Green is the color of our winter; not gray-brown, nor white, as in most parts of Europe and the US. Every few years we may see snow for a day or two, but most of the time our winters are mild, with many bright and crisp sunny days. The rocky island hills fill with all kinds of plants after the late fall and early winter rains. The huge, dehydrated thorny bushes, seemingly carved into the windy cliffs over the sea, bud with tiny, jagged-edged green leaves. The oaks, scattered around the island —mainly on the eastern slopes— as well as the countless almond trees lose their leaves, but the lush green fields around them make up for the missing foliage.

Sheep and goats roam around the hills happily munching the tender sprouts, practically unattended in most parts of the island. Nikos Mavromatis, our butcher, watches his sheep with binoculars on the slope across from his shop in Hora when he expects them to give birth. Occasionally goats climb up the stone fences and feast on roses and other ornamental shrubs that border the gardens and pools of the now empty vacation villas. There is a consensus here that people who spent a fortune buying land to build summer houses are supposed to erect tall barriers because “the goats cannot know where properties end or begin,” as locals explain to the outraged Athenians, who find their gardens ravaged when they return for a spring weekend. (more…)

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For two months the kitchen was a pile of stones, concrete, and dismantled doors and windows. Dusty and noisy, emptied of everything that could be moved, the space looked destitute, as if it could never be a welcoming kitchen again.

  Slide Show: New Kitchen for the New Year!

At times I questioned my strong impulse to knock down the staircase, expand and completely renew the room. Patience is not one of my qualities, and I wanted the work to finish as soon as possible. Wanting to speed up the entire process I went a bit far, taking the measurements and ordering the granite surfaces before installing the kitchen cabinets; the suspense was killing me for weeks – would the fit be correct? — until the shiny dark brown slabs arrived, and were a perfect fit! (more…)

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Even using the leftover decorative pumpkins, following my recipe for kolokytha rossoli, the easiest of the spoon sweets, you can prepare jars of home-made edible presents to offer to your friends…

  Slide Show: The Greek way with Pumpkins

Recipes mentioned in this post
Pumpkin Preserves (kolokytha rossoli)
Pumpkin, Leek, Walnut and Cheese Tart
Pumpkin Pie from Lesbos
Pumpkin ‘Hummus’ (or tahini babaganoush)

READ MORE (in The Atlantic)

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“Thank you for an exceptional week and for welcoming us into your home and community. I was so immersed that I forgot about our life at home—-a true sign of a successful vacation.” Comments like this, coming from our guests across continents, are our greatest reward at the end of yet another successful Kea Artisanal year. In 2009, once more we had the chance to meet several wonderful people who became our new friends:

Starting in early May, we welcomed our visitors to a green island, filled with spring flowers. By late May we received a group of charming ladies, our first visitors from South Africa. The group was put together by Debbie Evans, who runs a cooking school in Johannesburg and organizes cooking trips to various parts of the world. (more…)

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A new and exciting workshop will take place in Kea next June (21 to 26): our ceramist friend Vicki Snyderfrom Santa Fe, who set up Terra Kea, her Greek studio on the island, together with the famous San Francisco ceramist Christa Assad will give pottery classes in a joint seminar with Kea Artisanal.

We will provide food and some extra stimulation, we hope. The workshop is already sold out, but let us know if you are interested, because a second one may follow later in the season.

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