Half way through summer....?

 The end of July always feels like something of a milestone to me, particularly when we're in Cyprus all summer. The hot weather usually starts to feel uncomfortable by mid-to-late June, and it feels like the end is in sight by mid-to-late September. And yes I know that means that the half-way spot should be about a week into August... but I would prefer it to be today. 

I didn't take many photos in the past month. Much of what interested us was at a distance: my younger son and his wife moved to a new location, where he's now the vicar of a lively church. I watched the installation by livestream, and some of the Sunday services too. My other son and his family made a trip to the Logos Hope, where they spent two years when the children were much younger. Not a long trip, as it docked in Edinburgh for a few days.

But we've stayed in Larnaca, which turns out to have been a good thing, for a variety of reasons. It was important to be here in July because our local friends (and cat-feeders) have mostly been out of the country. And since they have three cats, I was the one who fed them when everyone was away, on about ten or twelve days of the month.

These are outdoor-indoor cats who only need to be fed once a day; they only have dry food and water. Two of them needed quite a lot of stroking and attention too; the other one looked at me rather superciliously after eating, and stalked away. I watered their garden, too. 

I went over first thing in the morning, when it was light but not sunny, and 'only' about 25-26 degrees Celcius. It made a pleasant 15-minute walk, leaving around 5.45-6.00am. Sometimes it was a bit over-warm when I walked home again, but it was still mostly possible to stay in the shade. It's not so easy to motivate myself to keep walking every day when it's hot out, and sometimes, if I'm not feeding cats, I only manage about half a kilometre.

At the start of the month, we had an aluminium-building expert replace some of our windows which looked like this: 

with this: 

It's purely cosmetic; the white bar things don't provide any extra strength to the windows. Apparently they were a trend at one point, made to look like the old smaller-paned windows. They're not unattractive when all the bars are in place. Unfortunately the sun eventually breaks down some of the glue that holds them in place, and they slide down, as in the first picture. We had some replaced a few years ago, too. We still have windows with bars that look fine, but no doubt they, too, will eventually need to be changed.

In the middle of July, St Helena's church had a major overhaul, with new air conditioners installed and the entire inside repainted and repaired. The communion rail was moved, and some of the wires had to be replaced. New trunking was put in to neaten several trailing cables.

There were professional decorators in, but several of the congregation worked hard, moving furniture to the centre, and ensuring equipment and wall decorations were taken down carefully.

Richard got involved because he previously did the installation of speakers and other PA equipment. He spent many hours dealing with the wiring and soldering, to get everything back in place for the following Sunday. 

We celebrated our 46th wedding anniversary with a meal out. Some years we've ordered in a takeaway for our evening meal. But this year it was on a Sunday, and we're still traditional enough that (usually, anyway) we have our main meal at lunchtime on Sundays. We talked about going to the sea front, but it was too hot for me to walk even the short distance from the marina car park to any of the restaurants. So we went to the mall, which is air conditioned, and where there are a few quite nice restaurants.

We went to Verde Caferesto: 

The menu was fairly extensive, and not too highly priced. Richard had a large chop with salad and fries; I decided on some halloumi tacos (an interesting combination of cultural specialities!) with sweet potato fries, and it was delicious. 

It was more than I needed, but I didn't think it would reheat well, so I ate it all. It was worth the feeling of being very over-full later...

The following day we drove to Limassol to have lunch with friends there, taking with us some friends of our friends, who were staying in our guest flat. After an excellent lunch, we were surprised with a special cake to celebrate our anniversary:

And so, with these and other low-key activities - or lack of activity - the month has passed. I have managed to avoid using the oven, although the air fryer has been on a few times. I'm not quite bored with salads yet, so hope to keep making a variety of them through August. I've worked on photo books, I've read fourteen books and reviewed them, I've done puzzles online, and written emails on discussion groups and forums. I try to stay in my air conditioned study from about 10am until 6pm or so, with a brief foray out for lunch, and (when relevant) hanging out laundry. It's not very sociable, but I don't feel at all sociable in the heat.

There haven't - yet - been many roaches, thankfully; at the end of June Lady Jane was going outside on the upstairs balcony, finding them - on our neighbours' roof, perhaps - and bringing them in, usually to the bathroom. We've started closing the door that gives her access to the balcony as soon as it starts to get dark, and since then haven't had any nasty surprises when going to bed. It probably helps that I found a lavender-scented toilet cleaner, and apparently they don't like that scent at all, so it stops them coming up the pipes.

On the other hand, we've had a lot of tiny ants in the kitchen, as happened last year. I don't know where they come from, or where they have their nest. They just appeared one day.  If there's anything out on the counter-top, they'll find it. They even found a loaf of bread which I had enclosed in TWO double-sealed plastic bags. If Lady Jane leaves even a tiny piece of her wet food after her lunch, the saucer will be covered in ants within an hour. 

So I'm using bio-kill (now called 'clean kill') on any clumps or trails of ants that I find. I don't really like doing it, but we can't have ants all over the kitchen. I'm using a lemon-scented spray, too, on the counter tops and when washing the floors, in the hope of disrupting their trails. Theoretically ants don't like the smell of lemon, but it hasn't kept them away. Perhaps Cyprus ants do like lemon, as there are so many lemon trees here.

It's been hot... but not as hot as some of the heatwaves we've heard about in mainland Europe and the UK. It's been a bit humid in the evenings, but nowhere near as bad as it sometimes is. Perhaps August will be worse... but I hope not.

I finished the end-of-June post with an image of the predicted weather for the following week. So here's one for July. It doesn't look all that different, but in practice it's hotter in the daytime, and already 28 degrees or so by 6am most mornings.

Moving on from spring

 Towards the end of April I wrote about moving on from winter - packing away our warm clothes, duvet etc. In May, we enjoyed slightly cooler weather than usual, and a surprising amount of rain. According to the Cyprus mail, rainfall was more than twice as much as normal for the month. But still there's a potential water problem, and hose pipes are still banned, other than for watering plants.

By the end of May, the temperatures were increasing, though the humidity was still low. It was time to start getting ready for the summer. By July I won't want to do anything much during the daytime. On the last Saturday of May, I did some extra laundry, so I could put away even our thinner jackets, as well as stray gloves and hats that were still out. 

We hang things on lines here, and they were all dry within a couple of hours. 

Summer in Cyprus. Again.

 I have probably written about summer in Cyprus more than anything else in the past twenty years since I started this blog. And while I've started another couple of posts in the past few weeks, both are awaiting further developments before I can finish them. 

