We ride through the mountains of Greece

WE're off to \lampia today up over the mountains to Olympia. The road is through a rather remote area with small farms and villages. The mountains are very rugged and rocky. There are small pines and grasses, and herbs, you can smell them. The contrast of the countryside here is so dramatic. Just the other day we where by the warm beautiful ocean and now we have rugges mountains and sheep and goat herds. It is very quiet and very little traffic but we can hear the clanking of the bells on the sheep and goats.

We are climbing today. The grade reminds me of Buford but Greece offers a nice touch to these mountain climbs, every few kilometers they have a fountain for fresh running water. The goats use it as well as passersby. Today we stopped at one of the fountains just accross from a woman tending her garden. It was such a beautiful garden bull of ripe tomatoes, cabbages, eggplant and grapes. I greeted her and complemented her on the tomatoes. We chatted for a bit, which of course has a lot of sign language but we where able to get information about where we where going.. she was so impressed. She insited we all take a handful of tomatoes..(domatess in Greek) now we had part of our lunch. What a lovely county.

We stopped at a small remote village Arieso for lunch. Yorgos meets us. This small village has the most beautiful stone building everywhere. The square is all done in stone, as is the church, the school and tavernas. We are greeted by a lovely lady who owns the restaurant.. She says we are the first Americans to visit their village. She is from Romania, I believe, and she speaks English well. She chats with Yorgos and us for quite awhile. We sit and rest and enjoy this quiet lovely place. She tells us that most of the people have left the town and Yorgos supposes there may only be about 30 living there now. (still having trouble uploading pictures from my card, but I have most on CD)
We continue on our journey to our destination Lampia. I happen upon a small building that looks like a medical clinic. I'm a bit ahead of our group and as Yorgos says it's all about meeting the people. The Dr. who is working at this 2 room clinic is Ioanna Koniari. She works for the ministry of Greece and is only 8 mo. out of school. She was working in Stockholm but the ministry called her back to staff this very small remote clinic. She said she doesn't deliver babies here, just sees villagers with problems and goes to emergencys. She is planning on specializing in cardiology. we talk a bit about newborn cardiologic problems of course. She is very interested. She says they have many problems with newborns in Greece, they must be transported out and they have only 3 sites in Greece for NICU's. She would talk on and on and we exchange e mails and she will look for my blog.

We are staying tonight at a beautiful old in in Lampia. This is another small village in the mountains that is one of 6-7 small communities in a mountain side. We have the entire 2 nd floor to ourselves. It even has a kitchen for our use.
We are in for a very special treat tonight. Yorgos is cooking us dinner. If you think he is passionate about the Greek countryside he is even more passionate about Greek food. So tonight he is making us one of his family specialities

Kokoras Meheelopites or Chicke with Pasta.
He went to the local butcher and bought a rooster. This is the traditional meat for this dish. The rooster is Very Fresh.. includes his legs! Tamara insits this is for her.. Yorgos says this is important to eat the legs as it honors the rooster. Well there you go. So here is the recipe:
Fry the meat in olive oil... quite a bit.. maybe 1 cup or so, until the meat is browned well.
The meat goes in a large pot, with about 1 sliced red onion, 1 can of chopped tomatoes, about 1 cup of canned sweet peppers, red wine.. a few glups.. or to be technical about 1 cup I'd say..salt, pepper, the oil from the fry pan, some oregano, cloves and cinnamon. This mixture is them low boiled for about an hour or until it's tender. The meat is removed, and the pasta is added. Yorgos uses a very small stamp shaped pasta and this cooks for about 10 min. The aroma is heavenly. He prepares the wonderful Greek salad with feta and his olives, a loaf of fresh country bread and of course.. more wine! It's now about 8-9 pm and we enjoy probably one of the best meals I've ever tasted. We sit and chat and eat slowly.. for another 2 hrs or so, it's too good to go fast. Yorgos suggests this site for Greek cooking:
www.kalofagas.org


We chat on the long climbs and we stop e
Yorgos thinks of everything for us.. we have great markings to follow and he points out hazards as well as steep downhills. He even stopped and petted a rambunctios doggy as we rode by so he wouldn't chase us.