Today is a special day for me and for the whole of Hellenism across the world as it is our national day for denying the Axis forces passage and the WWII was declared upon us. I chose to share this dish on this special day because it is both dear to my heart and has a story that my grandma used to say to me and my cousins quite often with pride as she was boasting about her hidden strength even despite her age. My grandma was the noble lady of the village and she was always the first to be involved in the communal affairs for the benefit of her village Diava, out of Kalabaka, Thessaly. She said that when the German troops entered the village, the whole atmosphere in the village went grim; as if even nature sensed the hostility of the Germans, “Kri-oi anthropoi” - “Cold people”, my grandma said, “not like the Italian soldiers who were more like us. They loved food, music and good company.” My grandma, and other villagers used to speak Vlahika, a dialect that was close to the Italian language and they could communicate with them. Italians were friendlier but everything changed when the Germans arrived; fear was spread like a heavy fog; you did not know what was going to happen in the next second. One day the Germans, without any reason arrested all the men and their teenage sons, including my grandfather Christos and one of my oldest uncles, their first-born son. They took them somewhere out of the village and had them locked up in a storehouse. The women went to my grandma crying, wanting back their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons. Then my grandma asked them to gather food and water for the men and led the women to the place their men were kept. Without fear and with authority, she went up to the first German guard and demanded to allow them to see their husbands and sons. The German soldier refused and yelled at her to leave, the women and children started crying; the captured men heard them and started calling out to their wives and mothers. My grandma again, demanded to let her and the women to see them and to give them food. The German guard angrily pointed his weapon and yelled at her to leave; then the unimaginable happened, my grandma who did not like to take no for an answer, slapped the German soldier across his face so hard that he almost lost his balance. Everyone froze for a couple of seconds, then the soldier went to grab my grandma to throw her on the ground, but he could not move her! She pushed him away hard, then he grabbed one of her arms and another soldier grabbed her by the other to take her away, but together they could not move her! She started shaking her arms left to right and back again trying to get them off her! The women were screaming, the children were crying, and the men were cursing the soldiers and yelling to let her go. Then two more soldiers came to the aid of the others; each one grabbed her by the arms as well and not only they could not move her, she was shaking them around like leaves. Amid this chaos the German commandant appeared and was shocked to believe what he was seeing. A Greek woman was rattling his four elite German soldiers like rag dolls. He yelled at them to stop and demanded to find out what was happening. My grandma said that the German commandant allowed her and the women to see their spouses and sons. Then she would conclude her storytelling with a demonstration of her strength, she would ask me and my other young cousins to grab her by the arms and try to move her like the Germans did. We were giggling as she was shaking us around and we would fall on the ground laughing hard. On the photo are my grandfather Christos, my grandmother Vagelio with their eighth child, my mother Vicky.