Count your blessings

Granny Ferris used to sing this song to me when I was a small child sitting on her knee. (I used to pester her, calling out "Tell me a story" and she would launch into the first line of a hymn "Tell me the old, old story" but that's a tale for another day).

No sooner had I begun to get into the doldrums (to use a nautical expression) than I began to look for the positives.

I have a new wallet, I had a great birthday with Cathy last week and at work a cake and card from a friends (thanks for choosing what was a really excellent cake K).  Also I have something that I saved up till me birthday as a present to myself, though it was actually a prize from a competition.

I have written in the past about how, on a sunny day with a warm breeze,  I can close my eyes and be transported back to Greece.  Now I have another way to that is just as evocative as what I refer to as a Greek Day. 

I am the proud reader and owner of a copy of Harlot's Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece 

This book is a non-fiction narrative of time that the author Patricia Volonakis Davis spent living in Greece after being married to a Greek in the USA; this fact is important as it gives Patricia the ability to see life from both sides, the the incomer and the insider in Greek family life.  (The title is from an Italian sauce and not an indication of a book of dubious content). 

I am still only partway in to the book, as I save it for those periods when I can read uninterrupted and savour the excellent writing.  In the book there are all the emotions I associate with Greek life and the situations run from pathos to bathos. 

There are parts when I have said, yes that's how I thought Greek families would behave and others which I never would have guessed.

I have to declare something of an interest here, as I got to know Patricia a little on a blogging site before entering the competition; that said, I know a whole bunch of people who make or do stuff but I only promote things that I find special and this book is one of them. 

Christmas is coming and if you love Greece as much as I  do, I feel certain that you will enjoy the book. 

I will repost this tomorrow when I have had time to transfer a cover photo but I want to get the text online now, while it's fresh.

[In addition to the book, Patricia is the person behind Harlot's Sauce Radio too.]