Mediterranea - A Manifesto for Living

How to live more like a Mediterranean Nonna and more....

Kalimera from a bright, blue skyed Athenian morning and HAPPY NEW YEAR.

First, I want to thank you all so much for subscribing for this newsletter. Last year was the first year I got a frequent newsletter up and running and I am so humbled by how many of you have signed up to the granny recipes, anecdotes and life lessons. The process of travelling to these women, cooking with them in their kitchens and interviewing them is really quite an undertaking and it means a lot that you would support me on this mission.

I’ve been ruminating on ways that this newsletter can work and last year was a bit of an experiment, between travel tips, granny stories and recipes. There will be more of the same this year but in a slightly more structured way, as I’m less ‘on the road’ in 2025 now that the research and all the non-stop whirlwind travel for my next book, Mediterranea, is complete.

I would love to hear your feedback but for a while now I’ve been toying with the idea of writing essays about what I have learned from my experiences of cooking with grandmothers for a decade. It’s a slight divergence from the recipes but something I feel is so pertinent to share. In the lead up to my new book coming out, I’ll be sharing the following:

• Preview recipes and behind the scenes encounters from the book (launching in August 2025)

• A monthly newsletter dedicated to life in the Mediterranean, exploring how we can all live better, healthier, longer and happier lives, if only we lived like a Mediterranean matriarch like the ones I interview.

• A monthly interview with my favourite chefs, producers and other people of note with a dedication to their grandmother in the form of a special recipe.

• A monthly travel guide / insider travel newsletter that will take you by the hand and show you my favourite places to eat and explore - giving you the local experience of the places across the Mediterranean that I have travelled to for my latest book.

• Early bird opportunities to book onto my in person retreats and special subscriber only discounts to these events.

As you are my supporters and those that essentially fund my Great Granny Odyssey, I am sharing below a first peek into my manuscript for Mediterranea. It isn’t polished, but it’s the idea I first went to my publisher with. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Kisses for the New Year xx Anastasia

MEDITERRANEA : A MANIFESTO FOR LIVING

Six years ago I made the decision to move back to the Mediterranean. A decade in London and even longer in the drizzly north of England had not managed to shake my Greekness. If anything, as with many diaspora Greeks trying to connect with their identity in less sun-kissed climes, I became more Greek. Sunday lunch in my London house share was observed as religiously as it is at my Greek Yiayia’s home on my island of Corfu (check out a younger me cooking Sunday lunch of moussaka way back when in London here).

I served up Yemista or slow cooked lamb Yiouvetsi with orzo as opposed to the classic Sunday roast, always with a hefty slab of feta atop tomatoes that tasted like they’d never before seen the sun. It was not exactly my Yiayia’s cooking, but it just about conjured the flavours of her white-washed out house kitchen on the days when I needed her most.

Mediterranea is the book I wish I had back then. Not just because of the 70+ recipes that instantly transport me to the land where olive trees stand testament to fertile land and cloudless days. This is a passport to classic dishes and some lesser known traditional recipes of the Mediterranean basin that will bring warmth to any kitchen. Transgressing the food, it is a tome of lessons to live by, gleaned from women equipped with the experience of a lifetime.