Last week I hosted folks from a London-based designer agency who are meeting with food-conscious people around the world to gather insights about the use of fruit and vegetables. We talked a lot about the Turkish food culture that I had embraced and made a part of my pantry and diet. We touched upon both fresh seasonal produce and the second life it gets in the form of salça, pekmez, ekşisi, tarhana, dried vegetable skins used for stuffing, seasoning made of dry vegetables, dried fruit and other ways of preservation. Besides sharing these insights, I got a few insights myself in particular about how I eat. I mean how I really it which appeared different from what I thought.
Recipes: Salads
The whole summer we have been making this salad for breakfast. Bol (full, a lot of, in Turkish) greens - parsley, dill, basil, mint, rocket salad and purslane which we were occasionally getting from Anamur, the Mediterranean home base of my husbands’ family. Then a bit of plum tomatoes, a hint of cucumber and red bell pepper - to give more color and substance to the otherwise green salad. Anne also puts cheese, usually leftovers and crumbles of the cheese she cuts for breakfast that morning - creamy ezine peyniri, soft string cheese and maybe some lor (cottage cheese). Then comes a splash of extra virgin olive oil, a memory of our culinary trip to Ayvalik. And a handful of olives - black and green - to throw on top of the salad right before serving. Eating bowl of this salad for breakfast has become a good tradition this summer.
As the season with the food tours and cooking classes have started in a big way I am less at the farmhouse. No wonder when I am there I appreciate the place more. This week I came for a few days without my laptop and camera left behind in Istanbul. So there was time for studying the blossoming garden, walking with Ömür, chatting with Özgür and foraging the wild herbs.
From sun and chirping birds I arrived to the up-to-the-knee snow. It took 1.5 hours to get from Istanbul to Sapanca and then 2.5 hours to drive up to our farmhouse. We stopped by the car workshop to put on tire chains. We then lost one of the chains as we climbed the hill and stopped to look for it and fix it again. We dropped the car by the gate and climbed the last 100 meters with bags and new gas cylinder through the up-to-the-knee snow and the complete darkness. There had been no electricity since the morning. Very typical for this winter.
I am used to being a foreigner. For the past 10 years I am. Through my travels and living abroad. Even in my home country. “You speak Russian without an accent“, - a Moscow taxi driver notes. “I am a native” - I murmur.
Being a foreigner is always discriminating - in a very cool but also very annoying way. On the one hand you get a license to do outrageous things that violate local customs. Yet on the other hand you are never given full excess to the local living. And you are constantly balancing between keeping your identity (and sanity) and yet integrating.
