I was craving Greek yogurt... 

So I before I went to the fruit shop in Monday, I went to the mini-market opposite. And here's the result of Monday's shopping:

Packaged flour and olive oil are 'minimally processed', as I understand it. And Greek yogurt is processed. The only additive is gelatine, which I would prefer to avoid - but this brand is, in my view, much the nicest. It's the only dairy product I have on a regular basis. 

And if anyone's wondering why I have some produce in plastic bags, it's because the fruitaria has a kind of colour code: the green bags are for their best quality products, the blue bags are for their mid-range, and the pink are for the ones which are either in excess, or which need to be used up quickly. I mainly buy blue-bag and pink-bag products (I have taken most of the fruit and veg out of their bags for the photos). And I re-use all the bags, for things like cat litter. So at least they're not 'single-use'. 

Salt Lake, a pot-bellied pig and a continuing shopping challenge.

Yes, it's almost half-way through January. After quite a slow December, and a very leisurely week after Christmas, January seems to be racing by. 

The Salt Lake, rain and a few flamingoes

The Salt Lake, which was empty for many months, started filling up in December when there was more rain than usual. Sadly it made little difference to the reservoirs, but the Salt Lake, which isn't very deep, did eventually look like a lake again:

January started dry, but then we had quite a lot of rain a few days ago, leading to puddles in many of the streets (despite much better drainage than in the past, since the installation of sewers under the roads). 

Greenery, construction... and a challenge for January...

Rather than continuing to recount my days in tedious detail, I decided to take photos every day, at least when I remember to do so, and write about them. Life in Cyprus has become normal to me, but visitors are still surprised at some of the things they see and experience.

Greenery

In many parts of the world, trees and bushes lose their leaves during the autumn months, and have bare branches during the winter. This is useful when there's a lot of snow, but that's not at all likely in the coastal areas of Cyprus.

We particularly liked seeing the citrus trees everywhere when we first arrived. Now we take them for granted, and this year the lemons on the trees look fairly small and sparse. Perhaps that's because there was so little rain until December. 

This, for instance, is a normal sight at this time of year, although usually there are rather more lemons on the local trees:

New Year's Eve

Christmas Day went well, with just seven of us sitting down to lunch. Although I still struggle with timings, I make extensive checklists for Christmas Day. As one of our friends remarked, we could probably have fed twice as many people. But that's part of the beauty of Christmas lunch, as far as I'm concerned: I don't have to do any cooking for several days afterwards.  

With most of the preparation done in advance, the day itself mostly involved setting things off at suitable times. I got up around 6.30 to do the first few: pudding in the steamer first thing, potatoes (prepared the night before) parboiled and left in hot water; red cabbage/apple/onion prepared and set off in the slow-cooker; carrots prepared and ready to go later; coconut cream whipped and put on the trifle.

The shepherds in my knitted Nativity set then arrived at the stable, and baby Jesus emerged from Mary, and was laid in the manger.

Christmas Eve

Although there are four Sundays in Advent, the fourth one is followed by less than a week - just three days, this year, in the final runup to Christmas. So rather than continuing my Advent posts, this is my annual Christmas Eve one, but continuing the daily updates.

December 21st was the fourth Sunday of Advent, and the church we're connected with had a communion service with carols rather than a more traditional 'nine lessons and carols'. I went to that, and enjoyed it, then chatted to some friends afterwards.

It's been our custom for many years to go out to eat at Alexander's on the last Sunday before Christmas. We got the idea from some friends many years ago. I can't technically say it's a 'tradition' because it wasn't handed down to us by parents or predecessors, but it feels like one. So at 12.30 we drove to the marina and then walked the few hundred metres to Alexander's.

Richard had the stifado, which he said was excellent. I had a mushroom omelette, which looked quite interesting, but wasn't as great as some meals I've had there. Still, it was filling and it's good to try something different. 

Third week of Advent

Sunday 14th December was the third Sunday in Advent. It was also a special anniversary for us: 48 years exactly since we went out on our first date, and 46 years since we got engaged. 

But there was no chance to go out to celebrate. I didn't go to a church service, either, as I knew I had to do a lot of cooking and baking in the morning. Every other Sunday our friends come over for an afternoon of games (with a DVD for the teenagers), followed by a shared evening meal. I always provide bread and a dessert, while they usually bring cut up vegetables and protein such as cheese, eggs and tuna.  Through the cooler months, I also make soup. 

In addition, I was hosting our local writing group lunch on the Monday. I wanted to ensure there we had enough variety of food, so I planned to prepare some of that on Sunday morning as well. And our Sunday lunch, which wasn't complicated as I used a previously frozen chicken dish, so I only had to prepare roast potatoes and veggies to accompany it.

I started around 10.00am after a leisurely breakfast and shower... and I tried not to rush, so I wouldn't get muddled. I first started the carrot and ginger soup, one of my favourites; I add previously boiled chick-peas in too, to give it some protein. Then I started preparing some chicken breast with a slightly spicy thick sauce, to serve cold on Monday. And put the ingredients for a loaf of bread in the breadmaker.

Then I leafed through all my recipes looking for something to make for dessert in the evening; nothing really inspired me, so I tried a lemon blondie recipe I had previously downloaded and printed. I had quite a lot of lemon juice which I had frozen last year from an excess of lemons, so it was good to use some of that up. 

By this stage, the kitchen looked like this:

I also wanted to make mince pies... so I had to tidy up a little, to make room for the food processor, and for rolling out the pastry.