Hello there, it’s Melissa Clark here, taking over for Julia Moskin, who was taking over for Sam Sifton, who has vanished into the woods for a well-deserved rest.

I’m just back from my own vacation. My family and I spent 10 glorious days in Greece, where I ate grilled fish — sardines, red mullet, mackerel — feeding the heads to the kitties that always seemed to be by my feet. They know a softy when they see one.

We also ate fried fish: tiny, crunchy, salty anchovies and whitebait that I showered with lemon juice and munched whole while watching the sun drift down into the Aegean. We savored it all with local wine, but not any of the bottles that Eric Asimov writes about this week in his story about red wines from Greece. There weren’t any actual wine lists at the tavernas where we went, just cold carafes of white, red or rosé, along with ouzo to start and mini glasses of syrupy mastic-flavored liqueur to end the night. I was glad I’d read Frank Bruni’s fascinating article on the medicinal possibilities of mastic (an aromatic variety of tree resin) before my trip, so I could feel good about my after-dinner tipple.

I also ate feta salads with tomato, red onion and cucumber every single day and did not get tired of them. And that’s why I plan to make Alexa Weibel’s new recipe for marinated feta with herbs and peppercorns (above) just as soon as I can get my hands on some really good feta, the kind made with sheep and goat milks, not cow, just as she sagely writes.