So, in the absence of anything else which I can write about today, here's yet another post about how summer crept up on us this year...

During May, I switched from jeans to shorts. I stopped wearing sweatshirts. We moved from our thin duvet at night to a duvet cover only, and then, by the end of the month were using just a flat sheet as a cover. I started using 'cold' water for showering; it doesn't really get cold in the summer, and the tepid, not-quite-lukewarm temperature of the water that has been in the outside tank is perfect for me. 

We cleaned our guest flat air conditioners at the end of May. We were expecting guests early in June, and wanted to ensure the air conditioners were available for them if they felt uncomfortably hot. We are at least somewhat acclimatised, and don't turn them on unless the room temperature exceeds 28 degrees. It had not, as yet, done so. 

However, by the first Friday of June, the forecast was for weather approaching that milestone. So we decided to go ahead and clean our upstairs a/c units. There are four on the main floor, and three upstairs; it took us perhaps forty minutes to complete the job. The house was pleasantly cool for a little longer, since they have to be run as cool as possible for ten minutes or so after using the cleaning spray.

Some of them, Richard said, looked fairly dirty inside. So next year we'll probably get them professionally cleaned. Assuming, that is, we remember before doing them ourselves...

Since the humidity was still low, I decided that it was an ideal day to start the annual curtain-washing. Up to 2013, this was an essential chore, and should probably have done more often than once a year. One of our cats, Tessie, used to spray. She was female, and spayed, but apparently it's not uncommon. Some of our books on lower shelves suffered, as did the curtains. As the weather got hotter, the smell in the curtains became more potent.

Tessie vanished twelve years ago, but I've continued washing the curtains almost every year in May or June. Cyprus is quite dusty, and I always like the fresh scent that permeates the house after washing curtains and drying them outside.  I say 'almost every year' because last year we flew out of Cyprus to the UK mid-June, and the curtains didn't get washed. After two years, they definitely needed doing. 

We have quite a few curtains, and I can usually fit three at a time in the washing machine. Everything I hung out on the line was dry within about an hour, so the washing machine was on almost continually, that day, and the following day too. 

With the curtains taken down, two or three at a time, I saw how dirty the windows were. It's unlikely to rain again until September or October, so I cleaned all the windows, inside and out. 

Along with curtains, I also washed the covers of our wheat bags, and the thin blankets we use when watching DVDs in the winter. When dry, I folded them to pack away in an airtight bag. We've learned from experience not to leave things like this unsealed, as they attract not just dust, but moths, and potentially other undesirable insects.

Since the weather wasn't yet too hot, I continued my early morning walks with my friend Sheila. On some evenings I went for short walks locally with Richard. In the middle of the month we went to Salina Park to an advertised 'Makerspace fair', which had a lot of booths showing what kind of things are done at the centre for youth.  We were surprised at how many people were there, given the minimal amount of publicity we had seen.

We were also interested to see that the café building, which had been empty since the park opened at the end of last year, was serving coffee. We didn't want coffee in the evening, but it was good to know that it was being used. 

I knew I wouldn't be using my oven much longer, and that we would start wanting ice cream. So I put the inner container for my ice cream maker in the freezer, in preparation. 

Regular June activities included a birthday lunch for one of our teenage friends, and the local Christian writing group last meeting of the season, followed by a potluck lunch. Richard has been assisting one of the members of the group with self-publication of her book. 

We were delighted to host some other friends for a leisurely lunch on June 20th. One of them was my most long-standing friend Anne, whom I met when we were both seven. We managed to stay in touch all this time, and even met up in the UK a couple of times, a few years ago. This time, my friend and her husband were in Cyprus for a wedding. It was the other end of the island, but they made the two-hour journey to visit us, which was very enjoyable.

As June progressed, the weather was slowly, inexorably, warming up. My last morning walk of the season with Sheila was on June 21st. She was going away for a week, and it was already approaching 25C at 6.15am.  My last use of the oven for the season was on June 22nd when we had our twice-monthly get-together with Sheila and her family, and I made a cake for dessert. 

And on Monday 23rd June, we started on our summer salads. Which doesn't mean we limit ourselves to lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes all summer.  In 2020, when we knew we would be here all summer, I scoured my recipe books for salad ideas. I checked the Internet, too. I jotted down some of the most appealing ideas, and - of course - adjusted them to our preferences, and the available produce. I try to make three or four salads first thing in the morning with a balance of ingredients. At least one will have some protein such as canned fish, air-fried chicken or legumes.  

On 23rd June I prepared a salmon (canned), cucumber and avocado salad; a peach, tomato and onion salad (with 'fake' vegan feta); and a wholemeal pasta salad with sundried tomatoes. 

This was our main meal, in the evening, but we only managed about half of it. So we had the same thing the following day, with the addition of some coleslaw with a lemon juice dressing rather than mayonnnaise. 

Another example is this, which we started a couple of days later:

The protein dish at the top is chopped boiled eggs with lightly boiled broccoli and leeks, the one next to it is mushrooms, new potatoes and green beans. Underneath the egg dish is a salad with lettuce, red grapes, avocado and walnuts, and the other one is the what remained of the coleslaw, which lasted us three days rather than two. 

There was rather a lot that had to be cooked in that second example, which is why I prepare these salads in the mornings, around 6.30 or 7.00 usually. The kitchen isn't too hot at that time, and there's plenty of time for cooked ingredients to be chilled in the fridge. 

There's enough variety in the salad recipes I use that I don't have to duplicate anything for a couple of weeks, but I might do so depending on what ingredients I can easily find. Our fruit shop has inexpensive, great quality avocadoes at present, so I've bought quite a few. They keep well in the fridge, for weeks, and give a nice smooth texture to contrast with the crunchiness of some other salad ingredients.

So we're all set for the summer, I hope. First thing in the morning I walk either to the fruit shop or round the block, to get a bit of exercise. Three days a week, I then prepare salads. I'll deal with laundry or whatever else has to be done before it gets too hot, then aestivate in my study with the air conditioning set to 28C. Not that I will actually sleep. I'll work on photos (I still haven't finished our 2024 photobook, and want to order it soon), and deal with any bills, and do some writing. I'll blog about the books I read, and perhaps work on my sites. 

August in Cyprus and a plumbing manifold replacement

When I got back to Cyprus on August 6th, Richard was supposed to be away, working with his PA kit at a conference elsewhere on the island. So it was something of a surprise to get a text message, after the plane landed, saying that he would be meeting me. It was nice to have a few unexpected hours together. But it was very stressful for him as he came up against bureaucracy and other problems. However, he eventually arrived at the conference venue the following afternoon. 

