The Greece adventures continued, with some village foraging.
Peter bought peaches from a truck, because he could:
I bought sour cherries, because I could. We made a mess, and then made compote, to go with our local yogurt for breakfast.
Truth be told, the cherries were not from a truck, but from the produce stand. A four-foot-tall old Greek woman grabbed me by the elbow and pointed and said, “Visino! Not sweet! Special!” Handily, I have learned the word for sour cherry in many languages, so I jumped right on that. Here’s the compote, with a mug of extra juice off on the right. Just looking at it makes my salivary glands twinge in longing.
We didn’t buy chickens from a truck, even though we could have.
Nor did we buy vegetables. But we ogled them, you bet.
And we ate our share of French fries that originally came from this truck, a potato processor from the next town down. Every day we watched them deliver tons of precut fries to all the local restaurants. And every night we gobbled them down. Beautiful Photoshopping, guys.
Every morning, a truck drove around selling fish. The loudspeakers made it sound like the revolution was starting. This little guy got left behind when progress marched in.
Near the end of our stay, we foraged for figs. These are Aydine figs, brought by families when they fled from Aydin in southwestern Turkey in the early 20th century. Lucky for us, they ripen earlier than other varieties, and there’s a giant tree in a vacant lot.
What fruit would you carry with you if you had to flee?
See Greece Photos #1
See all Greece photos on Flickr
I’ve lived in Astoria for 11 years. There are lots of grocery stores here, and new foodstuffs all the time. But it’s been a long time since I’ve found something I’ve never even heard of: oxymeli. It was just sitting there, all innocent, on the shelf at my usual Greek grocery, Greek House on 30th Avenue. I love this guy because it’s the best kind of tiny store–the kind where the more you look, the more you see things you need. Also because he stocks a lot of 
And because our pantry is overstuffed, I have to manage it the same way I do my clothes, tossing old to make room for new. The victim this time was a bottle of Rooh Afza, appealingly billed as “The Summer Drink of the East,” and smelling of rose and “fragrant screwpine.” Alas, it didn’t taste like much but sugar, and even its pretty label and ridiculous bright-pinkness couldn’t save it. Buh-bye, Rooh, and thanks anyway to Hamdafd Laboratories of Pakistan (though I love the sound of a drink made by Something Laboratories, don’t you?). 
Oh, but I lie. I snuck in another new thing, without quite purging something else. It’s a bottle of mulberry syrup from Syria. It was a risky thing to bring back, considering it could have made a horrific mess in my luggage. But it’s intact (if now even already a third consumed), and in a drink-mixing frenzy over the last few days, I found it goes well with gin, and with bananas in a smoothie. Now that’s versatile–a real keeper.