Paleo Greek - Episode #1: Grape Leaves

My sons performed some plays last night based on 4 Greek myths. Their fellow cast members were a bunch of other homeschoolers. Homeschoolers are notorious for leaving no stone unturned, so in honor of the Greek myths we had a Greek potluck. This seemed the perfect reason to unearth the jar of grape leaves from my shelf (that had been there awhile) and make stuffed grape leaves. My sister, realizing my often frantic, over-scheduled existence, was like "why the hell don't you just go buy some stuffed grape leaves"? "They won't be Paleo. They'll have rice" I said. "Yeah, like 14 grains of rice. So what." My sister is way more sensible than I am. But I had already envisioned an idyllic homeschool, mother-son experience -cooking Greek food to soak up the whole Greek thing before the debut. First, as I was gingerly tugging the wad of grape leaves out of the too-narrow-mouthed jar I told my sons the story of their Dad and I watching the very old Portugese women pick grape leaves from a vine alongside our triple decker apartment building in Somerville, MA. Like most children of divorced parents, my kids find stories involving their parents together, fairly compelling. Grape leaves aside. I gave Son #1 the task of carefully peeling apart the fragile leaves, unwrinkling them, and rinsing them. Since Son #1 is currently the physical equivalent of a bull in a china shop, this was risky, but turned out OK. Son #2 was playing the role of "grape picker" in one of the Greek plays. We had been to the dollar store the previous day to find some plastic grapes for a costume piece. "Look Ezra", I said, "these are real grape leaves, like the ones on the plastic grapes". "Grandma says the Greeks picked grapes to make wine," Ezra says skeptically. My mother, with good reason, is a tee totaller of the most stoic variety. Somehow she managed to pass on her feelings about wine to her grandson even in the context of a Greek myth! "Yup. Dionysus was the God of wine. He was very important." I try to inject some objectivity, but I'm pretty sure Grandma is more influential. "We don't have to eat these do we?" both sons ask. Maybe my sister was right...