I had hoped for a relatively peaceful week. It always takes me a few days to get over the brain-fog and exhaustion that hits me when I return to Cyprus. The heat and humidity don't help, but in early August it wasn't as hot as it had been in July.  32-33 degrees in the daytime, rather than 37-38 (or more). 

I was delighted to find a 'Foody' voucher in my email, reminding me that I hadn't used their delivery service for six weeks. Not really surprising, as I hadn't been in Cyprus for that period.  So I ordered a  takeaway salad that cost me almost nothing by the time the voucher was used, and provided a good meal for me without any effort. Not just on the day after I arrived back; there was plenty for lunch the following day, too. Which turned out to be a good thing...

The following day was not my favourite of the week. In our guest flat, Richard had discovered a slow leak in one of the pipes in the bathroom. Someone had put a small plastic container at the back of the sink cabinet to catch the drips, but had forgotten to let us know that there was a drip. We didn't know how long this had been going on, but there was some significant rust and it was clear that the 'manifold' was rusty and needed replacing. 

I had no idea what a manifold was, so Richard sent me a helpful diagram:

Our young friend L had been in Cyprus over the summer and had done several jobs for us, in our bathroom and elsewhere. But this was not something he felt able to do. So Richard asked a plumber whom we know to take a look. He is very busy, and said he could slot us in on the Wednesday after I returned. Which would have been okay, except that there was a family staying in the guest flat: friends of friends, who have stayed before. They usually go out for most of the day, but were not happy at the idea of an unknown plumber and his mates being in the flat without anyone else there.

So I had agreed to be in the flat with the plumbers. 

They arrived about 11.30, an hour earlier than they had specified. So I wasn't prepared or ready for them. Thankfully they left again for a break around 12.45 saying they needed to get some extra parts. So I was able to get upstairs again to the part of the house where we live. I ate my lunch at speed, and made a frappe, and used the loo... something I could not have done downstairs with the plumbers working in the bathroom. 

Then I filled my water bottle and found a book to read. They returned about two o'clock, and told me that they would probably be another two hours. At half past three, they said they probably wouldn't be finished before five. At five o'clock, they still weren't finished... 

I managed to read an entire book that day. I had to sit in the guest flat without using the air conditioning, since the plumbers wanted the front door open - they were in and out constantly to their van.  It took me a few hours before I realised I could at least turn on a fan. 

It took over six hours in all, with three guys on the job. We still don't know why it took so long, but the result looked good:  

As a friend commented, a manifold a bit like an octopus. Although ours doesn't have eight 'legs'. 

But the day was so draining it took me another couple of days to feel myself again. 

Summer in Cyprus: Sweltering, Spraying, and Staying Indoors

Holiday brochures advertise Cyprus with 'sun, sea and surf' (or similar). Which is all very well for visitors, staying in hotels by the beach for a week or two. But when one lives in Cyprus, it's not quite so simple... 

June this year was - by Cyprus standards - reasonably cool. Warm enough that we didn't need to wear anything other than tee shirts and shorts. I switched from trainers to sandals, too, or flip-flops... I much prefer wearing trainers and socks but strongly dislike having over-warm sweaty feet. 

By the end of May we had started using our bedroom ceiling fan at night, and some of the other ceiling fans in the daytime, as needed. But through the whole of June there was no need for air conditioning, even for the computers. With windows open, a pleasant breeze cooled the house through the day. 

Then we spent twelve days in the UK, as I wrote about in another post. It was busy, and productive, and - for me, at any rate - a wonderful break, seeing many of the people I love the most. We arrived back in Larnaka after 10pm on July 12th and while it was warm - I had removed my coat and sweater before leaving the plane - it wasn't unpleasantly so. I was particularly pleased that it didn't feel humid, since we had to spend about ten minutes standing on the steps of the plane waiting for the bus to the terminal. 

Sweltering...

Reality hit home in the morning. I didn't wake up until about 7.30am, and it was already thirty degrees outside, according to my phone's weather app. But although I was tired, I knew I had to get to the froutaria for some oranges and other fruit for our breakfast. So I went out, keeping mainly in the shade. It was probably good to get some fresh air and sunshine first thing, but I don't think I appreciated it much. 

That was the start of a heatwave that lasted two weeks, breaking all kinds of records. Most of the southern part of Europe experienced something similar. Then a couple of days that were more normal, for Cyprus in July, and then there was another high temperature warning for the next few days.

'How do you cope?' This is a question I'm asked regularly. I've never been good with hot temperatures, and I know from experience that if I'm outside in the sunshine, or if temperatures are more than about 30C at most, I really don't 'cope'. I become slow, lethargic, and often develop a migraine. 

So over the years in Cyprus I've developed a kind of summer routine. While I often try to be out of Cyprus for a few weeks, there are always some hot summer days when I'm here. I used to say that I do everything I need to do before 8am, then 'aestivate' until the evening. I don't actually go to sleep, but I don't leave the house, if at all possible. I shop locally first thing, and if we have to go to a bigger supermarket, we go in the evening rather than the daytime. 

Spraying

One of the things I like least about Cyprus summers is the increased insect population. Not mosquitoes - they are worse in the spring and autumn, and we mostly avoid those in the house by having netting over open windows. No, my 'bête noire' is, literally, a black beast whose name I still slightly shudder to mention.  (Whispering): Cockroaches.  

I had hoped that by having our house connected to the mains drainage there would be fewer - certainly we have fewer access chambers in our side yard, and the lids fit much better. But a neighbouring house was having a lot of major renovations and for the last couple of weeks of June, and most of July, we had at least one of these nasty beasties in the house every day.  Mostly deceased, I'm relieved to say. Some caught by the cats, and some stunned by the 'biokill' spray. I use that liberally around all possible entrances and as many hiding places as I can think of. 

I did this as soon as the first one appeared in June, and again just before we went away. Then I repeated the process at the end of July.  Thankfully there have been fewer since August started.  

Salads

One feature of the last few years has been eating a lot of salads; not just lettuce and tomatoes but a wide variety of different salads, inspired by both cookery books and online sites. This, for instance, is a sardine and lentil-based salad: 

From July 1st until at least August 31st, I don't turn on the oven. Originally I determined to do all the food preparation first thing in the morning, but that hasn't happened this year. It's mostly in the half hour or so before we eat. 

