Fooooood

It's been a while since I've posted some food pictures. I haven't been doing as much Turkish food cooking as I would like - hopefully that will change! In the last week I've been invited to a couple of different houses where the women are tremendous cooks - lucky me! Last week I went to Aysegul and Mehmet's house - Mehmet is a good friend of my roommates and a previous occupant of this house, and Aysegul is his fiance. Aysegul picked me up mid-afternoon and we took a jerky ride (she's just learned to drive...) we got some coffee then went to her house and ate some delicious food! She absolutely went overboard with the amount of food but it was fun and I got to take some leftovers.



I'd always seen this but never tried it - it's semizotu and yogurt. I had no idea what it was but it's purslane and yogurt and garlic? Anyway, it's delicious! The combination just really works and it's a great side dish.
A quick side story - a few weeks ago at Cengiz's brother's house I made a little fruit salad - oranges, bananas, and pears - with a little yogurt to hold it all together (a trick from Anna - thanks Anna!). They went CRAZY over it and were shocked when I told them it was yogurt. They never considered or found the appeal of yogurt and fruit together, which is sooo normal for me and my family and my culture. Here, they put broccoli and yogurt, or spinach and yogurt together - now that's strange to us!



No Turkish household is complete without a big plastic container of pickled vegetables in the cabinet under the sink. I think most of these came from her family's garden in Edirne.



This I could not stop eating. She cooked some short noodles, then added some cooked shredded chicken breast along with some mayonnaise and yogurt. It was topped with oil and paprika heated together. No joke, I ate 4 helpings.



Some red peppers from her family's garden, pickled and with lots of garlic - yum!



Homemade chicken soup, with oil, paprika, and vinegar to top it.



Some fried peppers, again from her family's garden.



Unfortunately I had no room for the main dish, stuffed eggplant.

Part of the reason I went over to their house was to try on some motorbike equipment. It's been too cold for us to ride on ours but we need to get some protective attire so I tried some on at their house.



Yesterday was my off day and I went to Avcilar (the very west of the city, almost outside of Istanbul) where I hung out with Cengiz and Bertal for a little before Cengiz went to teach his classes, and then I hung out with his sister in her house. She doesn't speak any English so it was good practice for me. We talked for a while, ate food, and made Valentines. It was a lot of fun and she's so sweet and energetic and it's always nice to get out of my neighborhood where I live, work and go to the gym.



We went walking by the Marmara Sea.



Of course, she made some delicious food. In the middle is rice with ground beef and lots of other flavors, yogurt with celery root and walnuts, and borek with carrots and spinach. There was also delicious soup and salad.



My Valentine-making station.

A quick funny/not-so-funny story:

For over a month I've been having mouse problems, and I must say, this mouse has good taste - it goes for my special stash of Oreos and gold coins that I carried over from Greece, my Reeses - really, it goes for the good stuff. It's also waking me up at night. So I bought some poison and I went through the WHOLE box and it still didn't die. The other morning I opened up my closet and saw it wobbling around. I shouted and slammed the door at it but it wasn't scared and just moseyed around my closet, climbing on my books and Christmas tree. So I got a plastic container and sacrificed a Reese to bribe it in there and sure enough, it went in and I quickly slammed the top on. I marched outside carrying this mouse and tried not to make eye contact with anyone as I threw it into the street. I was feeling pretty relieved as I went back into my room and no joke - 10 minutes later ANOTHER mouse ran across my room. Sigh. Time to get some more poison. It was a really cute mouse I have to say.

Edirne

Hello everyone! I hope the new year has been good to you. Are you keeping up with those resolutions?

To make a long story short, I was supposed to go to America on Thursday but I had to cancel my ticket, but I had taken time off of work so I decided to keep some of it to relax and enjoy some time in Istanbul. I decided to go on a day trip to Edirne, a city to the west of Istanbul, on the European continent and very close to the Greek and Bulgarian borders. It's only about 2.5 hours away by bus but I had to take 2 buses to get to the real bus but it was fun to go out and do something independent and out of the city.

Edirne was the 2nd capital of the Ottoman Empire (after Bursa) and it's really famous for its mosques. The most famous is the Selimiye mosque, which has a dome even larger than the Hagia Sophia's. It was quite stunning but I was in there just before prayer time and people were in there so I didn't stick around too long.





