I (Ken) watch some Greek TV pretty much every day, even though I understand only a little of it. It is actually helpful--each time I feel like I'm a little closer to "getting it." Some of the things I find on TV here (at least standard broadcast TV) almost any time I watch:
1) Talk/opinion (lots of this)
2) Home shopping/infomercials (lots of this)
3) Nickolodeon in Greek
4) CNN (on about 8 different channels!)
5) Soaps
6) Cooking shows
The talk/opinion shows are like John McLaughlin's show on steroids. Quite a bit of the time, 2-4 people are talking at once. Whereas on American TV, the moderator does limit the food-fight aspect of it at some point, that never seems to happen on Greek TV. But they all seem OK with it.
I actually enjoy the cooking shows, because typically only one person is talking at a time and more slowly than on the news/talk shows, so I can follow it a little. I got a laugh out of a couple things I saw recently. On one show, I watched a person prepare a wonderful--looking dish that I can only assume was very traditional. The ingredients were placed in a large clay jug, the lid put on and sealed with some sort of dough, then the whole thing baked in the oven. It was taken out, the baked dough chipped off, lid removed, and the ingredients scooped out into a large cupped dish that was about 1-2 inches deep. So far, so good--my mouth was watering. Then the cook created a little "fence" around the edge of the dish by placing (can you guess?) potato chips vertically all around at the outside edge of the food!
Intro to the second story: You need to know that there are all kinds of cheeses here, including some nice soft white cheeses a little like Mexican queso fresco. So.....on another show, the cook prepared some other wonderful-looking dish that was destined to be used as topping on a sort of open-faced sandwich in which the "slice of bread" was a large piece of pita. Just before the topping was put on the pita, the cook spread some cheese on each piece of pita, using not some Greek cheese, but Philadelphia Cream Cheese!
Purists, beware--traditional practices often have more possibilities for flexibility and using whatever is available and looks useful than we like to believe.
1) Talk/opinion (lots of this)
2) Home shopping/infomercials (lots of this)
3) Nickolodeon in Greek
4) CNN (on about 8 different channels!)
5) Soaps
6) Cooking shows
The talk/opinion shows are like John McLaughlin's show on steroids. Quite a bit of the time, 2-4 people are talking at once. Whereas on American TV, the moderator does limit the food-fight aspect of it at some point, that never seems to happen on Greek TV. But they all seem OK with it.
I actually enjoy the cooking shows, because typically only one person is talking at a time and more slowly than on the news/talk shows, so I can follow it a little. I got a laugh out of a couple things I saw recently. On one show, I watched a person prepare a wonderful--looking dish that I can only assume was very traditional. The ingredients were placed in a large clay jug, the lid put on and sealed with some sort of dough, then the whole thing baked in the oven. It was taken out, the baked dough chipped off, lid removed, and the ingredients scooped out into a large cupped dish that was about 1-2 inches deep. So far, so good--my mouth was watering. Then the cook created a little "fence" around the edge of the dish by placing (can you guess?) potato chips vertically all around at the outside edge of the food!
Intro to the second story: You need to know that there are all kinds of cheeses here, including some nice soft white cheeses a little like Mexican queso fresco. So.....on another show, the cook prepared some other wonderful-looking dish that was destined to be used as topping on a sort of open-faced sandwich in which the "slice of bread" was a large piece of pita. Just before the topping was put on the pita, the cook spread some cheese on each piece of pita, using not some Greek cheese, but Philadelphia Cream Cheese!
Purists, beware--traditional practices often have more possibilities for flexibility and using whatever is available and looks useful than we like to believe.
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