After lunch on Sundays we have, for a couple of years, eaten dark chocolate Bounty bars - not entirely dairy-free but low-enough in dairy that they're not a problem for Richard. 

We used to buy these in airports before flying back to Cyprus, then for a while they were available here. Nearly two years ago, we mentioned this to some friends who were soon to fly out, and they scoured their neighbourhood, bringing out over 40 of these bars, enough to last nearly a year. Here are just a few of them:

Alas, they were discontinued nearly a year ago. We didn't realise this, but were disappointed not to find any during our UK trip in January. We did look again earlier this month, but were not surprised to find them still unavailable. 

On the Sunday after we returned, we ate the last of our stash. Possibly the last dark chocolate Bounty in Cyprus... 

Celebration

A week after our return, we celebrated our anniversary. The heatwave was intense, and I didn't even want to go out in the evening. So we ordered a Lebanese takeaway, which was delicious: 

It was excellent value, too  Supposedly a vegetarian meze for two, it was twice as much as we could eat in one sitting, so it provided a second main meal the following day.  To make it even better value Richard had just been sent a seven euro discount voucher from Foody. 

Staying indoors

My aestivation might sound like a kind of lockdown, but it's not the same at all as the restrictions we were under three-and-a-half years ago. The main theoretical difference is that it's my decision, rather than being enforced by anyone else. Richard, who deals much better than I do with heat, has been out by car in the daytime many times to see people, or visit his boat, or pick something up at one of the DIY stores.

A major practical difference between my self-enforced aestivation and a lockdown is that there's no restriction on the people we see. A few weeks ago, we were invited to a young friend's 18th birthday dinner; it was the first time I'd been out in an evening since we returned from the UK, and the outside temperature was 36 degrees even at 5.30pm. I struggled to walk the short distance from the car to our friend's home, and was thankful it was not at lunchtime (as in previous years). 

However it was a very enjoyable evening, spent in our friends' air conditioned living room. 

Our friends continue to come for games mornings on Tuesdays, though during the summer we play in my study with the air conditioning on, sitting on the floor, rather than at the dining room table:

And another young friend, far more able to deal with the heat than I am, has been doing some repairs on the side of our house, where the surface spritz had been crumbling away. 

Steps

I don't want to lose the habit of daily walking. So I still aim to get out almost every morning at about 6am, if only to walk the 500 metres or so to the froutaria and back. On mornings when the temperature shows 30 degrees or more by 6am (and that's happened three or four times) that's more than enough. 

On mornings when it is only 24-25 degrees, I walk a couple of kilometres around the local neighbourhood. It's not a lot, but it gives me some fresh air and exercise, albeit limited. For the last few days our friends have been away and I've walked to their house shortly after 6am to feed their cats and (a couple of times) water their garden. Thankfully the temperature was only 26-28 by the time I was home again at around 7.30. 

During the less hot periods of the year - usually mid-September to late June - I walk an average of about 7,000 - 8,000 steps per day, or around 50,000 - 55,000 per week. When we were in London, walking all over the place, this continued. But at this time of year, I just about manage 30,000 in a week.  

I'm relieved to know, due to some recent research, that we only actually need around 2,500 steps per day (at a reasonable pace) to benefit our hearts and blood vessels, and around 4,000 to start reducing the risk of premature dying. More than that has a greater benefit, of course; but according to a Japanese study, the optimum number is around 5,000 - 7,000. That does talk about 'older people', and I'm not yet quite at the age they mention, but for me this is achievable. Much more is not. 

I'm trying to use my indoor air conditioned time productively: sorting and backing up photos, maintaining my websites, doing some filing, tidying up my folders, spending a bit longer at Duolingo. And reading a bit more than usual. August - so far - has been a tad cooler than July (which was apparently the hottest month ever recorded globally). The days are noticeably getting shorter and a month from now we might even be able to stop using the air conditioning.

As for the beach... we went there once with our grandchildren in April, It's been too hot to go there so far, this summer, and we haven't yet found a suitable evening to go with our friends. If we don't manage it this summer, I won't mind at all.  

Preparations for the Cyprus Summer

I have written several times before about our preparation for Cyprus summers, and here I am again, on the same topic.  After more than quarter of a century living here, we're used to it; the only slight variation is whether it starts to feel too hot towards the end of May, or some time in June. And even that's somewhat predictable; there's often a burst of heat in the last week of May, making us rush to clean the air conditioners, only to find that we don't actually need them until mid or even late June.

This year is a little different from previous years in that our guest apartment - the flat comprising the ground floor of our house - is pretty much booked up for the whole summer. We don't rent it out, we offer it to family, friends, friends-of-friends and other contacts needing a bit of rest and relaxation. And if they're coming from the UK or similar climes, they're likely to need a bit of air conditioning even if we're still coping without.

So towards the end of May, when there was a short gap between guests, we cleaned all the air conditioners in the guest flat. It's something we do every year before switching them on: we've done it so often that we can clean all five in about fifteen minutes.  The filters have to be removed, washed and sprayed with anti-bacterial spray that's now widely available at many shops. The units themselves also have to be sprayed, after removing any obvious dust. And then they have to be run, as cold as possible, for about fifteen minutes so that the spray evaporates. 

We had expected to do the seven units in our part of the house a few days later, but - as happens so often - the temperatures reduced again in early June, and we were fine with just the ceiling fans. Just as well, really, since we did quite a bit of entertaining in the first week or so of the month, with three different sets of friends for meals on three occasions in the course of one week.  

We had abandoned our thin duvet in favour of just the duvet cover at the end of May, but I didn't wash the duvets - even the thick one - until mid-June, by which time I was sure we wouldn't need either of them again until the autumn. I used to have trouble squashing them into the closet where they're stored in the summer, but a year or two ago we bought some useful air-tight packaging which keeps them dust-free and easy to find when needed.

Last Saturday I switched us from a duvet cover to just a single sheet; it often gets kicked off during the night, but with a cat who likes to sleep on the bed in the daytime, I prefer to have the under-sheet covered.

Washing each duvet takes up the whole of our washing machine, so I can only do one at a time.  Then I leave each one for at least a day on the line outside, to ensure it's completely dry. 

So it was a week later that I embarked on the annual curtain-wash. The curtains we bought when we moved here seventeen years ago are still in great condition. As promised by the people who made them for us, they wash very well and don't seem to fade.  But there are quite a few of them, as well as the ones I made for our dining room nearly two-and-a-half years ago. 

