Antalya Day 2

Just a few more pictures from today - I head back to Istanbul tomorrow and I hope everything goes okay. Istanbul was all over the news today because of the continuing snow. My flight is at 8:30 so hopefully things won't be too backed up. We'll see! While I've been here, Kubra (Sinan's sister) and I have been making Valentine's like crazy. Here's the mess we made:





Breakfast this morning. We had leftover sarma and fried potatoes. Fried potatoes are a really popular thing for breakfast here which is fine by me!



Dinner. Sinan's father grilled hunks of meat on the balcony and his mom made stuffed eggplant. I watched her closely to learn how to make it better. I'll give a quick summary with the next photo.



This is the stuffed eggplant - cook onions and lots of garlic. Add some peeled and chopped tomatoes and some already cooked ground beef. Then I think add spices like cumin, dried mint, salt, pepper, red pepper, and then some parsley and tomato paste. Let this cook together for a while and then add to cut open eggplants that have been peeled in alternate strips and fried in oil. Then rinse out the meat mixture pan with boiling water and add this meaty water to the pan with the eggplants so they are almost submerged, cover, and boil them for a while.



This is Kubra's famous salad. Everything is cut so small and with oil, pomegranate sauce and salt it tastes perfect.



This cake was so easy and so delicious but so heavy! Especially when I ate it after I ate a bowl of rice pudding. It's probably good I'm going back to Istanbul tomorrow, otherwise I'd have to buy two seats on the plane...

Antalya aka lots of food pictures

Hi everyone! I'm in Antalya for a quick vacation - I haven't been here in four months so I wanted to come say hi, and also Sinan is here for his winter break. Getting here was a bit of a pain because of a sort of snow storm in Istanbul. Every flight leaving and coming in was delayed; I was supposed to leave at 10:30pm and arrive in Antalya at 11:30 but instead I arrived at 2:05am. It's okay, I'm just glad I got here safely. Just a few hours after leaving a snowy, windy, cold Istanbul, I come here and eat breakfast on the balcony outside!



Looking outside from work. This is before it started sticking to the roads and blowing sideways.



Standing on the balcony at Sinan's house - I love the snow capped mountains in the background.



Sinan's mother and the downstairs neighbor making borek - one kind with cheese and parsley, another with spinach and onion. Delicious!



Breakfast, of course, complete with tomatoes, cucumbers, and tea.



Later we make sarma - grape leaves rolled up with rice (uncooked at this point), tomatoes, parsley, onions, garlic, dried mint, cumin, salt and pepper. They are really really hard to roll but I managed to do okay actually!



Sarma - after they are boiled. Good with lemon squirted on them.



The sarma were for dinner, along with chunks of meat cooked with peppers and tomatoes, and cacik - grated cucumber with yogurt, water, and salt.



Meat stuff - it's a little heavy for me but still delicious in small quantities.



The cacik



This is sutlac - or rice pudding. Funny story - I really like this stuff and THREE times I've tried to make it and every time I fail - it's always soupy. I watched Sinan's mom make it and hopefully I can do it now. This was so delicious, especially with a little cinnamon sprinkled on it.

Sinan's birthday party

January 15th was Sinan's birthday party. He's really not into his birthday but I always like to give a little something and of course, eat some cake. I brought a cake and some chips and clementines over, his cousin brought some soda, and I gave some gifts - nothing too special. But 15 minutes later, one of his roommates brought another cake! So we had to eat that as well. It was fun - I like how these guys don't use alcohol to celebrate things (they aren't against it, but just aren't that interested in it), but instead tea, sunflower seeds, and some soccer videos are enough to amuse them for hours. Sinan and his roommates are some of the nicest guys I know - I'm so thankful to have them and I appreciate their patience with me! I also use them as my guinea pigs for my attempts to cook Turkish food, but they seem to have no problems with that.



Cake Number #1. Complete with candles with the color of his favorite football team. That's one of his roommates, Umut, on the left, and his cousin in the middle.



Sinan with his new presents. I gave him the newest Galatasaray jersey (too small, but we returned it) and a really really soft blanket.



Cake Number #2. I've already stolen the fuzzy blanket.



That's Hamza in the front, and Baris on the right, Sinan's other roommates.



One more funny picture.

Tarkan!

