I'm currently reading Mythology & Meatballs, which is a distilled version of Daniel Spoerri's original travelogue of his time on the Greek island of Symi. It is a fascinating read, sporting a bizarre combination of ancient erudition, stories about 1960's era Greek sanitation, and food. I'm not really sure what to call it, honestly; it's not entirely a cookbook, but neither is it purely a travelogue. In any case, here is the first installment of things I've drawn from it as interesting.

sporelio, apparently, is a kind of very cheap oil drawn from the seeds of an olive. It comes up in Spoerri's story in a bowl of rice and mackerel he made for his attendant cats.

When in Greece, do not but the herb mazidi for culinary purposes, lest you be made fun of by Greek women. As a passing priest apparently told Speorri, it has a lot of uses, but none of them involve food.

Mayeritsa

This is something I am terribly unlikely to make. Nonetheless, here is my version of his recipe.

Boil the offal of a lamb for half an hour. Remove and chop finely. Replace in the bouillon, adding two or three quarts of water, with absolutely no other seasoning. [one of spoerri's companions breaks in here to note that seasoning it, especially with either onion or dill, will only succeed in sickening the soup, making it fit only for mainlanders] . Add a little salt. cook for an hour, then thicken the soup with a mixture of egg yolks and juice of a lemon.