We’ve written before about how much we love the simple food of Greece. What Greece does especially well that we enjoy are their fresh fruits and vegetables, and also their honey, olives, olive oil, dried fruits, herbs and spices. The dried herb mix we found for feta cheese has transformed the way we make our enjoy our ritual of  making a simple salad of tomatoes and cucumbers, olives, feta cheese sprinkled with these herbs, olive oil, a little lemon and anything fresh we have on hand that we feel like adding.

We are not big meat eaters, in fact we usually just have chicken or fish once or twice a month.   I thought we would be lucky because most meat in Greece is sold separately in butcher shops so we don’t even need to see it when we are grocery shopping. However, it turns out the butcher shops have huge picture windows and as you pass by you’ll see scenes like this.

Juniper found some unique products to take back to the USA

Yesterday we discovered the most wonderful little herb and spice shop in Lerapetra, the little town on the south coast of Crete where we are anchored. The owner, who spoke almost no English, nonetheless communicated his enormous passion for his wares by excitedly pulling out one after another for us to try, and he ate everything before and after we tried them.

His store is the only place I have found no-sugar-added dried fruits. He also sold a sun-dried apricot that is out of this world. Never again will I be satisfied with the too-orange colored apricots one typically finds in stores. He also sold the Ceylon cinnamon that is less common, but the only type of cinnamon that has the heart benefits. He also sold olive oil with the lowest acidity (0.1-0.3) that I’ve found. Here is the store’s location (I can’t write it’s name in English)