FOOD Part 2

Continuing on with the deliciousness...

• Mantı: This delightful dish is composed of small, ravioli-like pieces in a broth. The ravioli things are handmade by rolling out a very thin dough, cutting it into tiny squares, dabbing a tiny piece of spicy meat paste on top of the square, and squishing it together to ensure that the meat remains inside the dough. Then these little pieces are cooked into a soup and served in a bowl with hot pepper and yogurt on top. The yogurt sounded really strange to me at first, but surprisingly it is actually quite delicious. I really enjoy this dish, especially after learning how to make it at one of my friends' houses.
• Künefe: A most intriguing pastry that includes two of my absolute favorite things: cheese and baklava. In essence, this is a giant, round hunk of cheese, with about a five or six inch diameter, covered in phyllo dough and the yummy honey-like substance of baklava. It is served warm, so that when you slice into it the white cheese forms long strings, and...ahhh...I am drooling just thinking about it. Whoever thought of putting cheese with phyllo dough was absolutely crazy and absolutely brilliant.
• İskender Kebab: Though not as good as the Adana Kebab in my book, this is definitely a delicious meal. Piping hot sliced meat is placed on top of small chunks of bread along with a tomato-based sauce. You spoon yogurt on top and mix it all together and eat it up. Quite delicious indeed.
• Sıkma: I have a mental block against remembering the name of this food for some reason, but no block when it comes to eating it...Sıkma begins with a tortilla-like flatbread, which is carefully rolled out using a rolling pin with a very small diameter. It is evidently a traditional meal from this area, so I often see older women rolling it out outside their houses. After the tortilla (for lack of a better word) is rolled out, it is fried in a pan over the stove until it is warm but not too crisp. Then your choice of filling is added, usually a white feta cheese with spinach or parsley. I also have had the dessert version, which is filled with butter and sugar. I can't help thinking that a sugar and cinnamon one would be absolutely wonderful...I'll eat it all though - so delicious, especially when served piping hot, as they always are. 
• Patlıcan: This is the Turkish word for eggplant. Eggplant, however, deserves its own explanation here, as it is used in so many dishes I've eaten, especially at home. It seems to be quite multipurpose - it is found floating in broths, fried up and eaten with ketchup, served on top of rice, and hollowed out and stuffed with rice (more on that later). I am actually not certain if I have ever eaten eggplant in the U.S. before; if I have, it has been quite a long time. At first I was a bit skeptical of the merits of the odd, purple vegetable, but it has grown on me (not literally, thank goodness).

FOOD Part 1: Kebabs, etc.

This is the beginning of an epic saga involving me and Turkish food. Don't let your mouths water too much as you read this...

• Adana Kebab: Adana's most famous culinary creation. This kebab is a long strip of ground meat mixed with various spices to your preferred spiciness level (in my case, SPICY), stuck on a skewer, carefully roasted, and served on top of soft and delicious flatbread with tomatoes and onions. It is legitimately one of the most delicious meals I've ever eaten. On a side note, I saw a kebab that was two meters long on Saturday - evidently the specialty of a certain restaurant here. Pretty cool!
• Adana Durum: A close relative of the Adana Kebab, Adana Durum is basically the meat of the kebab wrapped up rather like a burrito in flatbread along with onions and parsley. Great when you're craving kebab but are on-the-go.
• Çiğköfte: This is one of the most fascinating foods I've eaten here. I watched my uncle in Kayseri make it, which was quite an incredible process. He started out with bulgar wheat in a giant pan, which he kneaded with oil, water, and lemon juice. Then he added thrice-ground raw meat (beef, I presume, though I am not certain), and he continued to knead. Meanwhile we added finely chopped onions, parsley, tomatoes, and seven different kinds of pepper (which Turkey is famous for). After kneading this mixture for around an hour (strenuous work!), he evidently achieved the proper texture. He pinched the dough-like substance into little cylindrical shapes, and we ate them (yes, with raw meat) wrapped in lettuce leaves with lemon squirted on top. It was absolutely delicious and completely a new taste for me. I've had it since then, as they sell it in the grocery store, and it is always good, but never quite as good as when I watched my uncle make it. Incidentally, I was warned that it can give you unfortunate digestive side effects...though any problems are definitely worth the amazing taste.
• Çiğköfte Durum: Like Adana Durum, this is Çiğköfte to go. It is rolled into a burrito-like flatbread with a spicy sauce and lettuce. I think I may actually like this even more than the plain Çiğköfte if that is possible - the sauce, lettuce, and bread really add a special something...which is probably the extra calories that I don't need, but oh well!
• Sucuk: The Turkish version of sausage, but obviously not made of pork. It's fairly spicy, and quite delicious. My Anneanne (grandmother) fries it up in the mornings sometimes with eggs...an absolutely perfect breakfast, along with copious amounts of fresh bread, of course.