Men performing ablutions.



At the women's restroom outside of the mosque, there were places for them to perform their ablutions.







There were some also great old houses that I drooled over:









I also stumbled across a market. I'm not sure if it's everyday or just Fridays, but it was fun to wander around.







I also came across an old synagogue, it was so beautiful it gave me the chills.

Happy New Year!

Hello everyone! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a nice New Years eve, and that this year brings you happiness and good health! My Christmas was probably different from yours. I went to the gym, and then I bought biscuits from KFC and cheddar cheese (kind of expensive, not an everyday thing for me), scrambled some eggs and sausage, and had a Christmas breakfast! Later Cengiz and I opened some presents and then I watched him perform at a show at an opening of a new gym.



I have to admit, my tree is pretty cute!



It's not Christmas without gumdrop cookies (a Gordon tradition). A quote from Cengiz, "I'm so full and I want to stop eating them but I can't". Considering some of the ingredients were different (coconut and brown sugar are different out here), they were pretty good!



A big stuffed dog from my roommates and gummies from my brother.



Cengiz's first Christmas. He was a bit confused at first that there were a few gifts for him, and that he just wasn't helping me open them.



It was a good Christmas.

Ok so what do I mean by Cengiz doing a show? I won't bore you with the details but he choreographed a 10ish minute show to show the people at the show the type of classes that will be held at this gym. He and our friend Sem are trained to teach Les Mills programs, a worldwide fitness program that gyms can buy and use (it's so hard to describe, sorry!) where trainers teach classes that have been prepared by the headquarters in France, classes like a yoga class, martial arts class, weight lifting, spinning etc. Anyway, it's really professional and great, my old gym had Les Mills classes and the gym I go to now doesn't, and I really miss the good quality of the classes. So, this new gym is going to use Les Mills classes so they wanted to show people what they were like. I forgot to mention there were like 2000 rich people at this gym opening and it was on live TV. Big stuff. Sorry to blabber! I'm proud.



Uhhh this is just a small part of the gym. This place was crazy!



Yes, he was wearing eye liner. A good effect I think.



My coworker Simon and I were in charge of the Christmas/New Year's party at work. We pulled it together at the end and I think most people had a lot of fun. We both dressed up which I think helped. I decided to invest in a Santa suit (all 20 dollars) and I think it was a very good investment. We played games like musical chairs, Santa says, Pin the tail on Rudolph and we decorated cookies, ate food, and did some coloring.



He's from New Zealand, so Santa wears shorts there.











This is everyone who works at Wall Street in Sisli, minus my boss who is taking the picture and Anna, who is in Sweden :(

There was another party here at my apartment for New Years but I just wasn't in the mood for it, so Cengiz, his cousin from France and I went to his brother's house and hung out there for the weekend. Nothing was out of the ordinary, which was just how I wanted to spend New Years. I made some food and desserts and sat around and talked.



So now here's the part where some of you might be like "You go girl!" or some of you might cringe and go "Oh nooo!" Anyway, Cengiz and sort of me got a motor scooter. BRIGHT pink. And there are Hello Kitty stickers on there. We're going to use it in calm places, very carefully, to just kind of cruise around and see and explore new places.



Yesterday we went to the Maiden's Tower, or the Kiz Kulesi, this little tower in the middle of the Bosphorus. You need to take a ferry to get out there, and the inside of it was so sweet and nicely decorated for Christmas. If you come to Istanbul, it's worth visiting and going to the very top to drink some tea and get a 360 degree view.







Kind of a funny story, while we were up there we lost sight of the scooter which we had parked on the main land so before panicking we put money into the telescope thing and caught sight of it. Phew!



And the next funny part is that when we tried to go back to the mainland (we're on the Asian side in Uskudar) via ferry (a 4 minute ferry ride) we managed to get on the wrong ferry (one for tour groups or something...I don't know!) which took us to Kabatas in Europe, a 30 minute boat ride away. Anyway, it was a pleasant ferry ride but just an extra hour out of the day!

I'm so sorry this is so long and sloppily written. As you can see, life has been busy, but good! I think things will calm down now, as I hope they will for you too. If you hung in here this long, thanks so much for reading! Take care!