villa luna

invade my kitchen

had an impromptu dinner party on sunday night. m wanted to cook (something he's been promising to do for almost a year!) and i blithely offered my kitchen.

happy to report that the flat is still in one piece, no one suffered any injuries and we ate so well!

                                             

to be honest, i'm not entirely sure what we ate. mostly i served as the sous chef - i chopped onions, peppers, carrots and potatoes and you can see the eggplant. at one point, i looked over and m. was looking at the bottles on the counter and the jars of spices on the shelves, wondering what looked good. he would pick something up, sniff it and sort of shrug - "yeah, i think that'll be good."

we had rice cooked with curry and which had sauteed peppers, eggplant, mushrooms and garlic mixed in with it. he garnished the rice plate with hard boiled eggs that had been fried and sliced. interesting.

the chicken (which is in the right picture) - had all the above mentioned veggies and vinegar and wine and who knows what else in it.

whoda thunk? a heavy metal musician and cook. it was an amazing feast and m. seemed to enjoy being the only guy at a table full of women.

yirmibes, XXV

after this past week's festivities with all the eating, drinking, talking and late nights (i almost said cooking but seeing as how i did nothing more than mix up a can of pumpkin goo with a bunch of other stuff and throw it into a pie shell (hand carried to istanbul from a safeway in america) i can't claim to have cooked.), i thought of something else i am thankful for.

food delivery.

i can sit in my pajamas, tap a few keys on my laptop and voila! i'm looking at menus for dozens of restaurants across istanbul. in the comfort of my own house, in my unwashed state, i can order food online and someone will bring it to my apartment door.

the people who created the website - which has service available in five other cities - are geniuses! they must have known about people like me who are too tired, too lazy, too hungover, too whatever, to be bothered with buying groceries and cooking or going to a restaurant.

if only i could get a coffee delivered in the morning...

yirmibir, XXI

(disclaimer - this is drunk blogging)

slammed through 6 articles today - an all-time record. i don't know what got into me but i managed to fly through articles about kuwait, brunei, bulgaria, ukraine, south africa and.. uh... some other emerging market somewhere.

all those silly articles i read every day and the only thing i can remember is the ruler of dubai is sheikh mohammed (who likes falconry and puzzles) and the population of brunei. helpful stuff, eh?

it's thankgsiving eve in istanbul and i'm already having a blast!

friends of friends are staying in the most amazing rented holiday apartment with an incredible view of the city. it's two floors, with pretty tiles in the bathrooms and the kitchen, gorgeous wood floors and a stunning view of the city. depending on which drunk you believe, you can see 11 or 12 mosques from our balcony plus what we think is a greek church.

seriously, this is the most beautiful city at night. well, a pretty city any time but even more so at night.

we had a great dinner - fried hamsi (little fish that are eaten whole - eww), tons of wine and pasta with homemade sauce and shrimp. mmmm... food... mmmm... wine from italy and france....

and people from so many places. well, americans who are living in so many places - the furthest visitor is from honduras. yes, honduras. he really did come all the way from honduras to istanbul to celebrate thanksgiving. wouldn't you?

as i've mentioned before, there will be lots of food and obviously, lots of people. i don't know when i was last so excited about thanksgiving. this is like being a kid on christmas eve!

and the conversation, as i log out, is what is your porn star name? you take the name of your first pet for your first name and the name of the first street you lived on. i have no idea what the name of the first street i lived on so i just went with the first neighborhood i remember.

so watch out for the debut of 'stupid alewa"! not coming soon to theaters near you!

all i can say now is i think i should get a special award at the end of this month for not only posting every single day (cause i will!) but for blogging through all the thanksgiving WEEK festivities.

surprises are expected for the upcoming events so STAY TUNED!

y

ondokuz

once again, chocolate chip cookies are a big success. this time in istanbul. first, it was romania where not only were the cookies a raging success, but so were brownies and, quite strangely, carrot cake. brownies have been quite popular here too - but who doesn't love a good double chocolate gooey brownie??? i will still have to try carrot cake out here.

really, that's about all i can think about. food. thinking about thanksgiving and pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes and turkey and HAM! right, ham. sure, ham is not typical thanksgiving fare but in a muslim country with people coming from other, more strict muslim countries, a good chunk of pork apparently seemed not only appropriate but necessary. it might possibly (but not quite) be more so than the turkey. i''m just wondering if i can sneak a bit of ham in my pocket to make a ham and cheese sandwich the next day. hmm....

the things one misses when living in another country.

for me, those things include good cheddar cheese (going to stock up on that tillamook when i get to the states next month), deli sandwiches (made with HAM), sour cream  (yogurt, no matter how good, is most definitely NOT the same thing), good canned soup for when i get a cold, fresh peas, corn and asparagus, maple syrup, trader joes trail mix and mexican food.

that's not to say the food here isn't good. it's great. but there are times when i want what is already familiar.

that being said, i was reminded today, as i brought chocolate chip cookies to the office, of the food things i brought with me.

