In My Kitchen in July

Not Much Cooking!

New Utensils

Olive-wood servers from Turkey and a new basting brush.
The only new gadgets in my kitchen in July.

New Magnets 

I removed many magnets to make room for my new ones.

New magnets from Greece and Turkey.
You can see what I found: mainly images of birds, especially owls.
You can also see that my little plant survived my absence.

A Few Meals Before the Big Trip

Cheese toasts.

Cabbage salad.

Pre-dinner July 4 snacks

Barbecue.

Summer fruit salad.

The Ship's Kitchen

The door to the ship’s kitchen.

“My kitchen” this July means not only the kitchen where I live in Ann Arbor, but also the kitchen of the National Geographic/Lindblad Orion where we spent 10 days while visiting Greek islands in the Mediterranean and three ancient sites in Turkey.

A peek down the stairs towards the extensive storage areas for food and equipment.

Just before breakfast: the waiters would bring the food from the kitchen up to the dining area on the rear deck.

What Kitchen Did this Come From?

Not-bad airline meal while flying home.

Not Food: Toadstools

Life follows art. A ceramic toadstool surrounded by live ones.
(Do not eat this!)

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Shared with Sherry’s In My Kitchen for July

Greek Sculpture: Photos without Words

 

Photos © 2025 mae sander

What we ate in Greece and Turkey

A Sea-Side Meal Near Athens

Very fresh fish.

We had Greek salads a number of times, and were impressed by the freshness of the vegetables.
Unlike the American-Greek restaurant version, they usually did not have any lettuce.

Winery Lunch Near the Port

On the way from Athens to the ship, we had lunch at a winery.
We were greeted with a glass of wine and some appetizers.

Buffet lunch.

We enjoyed the company of the group of people we had been traveling with,
and we continued be friends throughout the voyage.

We heard an interesting lecture while walking through the winery.

The vines surrounding the winery, which also obtains some grapes from other sources.

Restaurants in Turkey

Vegetables and salad at our outdoor meal in Turkey.

We had only a drink while walking around here, but I liked the look of this waterfront restaurant
and its cool mural of food and wine.

A Few of the Meals on the Orion

Breakfasts

Breakfast buffet. A special dish such as pancakes or French toast was available at another counter.

Flaky pastries were tiny and delicious.

 

Local jams at breakfast

Set up to make the breakfast special.

Eggs Benedict were the custom-cooked special one day.
I love poached eggs and English muffins!

I selected fruit with yogurt and some broiled tomatoes to go with the Eggs Benedict.
Lunches were also served on the deck as a buffet.

Kumquats were always on the buffet at breakfast.

The tables for breakfast and lunch were on the deck from which we enjoyed watching the sea.

Dinners on the Ship

Lamb chops.

Appetizer: scallops on shells. Everyone had the same scallops, but the shells were all different.

Octopus dinner entree.

Fish dinner.

Dinner was usually in the more formal indoor dining room, but on one evening
there was a buffet with roasted suckling pig.

Desserts

Cheeses and pastries from some of the shops in town were served after dinner on the last evening.

The ship’s baklava was quite nice: not as super-sweet as some versions of this pastry.

This must be an Orion special, as I had a photo of the same dessert on our previous
Orion voyage in Polynesia in 2019!

A Cooking Lesson in Athens

After our visit to the Acropolis, we headed for a pleasant restaurant in a park, where the chef
gave us a cooking lesson. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very informative, as all the interesting parts of the
preparation were already done. For example, the stuffing for the vegetables was pre-made.
We did get to know our fellow travelers while we were cooking, though.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander