Bet you haven’t heard that word before! That’s Greek for (female) cousin and last week I invited a bunch of my cousins over, and as is typical, it’s the girl cousins who came.

I made kalitsunia (ricotta filled fried turnovers), butternut squash gratin, galactobouriko (custard filo dessert), kalouria (simple cookie), and cinnamon iced tea and my lovely cousins provided the rest. As you can see from the pictures there was a TON of food. I will not remember it all, but we had skordalia, vegetable stew, tzatziki, dolmathes, taramasolata, spiced nuts, feta, corn salad, Leni’s mixed green salad, strawberry cream cake, and pumpkin bread…of course there was wine and coffee. It was a groaning board for sure! I’m still eating the leftovers.

And as always we laughed, shared family stories, and created some new ones. My cousin Nikki asked me to autograph her copy of my new book and I managed to misspell her name…and had to insert the letter “l” into the word “health”! No wonder mom used to advise me to practice writing thank you cards on a piece of paper before I actually wrote in the card. I plan on hosting these get togethers several times a year. I think it’s wonderful that we enjoy each other’s company and get together for no reason at all other than to eat, visit, and laugh.