• chocolate chips
• crisco (for cookies)
• brown sugar
• cheddar cheese
• some spices
• vanilla extract
• brownie mix
• jello (we'll be having jello shots this weekend! what could be more american?)
• tabasco sauce

possibly a strange list but all of it (except the jello) has been used and appreciated - mostly in baking.

and really, none of it is all that strange. certainly no more bizarre than contemplating, as i stood in a market in ljubljana, slovenia, a jar of hellman's mayo i had just found. i HAD to have that mayo but, in the end, couldn't see carrying it in a backpack on trains and planes all the way back to romania. i sadly had to put it down. clearly, i really wanted it because i still remember that jar and the horrible feeling of putting it back on the shelf three or four years ago.

onsekiz, XVIII

right. so i didn't really get kidnapped yesterday. but my day did go off in a completely unexpected direction after the old woman told me i should be covered in the black bedsheet (i'm sure those weren't her words - black bedsheet), i started talking to the turkish guy who had translated a little for me when the woman was leaving.

we people watched, commenting on what we saw going by, talking about turkey and turkish politics, food, people, travel and whatever else popped into our heads.

after a while, i figured it was about time to go, when ali suggested we go have a fresh orange juice. errr... why not? sounds great!

he started walking me down a small street near the spice market i'd only walked part of the way up before. there on the side of the street was an open air sort of street cafe where you could buy doner sandwiches and durum (wraps) and about a dozen or so different kinds of fresh juice combinations they squeezed to order.

orange? greyfurt (grapefruit. i think that is one of the silliest words in turkish.), pomegranate (which ali thought was an equally silly word in english. it's nar in turkish.), apple, banana, pineapple, kiwi... i'm sure there were more. they even had something called grippin they would add if you wanted something to help you ward off a cold (grip). i was overwhelmed by the choices and let ali decide. orange and pomegranate it was. and it was amazing! yum!

the next thing i knew, ali was ready to walk me to "a great place to buy electronic stuff" because i mentioned i needed a new cable for my i-pod. just a few streets from where we were is a small shopping "mall" full of teeny tiny electronics shops selling everything you could think of. there were electric razors and toothbrushes, i-pods and knock-off i-pods, a wide variety of digital cameras and video cameras, new and used cell phones and accessories, all manner of cables, cords and digital media cards, security cameras and even medical devices for testing i don't know what.

not only did they seem to have everything i could think of, it did seem cheaper than anywhere else i'd seen similar things. ali said he rarely saw foreigners there and figured it was because they just didn't know it was there. i have to admit i felt a little like an oddity. but what's new in that?

then we walked from eminonu, across the galata bridge and up the hill past the galata tower. ali walked me up a steep street that was a shortcut to the end of istiklal caddesi (the pedestrian street) but warned me it wasn't a place to walk alone - esp. at night. i thanked him for taking me to a sketchy neighborhood but he assured me i would be ok with him. still, i was ready to whack someone with my new soup pot if i had to.

then suddenly, we were at galata tower and walking up the street where all the shops with musical instruments are. he pointed out the dervish place i knew was in the tunel/galata area but had never found.

back when we were drinking juice, ali told me about one of his favorite places on istiklal that had really great pudding. so of course, we had to go have pudding. we walked into a pudding shop that has been on istiklal since 1930-something and had to walk up to the 3rd or 4th floor before we could find an empty table - it is that popular.

he was right. the pudding (i had chocolate because as any sane person knows, that's really the only flavor of pudding worth eating!) was really really good. watch out bill cosby! we talked about my work (editing), his job (teaching music) and the beetle club he belongs to. that's beetle as in volkswagen beetle. apparently, turkey has some very active beetle clubs. whoda thunk?

we traded phone numbers and then i headed home (because i had to make a blog entry before midnight!) and he went off to play music with some friends.

it wasn't the afternoon i was expecting and that was perfect. it's those days where you get the opportunity to surrender yourself to whatever is happening that are sometimes the best ones. i hope i made a new friend. even if i didn't, i learned some interesting things, found some new places and had a great time overall.

it was a far cry from the black bedsheet lady and her leeches!

(sorry for lack of editing. must to give laptop back to flatmate!)