Pita with Yiayia

Pita means pie. My mother-in-law, Chevi, used to make the most delicious pita. It consisted of a crust that was water, flour, olive oil and salt. The filling was created from whatever was ripe or ready in the garden, along with the milk or cheese from her goats. If no vegetables were available, she made something called macaroni pie. Oh boy! That was like baked ziti wrapped in phyllo dough and a guaranteed sedative to send you peacefully off to siesta.




Like all the other women in the village, Chevi used a skinny wooden dowel to roll the dough to paper thinness--almost translucent. 

The round wooden table in the photo above, was always used for rolling out the dough in the ol' days. I saw the exact structure in other houses years ago and now-a-days I see it sometimes hanging as a decoration, so it appears to have been a common household item.

Chevi's little round table also now hangs decoratively on the wall in the backyard kitchen. We call that kitchen the shack (καλυβι) because years before, that's exactly what it was.

That so-called-shack, however, is now more like a small house with an oven, a sink, a refrigerator, a little couch, a granite table and a fireplace. It was built by Chevi's children -- piece by piece over several years -- in an  effort to make up for the squalor she had to endure for much of her life. Ironically, it is where we spend most of our time, even though our actual house is a few steps away in the courtyard. 

Your Own Kind and The Nifi are available in paperback and ebook. And free if you have Kindle Unlimited. I hope you will give one of them a try!