We’re now well into what is best described as the ‘sticky’ part of the year.
It’s that couple of months or so when, try as you might, you never really feel dry. Not even straight out of a refreshingly cool shower, as the humidity in the bathroom means you’re trying to dry yourself in a steamy atmosphere – a definite non-starter. Any achievements in the way of dryness are short-lived: move away from doors and windows that are valiantly trying to admit that tiny bit of breeze and it’s like climbing into an open oven. The heat is tangible and the humidity high.
The only comfortable place to be when the weather gets this hot and sticky
Normal life becomes decidedly uncomfortable. Cooking offers the challenge of working out how to produce a decent meal using the minimum amount of heat, without resorting to salad every day. Linger near the cooker for even a few seconds and you break out in a sweat. I can’t imagine what it’s like working in a restaurant kitchen in this weather, and I have nothing but admiration for those people who work out of doors in the intense heat, day after day.
Then there’s dish washing. Even with water at the minimum acceptable heat to clean the dishes it still seems to give off a steady flow of hot, moist air. The best argument I’ve come across so far for getting a dishwasher!
In fact, the slightest physical exertion generates a noticeable amount of heat. Just a few movements and it begins. From the fitness angle, it’s gratifying to realise that your body does start to generate heat with so little effort. But when it’s the beginning of a series of stretches and lifts, whether for exercise or cleaning the bathroom, the end seems very far away, the light at the end of a sweaty, generally unpleasant tunnel. This is when you search out those items of clothing least likely to need ironing, or sport the crumpled look.
All the experts tell you that the time to stay out of the sun is between 11 am and 3 pm. But even at 8 am it’s too hot to stay out in the sun for longer than a few seconds. Walking down into town becomes a game of ‘spot the shadows’; narrow, shady alleyways becoming more attractive than the more open, easy roads. Clothes stick to you, creating eye-catching damp patches. Yes, we could take the car, but putting aside the unjustifiable use of fuel for such a short journey, it’s usually impossible to find a shady parking space. A hot body in a hot car means twice the stickiness.
At this time of year there are trade-offs needed constantly:
- Use the car (quicker) or walk (in the heat for longer)
- Use climate control in the car (increases fuel consumption) or try to keep cool by opening the windows (tangled hair and sometimes it’s a hot breeze).
- Switch the computers off (can’t work) or use fans to keep them cool or even air con (both use extra electricity and air con isn’t that healthy).
- Get up at 4 am, when it’s actually cool, then try to catch up on sleep later in the day when it’s hotter and noisier
We always try to take the greener option, but sometimes it’s a difficult call.
Last night around 9pm we walked down into Koroni – a band had been advertised as part of this year’s free entertainment. At first the atmosphere seemed better as the heat of the day was slowly fading, but after a little while I realized it was actually less comfortable than when the sun was out. The sun masks some of the humidity during the day, but at night there’s no getting away from it, and we have at least 50% humidity at present. By the time we completed the 10 minute walk to town my clothes felt clammy and uncomfortable. It was warmer on the seafront than up at the top of town, and even the slight breeze out on the pier made no difference.
To add the final topping, the band was dire. They seemed unable to play at anything other than slow and made a hash of Dylan’s ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ among others. Their lead singer didn’t have much of a voice either. But their audience applauded politely, even enthusiastically, at the end of each song, so maybe we just haven’t acquired the local taste yet!
But the heat doesn’t just affect us humans. Now is the time of year when fresh food can go off almost while you’re looking at it, which isn’t good when we’re getting produce from the garden more quickly than we can use it. Storage is a challenge as we only have limited fridge and freezer space in our apartment, and anything in a bottle that’s been opened needs to go into the fridge or it quickly sprouts a surface of mould.
We do, however, have the use of an ‘agrotiki’ – essentially a storage area of up to 15 square metres of additional space on top of what the planning regulations allow.
We hoped the agrotiki would give us somewhere relatively cool and dark to keep things fresh for a bit longer, but it’s not working out that way. The temperature in there is warmer than our apartment during the night, presumably due to the two water heaters that are housed there (a useful thing to remember when it gets cold in the winter), and cooler during the day. But it’s not really that much cooler, nor is it completely dark, thanks to our landlady deciding it needed a metal door with a window, and vegetables are quickly drying out or going mouldy. Strangely, grapefruit seem to keep well.
A couple of weeks ago, nurturing the idea of a potential bumper crop, our thoughts turned to long-term storage. Freezing or bottling seemed to be the two options, and with nowhere to put a freezer we thought we’d give bottling a try. First stop was to buy a pressure cooker, which we thought would be ideal for the job. Second stop was to read up on the techniques. Sadly, the wrong way round.
Our thoroughly modern pressure cooker, unlike the two old ones I discarded in England, only has one pressure setting: high. Apparently this isn’t unusual these days, and makes a lot of sense as most of the things you cook are done at high pressure. Unfortunately though, to use it for bottling, we need to be able to generate low pressure. So it looks like we’ll have to resort to one of the longer methods, which means using the cooker top or oven, not something that appeals in this weather.
We’ll still be able to enjoy stews, soups and especially rice pudding (if I can remember the recipe), and cut down on use of the cooker (and heat generation) at the time of year when it’s cooler anyway. Well that’s when I’ve managed to decipher the instructions, which are helpfully only in Turkish.
Still, it’s probably just as well. All the instructions for bottling tell you to keep your newly processed produce in a cool, dark place, and we’ve already established that we’re not going to have one of those for a few months. It would be very disappointing to go through all the rigmarole of bottling, only to have to throw the stuff away because it got too hot in storage and is likely to give us upset stomachs or worse.
So there’s another thing on the list for our own home: cool, dark place to store all our nice home-grown fruit and veggies, both fresh and bottled.
