About

Yiasou! (to your health/hello),

First off, thanks so much for wanting to get to know a bit more about our site. We love getting to know our audience and people who come to this blog, so feel free to contact us at any time.

This website was created by us, Kenton and Jane. We do all the photos, recipes, articles, etc., etc.,

Kenton is of Greek decent and Jane is of Russian – interesting mix I know 🙂

We were both born here in the USA. Kenton in Chicago and Jane in Burbank, CA.

We’ve been together for a little over 9 years (Engaged in May 2014! Married May 2015!)

We met in college (UCLA – GO BRUINS!)

We have collected hundreds of Greek recipes, some from Kenton’s family, some from our travels to Greece, and others from cookbooks.

The main aim of this website is to document our exploration into Greek cuisine and cooking with Greek inspired flavors. Taking traditional Greek recipes and turning them into unique dishes that we’ll share here. Additionally, we highlight healthy Mediterranean diet lifestyle tips and recipes with a Greek flare.  

This is done by taking a recipe we know or have and altering it, sometimes to an unrecognizable level, cooking it, figure out what flavors worked and what didn’t- cook it again, and when we think it’s delicious – we post it.

We’re not experts, but we love spending time in the kitchen cooking and experimenting with foods, flavors, and ingredients inspired from or that have came from, Greece.

Our inspiration comes from family backgrounds, Greece, any person/book/blog/magazine/etc., that writes about Greek food, and of course, the yia-yias of the world.

Why start a Greek cooking blog?

Jane and I currently live in sunny southern California. Ever since we started dating she, without question, ate any Greek food I made. From simple Tzatziki to Moussaka, she’s tried them all. She’s even learning Greek!

One night, we were talking about finding passions in life and doing a job we actually loved.

She then said, “we love to cook, why don’t we take our collection of Greek recipes and start cooking them, one-bye-one, and document it all as we go in the form of a food blog. It would be fun and we can show people how delicious Greek food is.”

I pondered that statement for a few weeks and then I thought, you know, she’s right. I think it would be fun. So in June 2012 we bought a website and began working on it (originally: greekreciephub.com). It then sat neglected for almost a year, and on August 1st, 2013 we relaunched it as Lemon & Olives with actual recipes and pictures.

We had no idea how to start a food blog or anything that went along with it. So much so, that I just started writing up the recipes I knew so well, found some pictures online and posted them. I was just so excited by the idea!

We then decided that we should make it an organic process: cook, take pictures, write, post. So, that’s what we started doing. Slowly replacing the filler pics with our own.

As it grew, it was amazing to see our passion for Greek inspired cooking being put into words and placed on a website that someone would hopefully utilize and enjoy.

Today, this website is a huge part of our lives. We cook together, explore new Greek dishes, analyze recipes and flavor combinations, record videos, and whatever else we can do to make this site the best destination for Greek cooking!

Heart of this Blog

Due to our combined efforts, we’ve amassed a collection of hundreds of recipes over the past 4-5 years. However, as odd as it sounds,we’ve only cooked a handful of them over and over, as we knew them and they were easy to make. Now we want to focus 100% on exploring other recipes and flavor combinations.

To document and explore Greek recipes and culture. From the dishes we’ve cooked many times to the hundreds that we haven’t. We’re no experts. Just eager cooks excited to share Greek recipes and what we learn as we go – with our own little Greek twist of course 🙂 Making adjustments to every recipe we have to maximize flavors and make it unique.

What we hope this site to be

We want this site to be true and real. We what to share with you what we learn when we learn it and bring you along for the ride as we explore Greek cuisine and dishes inspired from Greece.

Lastly, we want to culminate this site with general information about Greece, from traveling to Greece to Greek culture, because we feel that if you learn a little something about the country from which you’re cooking the food, it makes it taste that much better!

We hope you’ll follow along with us as we explore and Cook the foods of Greece!

OPA!

– Kenton & Jane