Ruth Paget: Greek Festival

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Greek Festival Pointers - Part 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Greek Festival Pointers – Part 2 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The dimotiká folk songs provide music for the folk dances performed by Greek-American teenagers hailing from Salinas, Carmel, and Oakland. Performing at Greek festivals throughout the state helps the teens keep their Greek heritage alive.

The popular circle dances like the kalamarianos resemble those portrayed on ancient Greek vases. Line dances encourage everyone to participate.

The large, white napkin that the line dance leader holds is absolutely necessary to signal authority in a culture of strong individuals whose members jokingly describe themselves in the saying, “Twelve Greeks equal thirteen captains.”

Yelling, “Opa!” and line dancing through the crowd should make festivalgoers work up an appetite for even more Greek food with the following 9 items offered:

-village salad – featuring tangy feta cheese made from sheep’s milk and plump kalamata olives

-grape leaves stuffed with rice or beef and flavored with mint

-spanakopita – spinach phyllo pie with pine nuts

-tyropita – phyllo pie made with feta and ricotta cheese

-pastitio – Greek lasagna with beef, macaroni, tomatoes, and a cream sauce seasoned with cinnamon that gives this dish a delicate taste

-moussaka – layered tomato and eggplant cooked in a tomato sauce flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg

-the famous gyro sandwich – made with garlic seasoned pressed beef in pocket bread (pita) with cucumber and garlic sauce

-souvlaki – lamb or pork kebab

-barbecue chicken

As your server wishes you, “Bon Appetit! (Kali Orexi),” it is easy to see how Greek women discreetly rule the home through the stomach.

Wine adventurers might want to try the white Retsina wine made from Savatiano grapes grown in the Attica region around Athens.

Legend recounts that the ancient Greeks added pine resin to this wine to discourage invaders from drinking it. When I drink Retsina with feta cheese, black olives, and bread, I think it is refreshing just like the modern Greeks do.

Monterey’s Greek community invites festivalgoers to enjoy festival kéfi, joyful exuberance, at their Greek Festival held over Labor Day Weekend in Monterey, California.

End of Article

Notes:

2019 Idea – Maybe a pre-paid “reserve and pick up” dessert and cookie box areas would increase festival sales. Suggested areas: one in the festival area and another in a far parking lot that would allow drive-thru pickups for the disabled, elderly, or families with babies.

Maybe those dessert and cookie boxes could be sold throughout the year at Demetra restaurants as a dessert and take out item.

FYI – I saw a sign for a gyros restaurant in Seaside, California. I have not tried the restaurant yet, but it might be worth a try.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Greek Festival Pointers - Part 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Greek Festival Pointers – Part 1 -by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

One of the first articles I wrote for the Monterey (CA) County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) when I was a food writer for the newspaper was about Monterey’s popular Greek festival. My family regularly attended the Greek Festival when my daughter Florence was little to pick up our box of Greek desserts and cookies.

Parts of the article I wrote about the Greek Festival have shown up in the newspaper over the years, but the following is the original article with slight format modification:

Have no Fear of Greek Gifts

Greek sweets that you cannot find in restaurants should make any visitor to the Greek Festival want to start lunch with dessert.

For Greeks, desserts symbolize joy and good wishes; you always take them to a friend’s home, for example, “to sweeten the friendship.” With thoughts of festivalgoers tasting the “sweetness” of Greek culture, the ladies of Monterey’s Greek community have been busy making traditional foods for weeks.

Reasonable individuals will start with a plateful of desserts and cookies from the following offerings:

-galataboureko – a custard filled pastry whose crust is built up with layers of thin phyllo pastry softened with melted butter

-karidopeta – cake made with ground walnuts instead of flour and flavored with orange zest and topped off with a syrup made of sugar, lemon, and cinnamon

-koulourakia – shiny twisted butter cookies

-kourabiedes – small crescent-shaped butter cookies sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar

-baklava – You can find this diamond-shaped pastry made with ground walnuts and cinnamon and topped off with lemony syrup in restaurants, but baklava has a different soul when a yia yia, Greek grandma, lovingly makes it.

Telling anyone about melamakarona cookies poses a major ethical dilemma for me, because I want them all for myself. I used to eat these all the time at my Greek college roommate’s home when I was a student at the University of Chicago.

The spirit of hospitality that the Greeks are famous for, though, requires me to divulge the melamakarona are butter cookies flavored with clove, cinnamon, and orange juice that are dunked in a hot syrup of honey and lemon. Before they cool, you sprinkle ground walnuts on top of them.

The best way to eat any of these desserts is with a cup of strong Greek coffee.

After indulging in dessert, you can walk around and look at craft items for sale that you always find at paniyeri (festivals) in Greece as you watch folk dancing and listen to music.

The Aegeans band will regale you with dimotiká, folk songs, recounting stories of love, politics, war, and lament whose origins go back to the 15^th century and the Fall of Constantinople, capital of the Greek Byzantine Empire.

End of Part 1.

To be continued…