Afternoons in Ithaka

Book excerpt: A charming memoir of self-discovery, family, connection and the power of a tomato. 'I remember crusty just-baked bread, rubbed with juicy tomato flesh, swimming in a puddle of thick green olive oil. I am seven years old. I sit on a stool in my grandmother's house. It is the height of summer in a seaside village in the south of Greece. We little Aussies devour 'tomato sandwiches' as the family chats and laughs and swats flies ...' From the first heady taste of tomatoes on home-baked bread in her mother's village in Petalidi, to sitting at a taverna some 30 years later in Ithaka with her young family, Spiri tsintziras goes on a culinary, creative and spiritual journey that propels her back and forth between Europe and Australia. these evocative, funny and poignant stories explore how food and culture, language and music, and people and their stories help to create a sense of meaning and identity.