Those of you who have been subjected to my "cheesy" music tastes have probably heard Tarkan somewhere along the lines. He's Turkey's most famous pop star, and I discovered him when I was in a Middle Eastern restaurant in Cambridge, England, before I ever came to Turkey. I heard it playing and I was like, wow, who is this, and I immediately ordered a CD on eBay. The majority of his albums are in Turkish but one of them, my favorite, is in English. He really caters his music to all audiences, with up-beat pop music to slower more traditional Turkish songs. Unlike America's pop stars, he doesn't get involved in scandals and he barely comes onto TV. Watching his music videos is a riot though - he pretty much thinks (or knows? He is pretty attractive...) he's the sexiest person on the planet. Here's one of my favorite songs, I really recommend hanging in there until after the 2 minute mark so you can see his priceless shirt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aWgPyECWz4

As some of you may know, Istanbul is the European Capital of Culture for 2010 (along with 7 other cities). You can read more about it here: http://www.en.istanbul2010.org/index.htm Anyway, to officially begin this, many events were held on Saturday the 16th, one of which was a free Tarkan concert! A group of 6 (all foreigners) went and stood in the cold rain to watch. He started early, we weren't smothered by a crowd at all, and he really really puts on a good show - the best way I can put it is that it really seems like he loves performing - he's so happy and comfortable up on the stage. Ok, and I actually didn't see him because we were too far back and there was some equipment in the way, but there were big screens. We were surrounded by Turks so excited and in love with him, it was great. It was a fun night and I'm glad I went.



A biigg video of Tarkan



Probably a funny sight for the Turks - who knew so many foreigners were fans of Tarkan?



Some fireworks before the show.



This is a quick clip of part of the concert - not long at all. I hope it works!

Cooking attempts

On my days off last week, I was in a cooking mood so I tried a few new things. I wanted to use the cookbook that was given to me so I tried a soup and a sort of sweet and sour chicken. Apparently in the Ottoman times the sweet and sour taste was common, although it isn't common at all now. I don't know if it was influence from other countries or what, but I'll try to read some more and find out. The soup wasn't exactly pretty looking so I think people had a hard time eating it. I cooked green lentils and then added some pieces of homemade dough (way too thick), onions, and some odd things like vinegar, butter, and honey. It actually didn't taste that bad, but I'm not a huge fan of lentils. Then I made some sort of fried chicken (egg and flour coating) and then a "sauce" of butter, onions, vinegar, honey, and cinnamon. Again, kind of odd. But fun! To have something normal, I made kisir which I think is one of my favorite Turkish foods. It's better for a summer salad - add boiling water, tomato, and pepper paste to bulgur, then add onions, spring onions, parsley, pomegranate sauce, and lemon sauce. So good!



The pieces of dough I later added to the soup



It's supposed to be a soup but as you can see it's not very soup-like...



Chicken



Kisir

The next day I felt like doing something even Turkish women don't do...making manti! Manti is like a tortellini or a dumpling. Dough is rolled out and cut into little squares and then a meat mixture (ground beef, or whatever you want, with grated onions and salt and pepper) is put onto each little square. Then you have to seal each little square. I had two problems. First, my dough was too sticky and it was a DISASTER. I can't even describe it. The dough was sticking to the table then ripping apart because it stretched but it wouldn't hold the meat in...Anyway, I added more flour and it got better. The second problem was that I only had a small water glass to roll the dough out, so it was very very thick and doughy tasting. But, the end problem you coat with garlicy yogurt and an olive oil and red pepper sauce so you don't notice it that much.



This is the first batch, I think I made two.



Little little bits of meat.



I didn't take a picture of them being rolled up because mine were not good examples of what it should look like! But here is the final product. Mmm it was quite good if I can say so myself.



A feast!

Christmas/New Years party at work

Last week we had a Christmas/New Years party at work (same holiday according to the Turks...). A couple of weeks ago we pulled names out of a hat to do a Secret Santa gift exchange; the day of the party we revealed ourselves and gave our gift. I gave a pretty straightforward gift to my person, one of the Turkish teachers - just an orchid (but quite pretty). The gift given to me was PERFECT - it is a cookbook titled "500 Years of Ottoman Cuisine" How perfect is that? There is a lot of history and also artwork and interesting recipes - I can't wait to try it.



Many of the people I work with - all very nice and helpful.



Me with Nazim, the clever guy who gave me the book. He's a great guy to work with too, we all love him.



Now we're at the party for the students. They can be a little awkward for everyone so we all had to bring games. My idea was limbo but only about 3 people did it. I should have gotten them to make a line, then make them do the limbo. They enjoyed watching it though.



This is Tara, another native teacher, from Portland, Oregon. Her game contribution was to be a fortune teller so the students have to ask her questions and she predicts their future.



Students looking on with curiosity.



Gavin, instructing a student on how to play the classic game, pin the nose on Rudolph.



Pretty good picture of Rudolph, drawn by Gavin.

It was my idea to have an area where people could do some coloring, to sort of escape the awkward mingling and also to have a place where you can talk, but also be busy with your hands. They really liked it and it was very cute to walk into the room because it felt like walking into a preschool, with everyone hard at work on their coloring.








A couple of days ago I felt like doing some cooking, so I tried to make one of the Turkish mezes (appetizer or dip) which has fried eggplants and potatoes with a tomato sauce on it. It didn't turn out like in the restaurants but it made a nice snack. For some reason I felt like making deviled eggs, because I've started to like hardboiled eggs and I wanted to try them. Pretty good!