In the Mediterranean Style

Our 4 lira houseplant from Pratiker has a new leaf! I was a little worried about why she might have been so inexpensive but in a new pot and sitting in the window sill she seems well...

I suspect that it might be she is celebrating the arrival of the bottled ginger beer! Peter has bottled the ginger beer and after it started fizzing (as shown in this picture), we squeezed out the excess air and screwed the lids on very tight. Now, all the ginger beer is wrapped in plastic bags and is in the rubbish bin in case it explodes...
Speaking of beer and food, since that is mainly what life consists of (except for working which right now is being done but at odd hours of the day as I remotely log on to computers half way around the world), I am trying to embrace eating In the Mediterranean Style. This is highly necessary because Peter's cooking is excellent and I could easily overeat every single day if we had homemade tomato soup, cottage pie, curries and homemade hamburgers everyday. And, it’s also a pleasure because everything is readily available for eating in this style, unsurprisingly, since we are just a few hours from the Mediterranean. I like to look at the MediterraneanAsian for inspiration. In many ways, eating the meals planned won't work for us but the pictures and info are very useful. After looking for inspiration and going to Real (grocery store) last night this was dinner: Mmm. The grain salad was from the deli section at the local grocery store and is bulgur, cilantro, tomatoes and spices to give it warmth but not too hot. And the white yogurt dip was also from the deli and is a spinach and dill yogurt dip. Yum! We just cut up some veggies and put some olives with it and poured two glasses of Skol beer and dinner was served!
Then...I made dessert :)

fridge... kiwi isn't really in season here nor are bananas and these are expensive compared to other things (e.g. 3 lemons cost .33 YTL, 4 sweet plums cost .46 YTL and 3 tomatoes tallies in at under .50 YTL while 2 bananas is 1.5o YTL) but they are familiar to me and I like to have bananas on my cereal in the morning. I am trying to make use of all of the seasonal things here like the melon pictured above and below - which is apparently a honeydew melon but interestingly, it doesn't look like honeydew I am used to... it is very good and juicy but not as sweet as what I would call honeydew and is more pale:

Plus, the rind doesn't look like Honeydew but it is very good all the same! The dessert then, was kiwi, banana and honeydew drizzled with honey (which is from one of Peter's students whose father is a police officer but he also keeps bees - we have five different types of honey in the pantry) and topped with crushed almonds and hazelnuts (findik). If the mint hadn't wilted, I would have put a sprig of fresh mint in the picture too! A lovely summery dessert In the Mediterranean Style :)

In other food/beverage news, Real has gotten in a shipment of filter coffee so I was able to buy something besides Starbucks! Real has all sorts of things including food, clothes, DVDs and air conditioners (like a Super Target) and most of the time, everything is in stock but things which are imported, like filter coffee (filtre khave) and frozen shrimp etc. are not always on the shelves. Anyway, the filter coffee we have now is Jacobs brand, which is very dark so I only need half of much of it compared with the measurement needed for Starbucks' brand. I am just a fussy American and can't handle those strong European coffees (let alone Turkish coffee! I have had it every now and then, but it's much too dark and ferocious to drink first thing in the morning!).

Last but not least, we are taking Turkish lessons for nearly three hours every weekday. Learning another language makes me sympathize with little kids who have a large repertoire of nouns and end up pointing a lot and saying words with pleading looks on their faces... or maybe that is just me as I try to learn a new language after my brain has lost all its language plasticity!

Gule Gule! (bye bye!)