Dilema

I can't decide what to make for supper! Do I go with a lentil & rice dish and some sort of pan-fried chicken breast? Or do I venture out of familiar territory with a green bean and chicken thigh kokkinisto, à la Maria?

I've also got to get off my ass and clean out my fridge and take stock of my pantry. I suppose that starts with washing the mason jars...sigh.

In other news, we got a huge shipment of treats from my aunt Renna in Chania last week, so now I have Greek honey, Greek oregano, paximadia from the village bakery, delicious dried figs...awesome! I had to laught though, there was a bag of loukoumia in there, which expired at the end of June (it took this package three months to get here, for ridiculous reasons I won't get into) but I've been eating anyway. Obviously food colouring in Greece does not represent the same flavours as it does in North America: sure, the yellow was a citrus flavour, but the pink? It took me a moment to decide why my mouth tasted like soap, until I realized that the flavour was "rose". Having had roses in edible form for the first time when I was in university (a coworker once made candied rose petals at the historical village where I worked), I'm still not really used to the idea of something that tastes like perfume in my food. I've had rose loukoumi before (a chocolate-covered Turkish brand), but it's not at the top of my list. The green was even more of a surprise for me - one would think...lime? Sour apple? Mint? Even perhaps pistaccio? But nooooo, it was mastiha (gum mastic), which is another strange, herbal flavour that I didn't really experience until I was well into my twenties.

So I have a bag of mediocre quality bulk-section-at-the-grocery-store loukoumi (Turikish delight) in rose, mastic, and...other mystery flavours. Which I probably shouldn't even eat because they're like three weeks past their expiry date. So why am I craving them right now? Hmmm...