The wind blew hard all night so I was looking forward to going out on the Early Walk. We were out just before six and, as the sky was clear, it was getting light.
The first section was completed in good time so we set off down the road towards Plakaki along the road. The sheep were safely penned up in their corral so were making rude gestures as the dogs walked past.
We battled against the northerly wind on the way to Plakaki and ran before it on the way back. Skinny was present for biscuits at the end of the Promontory AND at Plakaki for a change. He even put in another appearance later on.
Back at the camping, the wind was getting stronger so bike riding would have been challenging. Come to think of it, Petrakis was open today as this is the Sunday before Easter. Not that I needed anything having been there several days in a row.
I concentrated on making breakfast, mixing up a new ‘starter’ having added the content of the jar to the dough left outside all night in the hope that it might rise to produce some bread with a little oven-spring. The bread is always edible just somewhat denser than I’m trying to achieve.
I released and fed the dogs once my breakfast had finished cooking then finally got around to eating it. I was about to get onto other things when I remembered the aubergines in the oven from the evening before. These needed to be turned into a purée which is quite a simple process with the aid of a cutter. I now have some aubergine purée for my supper later.
A call from Georgia invited me to a meeting in the New Room where the others were gathered whilst Georgia prattled to her mother on the phone. With the run-up to Easter, there was no end of arrangements to be made. With determination, the meeting could have been over in 30 minutes but then, this is Greece so there was a number of interruptions. She wants more cameras and a longer recording time which is going to require upgrading the 100MB network to fibre or at least gigabit Cat6. She wants a larger recorder with more storage too! We talked about other things including getting the bar ready and customer bookings. Useful information is that Maria should be joining us on or around 15 May so I only have a couple more weeks as the goto guy at Grammeno. Not that this winter has been arduous…
I escaped and got on with making banana bread then was called away by the twins to talk to Elias about the feasibility of taking a bunch of cats to Germany. He was preparing bread for baking. The girls were in the truck being young girls and Matilde was trying to work in the rear cab. Then there was Elias and I chatting. All very cosy with the wind outside.
I eventually escaped on the grounds that the oven was now hot so I needed to put things in it for them to cook. I put in the banana bread and the dough which has hopefully risen and baked right through. I extracted everything from the oven at half-time to remove the bread from the mould. The banana bread seemed to be progressing ok.
The oven is now cooling down so the BB can be removed and turned out onto the rack to cool if it’s feeling cooperative. It is now bottom-side up on the cutting board and in one piece. I will allow it to cool before cutting it into slices. I give some of the banana bread to Elias as they provided loads of squishy bananas and chunks of his most excellent bread.
The wind is still with us and will remain so until tomorrow afternoon. It’s not nearly as strong as mid-afternoon today but I suspect we’ll find it’s strong enough when we go out for the Evening Walk. We had an extended one this morning as I’d decided it would be too windy for comfortable cycling as I had no other reason to go out on my bike other than for exercise.
The weather forecast predicts warmer weather as the week progresses so it should be good over the Easter Weekend which is coming up. Georgia was telling me that Martha might produce some animal-free dishes this week as we approach Easter. Some orthodox Greeks fast and eat plainer food with no meat or oil for the whole of Lent. I’d better put something together to eat when we come back from our walk.
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