TSIKNOPEMPTI: A Greek Traditional Meat Eating Day
Most of you already should know by now that in Greece we love food. Not only do we love eating but Greek food is considered one of the tastier and healthier ones. Ofc we tend to eat a lot, thus the healthy aspect is long gone but you get the vibe. Anyone who visits Greece, except for the amazing sceneries and cool people gets in love with the food.
Today is a special day for most Greek foodies and mostly every tourist who is currently in Greece. Tsiknopempti is basically a traditional celebration of the Carnival season and occurs each year on a Thursday, Pempti means Thursday in Greek. In English, the celebration can be called Charred Thursday or Smelly Thursday.
Note that Tsiknopempti celebrated 11 days before the Clean Monday. Also, this celebration is similar to Fat Thursday that occurs in other countries and basically it's a day full of meat to get you prepared for Lent, even though mostly nobody follows a fasting routine based on religion.
Anyway, as i said we eat meat, lots of meat that day, grilled and barbeque, people go out to taverns or basically do it at home with their family. To understand how much we love food and meat (except if you are vegan and such), during this day people who work onsite tend to grill instead of working and even in schools and universities there is that "rule" that today, we have fun and eat meat, we don't study.
So today, after most of my family members ate at work, the time for round 2 came. Each year we try to celebrate this day together, eating tons of meat. As you can see in the pictures above, we lit the "fire" " We had some stakes ready, some sausages and pita bread and started grilling. The apples are just something extra, nobody ate them today :P
The next thing is the meats already in the fire as you can see above. You can see the smoke coming out which is basically the "Tsikna" as we say it in Greek, it is the first part of the TSIKNO-PEMPTI celebration. Basically, the meaning is like the smelly smoke with its certain aroma. You won't smell fresh air today, only that kind of smell!
Sadly, i never took any photos of the sausages and pita bread as well as the dinner table with everything, as i was to focused on eating and eating and eating again. And ofc we are Greeks and eat a lot at the end we should eat dessert as well, How else does the perfect day come to an end?
In the picture above you see 2 different desserts and pretty much 2 different worlds. On the left side, there is an extremely traditional dessert my grandma made, which is called pecan pie and she also added white chocolate on top, which isn't traditional but she wanted to try something new. If you ever come to Greece and find a good place that serves this, you will be amazed trust me.
The thing on your right is basically a cake and we basically bought it because my Grandpa has her birthday today and we wanted to surprise her. Basically, it's like a usual birthday cake but with bueno chocolate instead. As you can imagine i have already eaten one of each and now i can't move! Thus, that was it from today, let me know if you liked that post, if you have a similar celebration in your country and goodnight everyone, or good morning depending on when you read it!