More food to come!

Filling in the Gaps...

Let me start of by apologizing for how long it has been since  I last wrote a blog post. Everything has been a bit crazy for awhile, and, to be honest, I just haven't known exactly what to put in a blog post. So I am going to try to piece together what my life has been like since I last wrote in increments - I am getting back on the blog bandwagon!

School started about two and a half weeks ago, but the few days before it started, I was in Kayseri and Kapadokya for Sugar Bayram, a Turkish holiday that rather reminds me of a strange cross between Halloween, Easter, and Christmas. The gist of the holiday is basically this: It celebrates the end of Ramadan, a period of fasting for devout Muslims, by being a time to eat lots and lots of delicious sweets (Especially baklava. YUM.). Also, children get money by going around and kissing the hands of their elders and pressing them to their foreheads, which is a normal gesture of respect to elders here, but Sugar Bayram provides a bonus of a few Turkish lira!

I had an absolutely amazing time being with my uncle and his family in Kayseri for this holiday. Kayseri is about a four or five hour drive north from Adana, and it is a smaller city surrounded by beautiful mountains and cold weather (which I LOVED. And I am still missing.). On the last day of our holiday, we went to Kapadokya (Cappadocia in English), which is one of the most incredible natural landscapes I've ever seen. Everybody who is friends with me on Facebook, go look at the pictures I posted from my trip, though they will not give you the full experience of being there. A mountainous area packed full of ancient Christian history, Cappadocia contains the amazing remnants of its former inhabitants in the thousands and thousands of caves that were homes, churches, and monasteries. I hope I can go back sometime while I'm here so that I can spend even more time exploring this fascinating area.

I started school almost as soon as I returned. I am in the 12th grade again at a private school here called Bilfen. My class is made up of nine girls (a coincidence - it's not an all-girls' school), who are all really sweet and who speak really good English. I have lots of English classes, which are rather boring, to be honest, because they all focus on English grammar, which the students have to learn for the big university entrance exam they take at the end of the year (more about this subject later). I also have Turkish Literature classes (which I am absolutely excelling at, as I'm sure you all can guess), German (which is fun, even though I've never taken it before), Geography, History, Religion, P.E., Sociology/Psychology (I'm really not sure which), and Math (only once a week - thank goodness). Since I can't understand much of what's really going on, I spend quite a few of my classes quietly studying my Turkish book or reading an English book.

I also get to wear quite an adorable uniform to school - a red and green plaid skirt with a white polo. It's nice wearing a uniform, actually, because I feel like I do blend in a tiny bit better, though I still get lots of attention for being so "exotic" looking. The boys at my school have nicknamed me "Bebeka" - "bebek" means baby in Turkish. I think this is a compliment, and I've actually grown to think the name is kind of cute!

As far as my Turkish language skills go, it is difficult for me to really measure my progress, though I can tell I am improving. I have a Turkish language class Monday through Thursday after school with the other Americans here, but so far it has been painfully slow-paced. What I know I have learned from studying on my own and from my everyday experiences, of course. I can tell that I understand a whole lot more now - I can almost always get the gist of conversations when I am listening to them. My Turkish teacher and friends say that I have really good pronunciation when I read and speak, which definitely makes me feel more confident about trying to speak. I think I have a strange advantage when it comes to learning Turkish which comes in the fact that no one in my immediate host family speaks much English at all, so I am forced to try to communicate in Turkish when I want to do something, ask a question, or simply make conversation. I believe everyone else has at least one member of the family who speaks pretty fluent English. I am really enjoying being forced to speak Turkish; though it may be broken, grammatically incorrect Turkish, I can speak it!

Will be continuing to fill in the gaps all this week - keep checking back!