Taking them down is easier than it used to be, as we no longer use pull-cords - they started deteriorating about six years ago, and although we did manage to replace one or two, it wasn't easy to find replacements, and a real hassle to put in place. 

Since by around 20th June the weather is fairly hot but not too humid, curtains dry extremely quickly. So one one day I ran the washing machine at least three times, with three or four full-sized curtains in each.  By the time a two-hour washing cycle had finished, the previous curtains were dry and ready to re-hang. 

It's not a difficult task - the washing machine does all the work! - but I have to be in the right frame of mind. And with the windows bare of curtains, I saw how grubby some of them were, and gave them a good clean. 

Well worth doing and I was pleased with the result when everything was finished, but rather tired, too. 

June has a series of birthdays, and the final writers' group meeting of the season (followed by lunch). To our surprise, it rained on June 19th, heavily enough that there were still a few puddles in the street the following morning when I went out for a walk with my friend Sheila:

It was the last walk until at least mid-September. Sometimes we keep going until the temperature is 25C or more by 6am, but that hadn't happened; however Sheila and most of her family were going away for ten days, and we never walk in July or August. 

So I remembered to take a picture of the Salt Lake, still looking fairly full (helped by the previous day's rain) and even with some flamingoes in the distance, although they can't be seen on this photo: 

It did get a bit warmer within a couple of days, although I do try to take a short walk in the neighbourhood most mornings, staying in the shade as far as possible. 

It still wasn't extremely hot in the daytime, but last Friday we decided to clean the air conditioners in our part of the house.  The same system worked well: Richard went up the ladder and removed the filters, which I then cleaned in the bathroom, while he went to the next air conditioner: 

We had bought a bottle of spray last summer, but I was pretty sure we were going to use it all up and need more. So we bought another bottle a few weeks ago, in a brand we hadn't previously seen - but they all seem to work well. Sure enough, last year's spray ran out when we still had three units to clean. The new one seemed to spray more evenly, and had a surprising scent of coconut, which is considerably less unpleasant than some we have used. 

In the evening, our current guest flat visitors decided to treat us to a meal at a taverna in Kourium, and then this year's Shakespeare production, 'Taming of the Shrew'. 

We hadn't been to one of the Shakespeare plays for years - not for over a decade, apparently. The last reference I can find was to 'Merchant of Venice', which we saw in June 2010. 

We hadn't previously seen 'Taming of the Shew'. I knew the general outline, of course, but was glad of the complementary programme which gave an outline of the plot, including the names of the significant characters. It's quite a confusing play, with people masquerading as others (and some of the male characters were played by women) so it was useful to have a reference. 

It was very well done - a controversial play, of course, but with some humour, and irony, and - as ever - excellent costumes and setting. 

We didn't get home until about 11.30pm which is well past my preferred bedtime, so it's a good thing I wasn't planning to walk with Sheila on the Saturday, as I didn't wake up until nearly 6.45am. 

And still, it isn't nearly as hot as it can be. I have the air conditioning on in my study right now, but that's because my thermometer was showing 29 degrees - which was the outside 'shade' temperature - and computers don't do so well in temperatures above 28. I don't either. We run our a/cs at 28 degrees (82F, for anyone who still thinks in Fahrenheit) which is relatively efficient, and cools us down sufficiently to be comfortable. 

As ever, the cats treat summer quite differently. Jane likes it, and pointedly leaves any room where air conditioning is running. Alex, by contrast, likes to find the coolest places he can. And if he can't find any room with a/c, he tries places that look most uncomfortable to me:

Of course that's not all we do to prepare for summer. I've already stewed and frozen a couple of crates of soft fruit - peaches and apricots - which we're only able to get here during the warmer months. I'm still making hot meals most evenings, and using the oven, although - once again - I plan to stop using the oven during July and August, and focus mainly on different kinds of salad for our meals. 

I've also sprayed and covered nasty crawling insects (I don't even like to use their name) which come in from outside or up the drains, so that Richard can dispose of them. It was about one per day for the first couple of weeks of the month, thankfully fewer in the past few days. Spraying possible entry-points with 'biokill' does seem to make a difference.

Today we had to have a new air conditioning unit installed in one of the guest flat bedrooms. A couple of days ago our current visitors told us they'd been awoken by the old air conditioner making a loud noise, then ejecting pieces of ice! Not something we - or any of our guests - had experienced previously. It was a unit that was, probably, close to twenty years old, and clear that the compressor had given up.  A new one should not only be more effective, but more efficient too in electricity usage. And it's likely to get a lot of use this summer, with so many visitors expected.

For anyone wondering if anything has changed over the years, or who wants to read even more on the same topic, here's what I wrote about summer in 2012; here's my post about summer approaching in 2014; here's one about preparing for summer in 2016; here's another in 2020; and here's one in summer 2022 which is more about what we were doing during summer, rather than as it approached. They're not the only ones, either... but more than enough, I hope, for anyone bored enough to want to read them. 

Friday update

For once, the week has not whizzed past as rapidly as expected. And that's not because Summer is here; oddly enough, it's been less hot than expected (no more than 30C in the sun) and perhaps more significantly, it hasn't become really humid yet. Somewhat sticky in evenings, but really not bad at all during the daytime. I know this will change sooner or later, but in the meantime am enjoying cool early mornings, and being able to use the kitchen in the daytime without either suffering or using the air conditioning.

On Monday, the Christian Writers' group met here in the morning, and we had a potluck lunch since it was our last meeting until September. People travel out of Cyprus during the summer, very often, and it's likely to be much too hot to do anything much - and we like eating together a couple of times per year. It was good that I had something to think about, since I was feeling a little on tenterhooks: our son Tim was flying out of the UK on Monday.

Or so we thought.

Originally he had been planning to come to Cyprus for just two and a half weeks in August. But for various reasons his plans changed, and he decided that he would like a longer break in the sun. We were able to find some very good value flights via Lufthansa, with the outgoing ones on Monday, due to arrive at 2.00am Tuesday morning.

Mid-afternoon, Tim called to say that while he was on the bus on his way to the airport, he had received a call letting him know that his flight was cancelled! However they told him to go to the airport anyway and they would sort it out for him. He wondered if they would put him on a bus to Heathrow and the Cyprus Air flight... but no. They booked him into the Airport Hotel overnight, and found three flights on the Tuesday, due to arrive at 5.00pm. Which is a much more sociable arrival time, and since he was coming for eight weeks, losing one day isn't too big a deal.

He had to be up very early (4.00am UK time!) on Tuesday, but all the flights went smoothly, arriving in time for the connections, and we were very happy to see our son at the airport when he finally arrived. He was tired, but suggested a game in the evening... at which he creamed us both:


(Anyone who plays Settlers and wants to know a little more about the game, I did write a brief post about this game on my Settlers blog which has been much neglected recently).

Yes, that's Cleo in the box lid. She has become much more sociable in the summer, and her favourite place to sleep is in the lid of any box that happens to be open. Whether or not she actually fits...

On Wednesday Tim relaxed, and slept somewhat, and chatted. At least, he tried to relax. It wasn't easy because the road works finally started in our street, and they were extremely noisy. The cats were upset and scared. Well; oddly enough Cleo, usually the most nervous cat, wasn't too worried. she did flick her ears a few times when a particularly loud machine went by, but other than that did not seem too concerned. Sophia sat on the stairs, looking extremely worried, but then she always hates loud diggers, which she seems to think are going to eat her.

Tessie surprised us the most by being truly terrified. She mewed - real mews, not her usual chattering cries - extremely loudly when I was in the bathroom, evidently telling me to get out. Then she hid under the bed. We can only assume that she thought we were having a major earthquake and was trying to keep us safe.

Thankfully the pipes seem to have been laid very quickly, and the road was back to normal again by late afternoon.

We were due to play a game with friends in the evening but they had to cancel due to illness, so Tim watched a DVD with Richard in the evening . And on Thursday decided that he'd done enough relaxing, so he went to the office to do some (voluntary) work with Richard. As he has done today.

Then friends who are shortly leaving Cyprus had dinner with us last night. So it's been quite a busy and enjoyable week.

Too many jackets?

Neither of us is particularly observant, so we tend to get used to the status quo, whatever that might be, forgetting to do anything about it. Over the winter, several jackets hang on the coat rack in our living room. We were still using light jackets in early April, but have not needed any since we returned to Cyprus early in May after our UK visit. However, somehow it didn't occur to either of us to move them somewhere else for the summer.

Until this morning. Actually it started yesterday when I put a load of laundry on, and realised that now we're wearing shorts and tee-shirts, I wasn't going to fill the machine. So I looked around for something else to add to the load, and decided to wash one of the jackets. Then I thought that perhaps today (Saturday) I'd do an extra load of laundry, and wash all the rest, then put them away in one of our closets for a few months.

So I removed them all, and the umbrellas, leaving a rather empty coat rack with nothing but sun hats:


I put two kagoules (waterproof light jackets) away at once as they're not washable. And I put away my warm winter jacket, one I've had for at least twenty years, but which I hardly ever wear as it doesn't often get cold enough. Everything else went in the wash.

Except that it was two entire loads. Just for jackets. Just for two people. This seems to me a little over the top. And while I forgot to take a picture of the overloaded coat rack before I removed them, I did take a photo of the jackets hanging out to dry:


That's two very light-weight zip-up hooded jackets of mine, one denim jacket that used to be Richard's but which I appropriated, and two fleeces of mine, plus three of Richard's fleeces, and his black body-warmer. All of which we did wear in the winter and early spring at different times. But somehow nine jackets - indeed, twelve including the three I put away without washing - seems somewhat excessive. Particularly as we have a few others that never left the closet, oh, and the one I washed yesterday.

And no, we don't buy clothes if we can help it. None of these jackets or fleeces is new. Somehow clothes, like other clutter, seem to accumulate in our house.

Rather like the large number of sun-hats now hanging on the coat-rack, which don't even include the ones Richard keeps in the boat for sailing.

Summer has arrived in Cyprus

So, the first day of Summer was a couple of days ago, June 21st. Tomorrow, June 24th, is Midsummer's Day.

Logically speaking, then, the last day of summer should be June 27th.

Alas, it doesn't work that way in Cyprus. In the UK, some summers do seem to have only about a week of warm weather (though not, I gather, right now). But we're pretty much guaranteed heat and high humidity for the next two or three months, now that June is coming to an end. I really can't complain: the weather during May was warm but not over-hot. We had a couple of days earlier in June that seemed to threaten summer, but then a thunderstorm and some rain about ten days ago cooled the climate down, to about 27-28C, which is quite bearable.

We did run the air conditioning at night a few times, for a couple of hours, since the evenings were rather sticky. I've also got into my summer mode of doing any housework or shopping before 9.00am... as far as possible. Except that yesterday it wasn't possible. On Wednesdays I change our sheets and clean upstairs, and we have someone from the office to a cold lunch... and last night we were expecting friends for a meal too, who needed to go to the airport later.

So I needed to get out to the Froutaria; I did manage to do that fairly early. And I put a loaf of bread to cook in the breadmaker, and made some more lemonade as we had run out, and froze some extra lemon juice in ice cube trays...

By which time it was almost 10.00.

I was aware that I was feeling warmer than I like to be, but I took things fairly slowly. I changed the sheets, and did the laundry, and put away Monday's laundry, and dusted and mopped and cleaned out the cat litter trays and made the bed... which doesn't sound like much, but took me until nearly 1.00, with very few (short) breaks to sit down. Then I cleaned out the glass bottles where we store lemonade (using crushed eggshells to do so - very useful) and bottled the lemonade and made egg mayonnaise and washed tomatoes and hung the sheets and towels out to dry...

Then we had lunch and I sat down for half an hour or so to look at email and Facebook, etc. And was aware that I was feeling extremely hot and rather headachey and very tired.

So when I went to the kitchen at 2.30 to start cutting up fruit for fruit salad, and making ice cream, I put the air conditioning on. At 28C as usual... and I was astounded at what a difference it made. I don't think the kitchen was more than about 30C, but having the cooler air, and the humidity removed gave me a new lease of life. So I washed vegetables and fruit and chopped them and prepared food for an hour or two, feeling much more energetic than I had expected. I cleaned the kitchen too, fairly thoroughly, and emptied the dishwasher which went on after lunch, and FINALLY got into the shower around 5.00pm.

By then it was a little cooler, and I'd switched off the kitchen a/c. Our friends arrived with Richard shortly after 6.00 and we ate our meal by open windows with the ceiling fan on, and it didn't feel too hot at all. When we went to bed we ran the bedroom a/c for a couple of hours, as it gets humid in the evenings, but I slept just fine, and at 5.30am when I woke this morning it was still a little cooler out than in.

