When the Cheshire emerges...

What an amazing culinary invention. No doubt one of the biggest things I associate with childhood and my maternal grandmother to this day. However, within the family there was also the time when my aunty cooked 1200. That was fun to hear about...

The last couple of trips home have been monumental in relation to kourambiethes fixes. I think I got them on my trip home in September, as I had my car and the large container would've lasted. But then there was (definitely) Christmas time...

On deciding to only take a carry-on bag (no point in spending extra when it's not necessary), I visit yiayia and she gives me a large container once again. I'm laughing saying I can't take it all, and she's telling me to take it on the plane with my handbag. I really couldn't not take any, so with mum later I compromised. I had to.

I fit about 12 into a small round container. And I relished those to the very end.

***

The trip home two weeks ago rolls around. I fly in, go with mum to visit yiayia straight from the airport. She warns me that yiayia was a bit cut about the compromise we would have to make once again.

"Dodika (12)? What do you mean, how am I meant to make just 12?" she had said to mum (or words to that effect).

We get there. The round container emerges, packed to the brim - with 12 of them. Mum said yiayia packed them in as tight as she could. Yiayia hands them to me shaking her head slightly. A perplexed disappointment hung in the air.


I'm just about to finish the last of them. At least next time will be when mum comes up to visit - with a suitcase. I'm expecting big things.

***
Your joy is divine and so is your suffering. There's so much to be learned from both.

The talks I have with my mother every night (yes, the chain is yet to be broken since my move) are nothing short of enlightening. Last night she told me about the love and sacrifice a woman makes for her daughter's happiness. The latest family happenings.

My cousin Maree asked my aunty Lucy to make some kourambiethes for her clients at work - you know, the Greek shortbread biscuits either round or cresent shaped. Since she had two days off Lucy agreed being the good cook that she is, and set on making 120. Not 120 biscuits it turns out, but 120 boxes of 5-7 biscuits. Now, 120x5 is 600. By the end of Monday she had made 800 - their demand grew. And then some. Over two days Lucy made 1200 of these biscuits. TWELVE-HUNDRED. My golly, that's a lotta dough. And icing sugar, wowee. But obviously a lot of love to go with it. Hilarious! How exhausting though, what a trooper! Damn, I gotta get me one of those, I miss Yiayia's.

Then conversation moved somehow to chain letters and my mum reveals herself to be a total sucker for them because she worries she'll get bad luck if she doesn't forward it to ten friends. Oh wow. Then a bit of gold: "I would write to ten people every time I got one. Because that's what we used to do, we'd have to write them."

Something tells me the chain letters were a bit more substantial than 'you are awesome, forward to ten people if you think they're awesome too'. They would have to be right? Aaaahhhhh I love my mother's randomness sometimes. Eight days until the parents are here in person to dish out some more...