Welcome to Delicious Istanbul!
Hi, am Olga! I run Istanbul food walking tours and cooking classes and help my mother-in-law run her restaurant at the countryside.
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Tag Archives: Family business
What are you chasing: productivity or authenticity?
I have spent a good part of Sunday helping with the breakfast at our countryside restaurant in Sapanca. You would get surprised how much attention it takes to do an open buffet for 40 people over 4 hours. I was only helping with refilling the buffet, bread basket and stock of tea glasses (imagine a Turkish breakfast without the properly brewed strong tea!). Couple of times I went down to the kitchen to speed up dish washing. In between I edited a post, sorted some photos and replied to a couple of emails. Then I spent the afternoon running between the computer, supervising hotel room cleaning, doing our own laundry and ironing restaurant table clothes. The day has passed like that - in the errands of the family business and little chats with the family members in between.
Dealing with Failure: Cooking is So Much Like Horse-Riding
There are no handy tips or recipes today. I am still gathering my courage to continue posting any. I had a cooking failure. Failure to use the right ingredient and do justice to it. Failure to cook something decent in the eyes of Zeliha Hanım, a strict judge of all my cooking endeavors in Sapanca. Failure to show up at the kitchen for a few days after.
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How to Set Personal Boundaries Without Building Walls
One week has passed since I have arrived to Sapanca and it seems like ages : you will not believe how busy life can be on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere. Major renovation of the hotel was finalized followed by a massive cleaning and preparing the rooms for the guests. Then receiving the guests over the weekend. Somewhat settling ourselves (if putting a bed in the middle of an empty room can be called settling). Cleaning the rooms after the guests and helping parents to settle down. Finding out a million of small things to be taken care (like we ran out of water last light and Özgür joked that he would write in his blog how I washed my foot in the toilet - he thought I would not mention it in mine, ha!). And the new week starts like that.
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