But I had a feeling it was going to be hot today. The prediction was for 33C in the shade. So I put away the laundry, and even did a little ironing, and emptied the dishwasher, and made orange juice, and froze 2.5kg tomatoes in a-little-over-400g pots, all before 8.00.

At 8.30, even having just had my shower, I felt rather over-warm. I checked the weather forecast, and it told me that it was already 32C. So I turned on my study air conditioner, and will probably leave it on for most of the day. Running it at 28 isn't very expensive, and is amazingly effective. I am very, very thankful for air conditioning.

So, summer is here, and will probably stay here for at least three more months.

Summer in Cyprus: first trip to the beach

Yesterday afternoon, some of the Cyprus home educators decided to meet on the beach, taking picnics. I went with our friends - Richard joined us later - and was surprised to find how very warm the sea was, given that the weather hasn't yet got REALLY hot, and it's only early June. I walked out into the sea up to waist height and didn't feel at all chilly. I didn't swim; I was wearing my swimsuit but hadn't taken my tee-shirt off, thinking I wouldn't want to go more than ankle deep, but it was very nice to be in the sea again.

Elisabeth spent some time trying to dig in the sand with a selection of small spades, then thought she might like a drink of water:


She is quite determined, but did become somewhat annoyed that she couldn't work out how to get into it by herself:


Helen was there too, but spent a lot of time playing with the other children and digging by the sea. I spent some time showing her how to pack sand in a bucket and the turn it over to make a little castle, which she promptly knocked down. She did sit still for a couple of minutes, though:


Then she was off, running around and playing. The small have so much energy. It was lovely to see how, at two-and-three-quarters, Helen is now starting to play with another friend's daughter Aimee, who is of similar age. At one point they found a "stage" where they stood side by side singing:


The sun starts to go down in Cyprus fairly early, even at this time of year. All the older children had been playing in and out of the sea, coming to eat a bit and then going back into the water. As the light faded, they were still doing so:


Before we ate, I took Elisabeth into the sea to get most of the sand off her, and to wash my own hands (not that sea water is particularly hygienic, but it's better than mixing food with sand). She stayed fairly clean, on one or other of her parents, while she ate some bread and cheese and cucumber, but then decided to get down and explore the beach some more.

A while later, Helen, who had seen me washing her little sister earlier, sidled up to me, pulled a sad face, and said, 'Sue.... Elisabess is dirty again!'

I think she's learning the art of understatement...

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!

The first - and worst - sign that Summer is almost here.

Wednesday morning, June 1st, was bright and sunny, but it wasn't unpleasantly hot when I went downstairs first thing in the morning. Nothing to let me know that Summer is indeed here, in Cyprus.

Nothing, that is, until in my not-quite-awake morning-routine way I pulled the cords that open the curtains in my study.

'Plop!'

It wasn't a very loud noise, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed something fall to the floor.

Something brown, about an inch long, which quickly ran away.

Ugh. Shudder.

I didn't scream, as I did nearly fourteen years ago when I first saw one of these nasty creatures that somehow get inside our houses during the summer months, but I did make a loud gasp. Then I rushed for the Biokill, and sprayed the area where it had disappeared to. And other darker spots in the room where I thought it might go.

Then I went to make my morning coffee. And to fetch a yogurt pot. Thankfully I spotted the nasty insect running across the floor, apparently undeterred by the Biokill, and managed to clamp the pot over it. Then, hearing it struggling, and concerned that one of the cats might knock the pot off, I put the Biokill container on top to weigh it down:


And there it still sits.

On Friday, when I was sweeping my study, I found another one under the sofa - thankfully not alive; perhaps the Biokill was effective anyway. I took a deep breath and swept it out of the door. That one was easy.

This morning I had to repress a shudder again, as I found one in an unexpected place where I wasn't expecting anything to move....


-oh, and if anyone is in doubt about what exactly I am talking about - you can find the answer in this post about yogurt pots and nasty insects!

Summer must be just around the corner in Cyprus

Visitors to this island might be forgiven for thinking that it's Summer. Particularly if they come from cooler climes. The sun has (mostly) been shining, and the temperature is pleasantly warm. If only this were, indeed, the weather to be expected for the next few months, Cyprus would be a wonderful place.

I determined, this year to be as ready as possible for Summer.. and also to delay its official onset in our household until June 1st. Last week the thermometer did climb to more than 30C one day, and I still held out. The following day it was back to 27C, which is much more pleasant, with a relatively cool 19C overnight. We still have the thin duvet on our bed. I haven't got out the frappé making machine yet, nor have I blended any smoothies, or run any air conditioning - although we did start using the ceiling fans a little last week. I haven't started wearing shorts yet, either. I abandoned my sweatshirt shortly after we returned from the UK three weeks ago, and put aside my trainers and socks for sandals. But I'm still wearing jeans.

And while it might be obvious to most people that right before summer is a good time to clean the air conditioning units, it's not something either of us generally remembers to do.

This year, I determined to do better. We have some special spray, and the job simply requires standing on a chair, opening a unit, removing the filters, washing out the dust, spraying the filters, then returning to the unit and spraying liberally inside that, wiping away any obvious dust or mould. Then, after five minutes or so, the spray has to be washed off the filters, and I shake them to get rid of most of the water... put them back, find the remote (sometimes a lengthy task...) switch on at the wall, and run for a couple of minutes to distribute the spray and to make sure that all is functioning as it should.

It only takes about ten minutes in all. The problem is that, in all, we have nine air conditioning units. And it's surprisingly warm work. So I've done our dining room, and the study, and also the two in our guest flat which haven't been done for rather longer than we care to think about, and were THICK with dust inside. I was going to do the living room and kitchen ones today, but was rather over-tired. I plan to do the bedroom units tomorrow.

And, although June 1st - ie tomorrow - was going to be my date for allowing Summer to arrive in our home, I think I may be able to delay it even longer. The forecast is for much of the same - no heatwaves imminent at all. I might start making frappés and smoothies just because they're so delicious, but if I can delay shorts, duvet-removal and air conditioning a while longer, it can only be a good thing.

Oh.. and for those wanting to know how Daniel and Becky are getting on, Dan has updated his rather neglected blog, with a post about how he's worried that he's turning into his parents....

Bird of Paradise plant blooms again in Cyprus

Around a year ago, our bird of paradise plant first burst into bloom. The amazing display lasted a couple of weeks, with new 'tongues' appearing as the older ones faded away.

