This week was one of the hottest I have experienced in my life. Outside of trekking around southeast Asia or the Caribbean, I have never sweat more ‘at home’, anywhere…! I must admit I stayed indoors most of the week – even a trip to the beach was beyond me…

What does a person do to cope with heat? Well, if you’re like ‘some’ people that I know, you head for the nearest climate-controlled building facility – The Mall.

And what’s more, it’s a bonus when the need for climate-control corresponds to the start of Summer Sales. Yes, the sale season started this week – and judging by the numbers of cold-seeking shoppers at The Mall, retailers must have been quite happy. On the flipside, it seemed that day that most of the rest of Athens also had the same idea – The Mall was jam-packed!

With prices at 10-20-30-40% off (and more!), it’s a good time to pick-up some deals on everything your life is missing…

And if The Mall proves too crowded, an evening at an open-air cinema is a great way to wind down and enjoy(?) the heat…

Until next week…

Jack

In this weekly space, keep up with ‘Jack’ as he navigates daily life in Athens… Anecdotes, stories, hits & misses, the good, the bad and, well, the rest…

The Kohylia menu provides the elite diner a host of choices in style, flavor, texture and taste. The menu is influenced by Greek specialties, seafood and Italian cuisine and includes more adventurous Polynesian and sushi delicacies. Each dish is prepared with craft and skill, bringing a wonderful dining experience and an incredible view to every table.

Grand Resort Lagonissi, 40th km Athens–Sunion, 19010, Attica

To read more, please visit elitetraveler.com

Do you have a recommendation or recipe to share? Send it to us at ideas@xpatathens.com!

What is Cookisto?

It's an online community that allows you to find tasty, homemade food wherever you are or enter your own homemade creations. For the more advanced, it is like the eBay of eating.

How did you get the idea?

When you're literally hungry, you become inventive. The idea was born when we realized how easy it is for someone who cooks for himself or his family, to increase the number of portions and share them with other people. The occasion for its implementation was Michalis' thesis. Panagiotis Paradellis undertook the technical part, and soon John Asimakopoulos (Community Manager) and Demosthenes Nikoudis (programmer) joined the team. The crisis was a positive factor for the success of Cookisto, since now people are looking for new innovative alternatives even in food!

Who is your target?

Cooks (people who cook at home) and foodies (people who love homemade food). A cook can be anyone loves cooking, is passionate and wants to share their passion. Do celebrity chefs also cook for us? Sure! In Cookisto.com you will find cooks from talented housewives to professional chefs. From stuffed gemista to sushi! The truth is that the gemista are currently ranked higher in popularity so far ...

Give us some reasons for us to become members as well.

Only in Cookisto can you find delicious, healthy meals from talented cooks at cost prices! Finally people who love to cook are given the opportunity to show off their talent through our community.

How can we verify if the Mrs. Maria from Kipseli has not put parathion in the spinach or simply does not respect the basic rules of hygiene?

Such ventures are feasible because technology now allows us to trust strangers. This is the power that Cookisto utilises as do other similar platforms, such as Ebay and Airbnb. Now you can stay in the home of a stranger for a night, rent the car of your neighbor, choose someone to help with your small daily chores and the list goes on ... So by connecting your Cookisto accounts to other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, it adds an extra level of trust towards you. Of course, the main role reflection of trust can be found in the reviews and ratings of other users that are also a strong indicator of future quality of the service of the chefs.

Do you make any profits?

Currently, we do not. Our priority is to create an active community and for people to love our application. In the future, each user will be able to buy cookisto credits, use them for transactions, and we will retain a very small commission.

How do you imagine Cookisto after 10 years?

It is difficult to plan ahead for 10 years... However, we have dreams and aspirations. We have now started with Athens as our focus. In the future we plan to expand to other Mediterranean countries, as we believe that both the cultural significance around homemade food and the economic crisis are favorable factors.

How have people reacted in this short amount of time you've been online?

Results so far have exceeded our expectations. After one month of effective functioning, we have 240 cooks and more than 1,700 foodies and already through our platform have delivered almost 400 servings!

Author: Nenela Georgele

Eating seafood goes along with that. Unfortunately the sea which was once so abundant is now barren in places through over-fishing and the Aegean sea simply can't keep up with the demand of a seafood-loving population whose numbers swell during the tourist season. Fish can be very expensive, though there are inexpensive fish available year-round, and these are just as tasty as the expensive ones.

Lets start at the bottom and make our way up the fish chain. The cheapest fish are sardeles (sardines), gavros (anchovies), kolios (mackerel), gopa (bogue) and marides (smelt). Also in this inexpensive category are kalamari (squid), though the frozen variety which is usually, if not always, imported from California, China and other far away places. When kalamari is in season they will tell you on the menu that it is fresh. When cut and fried it is usually frozen but fresh kalamari is grilled or fried whole. In the kalamari family is also thrapsala which to you and I looks like a squid and tastes like a squid but is not a squid. Well maybe it is a squid but they call it thrapsala and like fresh kalamari they serve it grilled or fried whole. In the same family are soupia (cuttlefish) which have shorter tentacles and are never fried but cooked in a stew with tomato sauce. Octopus, which is eaten in small amounts as a meze (snack) can be local or can come from China or the Atlantic. Octopus can be served in a number of ways which I will go into later. In between there are a number of fish whose price depends on supply and include xifia (sword fish), a couple varieties of Mediterranean tuna, and a whole family of bream, trout and even mollusks. Included among them is fagri (red porgy), sargos (sea-bream), lavraki (sea bass),  lithrini (pandora), and synagrida (dentex) most of which are either baked or grilled and sold by the kilo.

Then at the top of the fish food chain is astakos (lobster), which can cost a small fortune and is familiar to anyone who has taken a charter sailboat around the islands because many skippers take their clients to the tavernas that serve fresh lobster or the newly popular astako makaronada (macaroni with lobster). Not surprising since skippers often get a commission from the restaurants for any business they bring and a table full of lobster can cost a few hundred euros or more. But here's a tip. Save your lobster-money for home. Mediterranean lobsters are over-rated, under-tasty and few chefs have mastered the cooking of these creatures. They also lack claws which besides the tails are the only edible part unless you want to spend the night sucking bits of meat from legs and antennae. Yes. The Greek lobsters have meat in the antennae. But not enough to justify eating them. In Milos I did see lobsters with claws at the restaurant of the famous Roberto at Da Peppe. "Where did you find lobsters with claws?" I asked him in wonder. "On the airplane" he said in his broken English. They were flown in, maybe from Maine, definitely from somewhere on the Atlantic.

To read more, please visit greecefoods.com