The plant continued growing, almost bursting out of its pot. I kept thinking that we must buy a larger tub for it, and some more soil. And I don't quite know where the year has gone, but we didn't get around to it... and now it's blooming again:


So I don't want to disturb it until these stunning flower heads have gone.

I've been watering the plants on the front terrace of our guest flat about three times per week, all summer. It's slightly less hot now, so I've cut down to twice a week, and the plants seem to be doing well. Once it starts raining, I may not need to water them at all.

As usual, most of our petunias withered away when the weather started to get really hot in July... all except this one purple petunia, which has not only survived, but appears to have spread itself out and re-planted itself somewhat:

A productive weekend, courtesy of the Froutaria special offers

I mentioned - when writing recently about making and freezing raw apple sauce - that I have determined to make more use of the special offer pre-bagged produce at a euro per bag at our local froutaria.

On Friday last week, I went there and spotted a bag of lemons. They looked rather grubby and spotty - perhaps even windfalls - but as far as I could tell, they were locally grown ones. I hadn't made any lemonade since just before Tim arrived, early August, and Richard very much likes my home made lemon squash.

So I carried home a bag of lemons, along with other produce I wanted, and when I weighed them, discovered that I had bought over two and a half kilogrammes:


They were distinctly dirty...


But I scrubbed them well, particularly the ones I was using for peel. As they were small, and rather hard, they weren't all that juicy; it took 25 of them to make a litre of juice. But I got my three bottles of lemonade to put in the fridge, which should last a couple of weeks, probably:


Cost: approximately two euros (a little less than one bag of lemons, one kilogramme of sugar, and some cooking time).

I actually made the lemonade on Saturday morning, after I'd popped to the froutaria again. This time, the one-euro shelf was piled high with produce. I immediately decided on two bags of tomatoes:


- which turned out to be about 7kg in all when I weighed them. I also bought another bag of apples - big ones, this time - although I hadn't quite decided what to do with them. With the other fruit and veg I wanted, I was quite weighed down on the walk home.

Still, despite continued high temperatures, I was feeling quite energetic. So while the lemonade was simmering, I chose about two and a half kilogrammes of the slightly better tomatoes, and popped them, a few at a time, in boiling water until they had softened. The first time I prepared chopped tomatoes for the freezer (to replace canned chopped tomatoes, which are expensive in Cyprus, and apparently not very good for us as the tomato juice reacts with the inner coating on the cans) I carefully skinned them all after blanching. It was time-consuming, and seemed like rather a waste.

The second time, I left the skins on when I chopped them... and they were just fine when used in lasagnes or casseroles or soups. I still do the blanching, because it helps the juice to be released as I chop the tomatoes, but it's a great deal quicker not having to skin them.

The result of this was six 450g containers of chopped tomatoes in their juice to be put in the freezer:


As for the remaining tomatoes (more than 4kg of them) I had decided to make passata - thick tomato puree - which I also planned to freeze. I found many recipes online, some of them suggesting that the tomatoes be roasted first, most of them recommending that chopped onions and garlic be gently fried in olive oil before adding the tomatoes (roasted or raw). There were many variations on the theme, so I thought I'd begin with as simple a recipe as possible. I had a very large onion, so I chopped that and gently stir-fried it. Then I cut up about eight or nine smallish garlic cloves - too small to be worth roasting whole. But no point crushing, since they were going to be put in the blender anyway. I threw in about a tablespoon of basil, as I think it goes well with tomatoes. Then I roughly chopped all the remaining tomatoes, and added them, a few at a time, stirring as I did. My largest saucepan was fairly full by the time I'd put them all in:


Then I left them to simmer, stirring now and again. The recipes I'd found online gave different times for this process, but all agreed that the contents of the pan should be softened and reduced. A bit like preparing fruit for jam, apparently.

After about an hour, the contents all felt soft, and were somewhat reduced, although not as much as I had expected. I was also a little surprised to see that the colour now looked more like tomato soup than passata from packets:


It even tasted rather like tomato soup, although I hadn't added any stock, or flour, or any of the other tomato soup ingredients. So I've no idea how well it will work as passata. I went ahead and blended it in the liquidizer in smallish quantities, after it had cooled down a little, and found myself with fifteen 250g containers of pureed tomato mixture:


So they, too, had to be cooled, labelled and frozen.

By that time - late Saturday morning - I'd had enough of cooking, and I planned to use my bag of apples for dessert the following day, anyway, when we were expecting our friends for a cold evening meal.

I weighed the apples on Sunday morning, early, and found there were nearly three kilogrammes.


I kept a couple of the nicer-looking ones for eating or juicing, and browsed through some recipes. I decided to try some apple pies. I discovered that pies with pastry on top only are the English style of pie, while the sort we call double-crust pies (with pastry at the bottom as well) are more normal in America. The pies with pastry at the bottom and not at the top (such as pecan pie or lemon meringue) are technically tarts.

I also discovered a packet of frozen blackberries in the freezer. Commercial ones, which were probably well past their sell-by date and probably bought by mistake when I wanted a few frozen raspberries for smoothies. (Neither fresh raspberries nor fresh blackberries are available in Cyprus, other than in tiny quantities at extortionate cost for a few weeks of the year). So I thought I'd make one basic apple pie, and two smaller apple-and-blackberry pies.

Unlike crumbles, the fruit doesn't need to be pre-cooked for apple pies, so I peeled and chopped five, to fit in my larger pie dish, sprinkling with brown sugar (less than any of my recipes asked for, as these were not cooking apples) and a little cinnamon:


Then I cut up another three for each of the smaller pie dishes, and divided the frozen blackberries between them, sprinkling sugar on top:


I then made shortcrust pastry, using half whole-wheat flour as I usually do, and was pleased that I'd estimated almost exactly the right amount for topping these three pies, with just a few scraps left to decorate them:


I then even remembered to brush them all with egg before cooking, and was rather pleased with the result:


The consensus on Sunday evening was that they were good, although the blackberries didn't really affect the taste at all. Perhaps they really were too old to have used, although they didn't do any harm.

We didn't even start the second of the blackberry-and-apple pies, so I put it in the freezer for some future occasion.

Yesterday morning I went to the froutaria for various bits and pieces, and there was nothing on the one-euro pre-bagged shelves other than pickling onions. Not something I use - so I didn't get any special offers. Just as well, really, because despite my burst of enthusiasm for working in the kitchen at the weekend, I feel less energetic this week and am glad not to have to do any more preparation. I shall probably feel better when the weather starts to become more autumnal, which must surely be some time soon...