Food

Food is wonderful here. I have yet to have anything I don't like. Except that some of the sweets are a big "over the top" sweetness -wise, I could blissfully eat Turkish food forever. When this honeymoon period wears off, there are also lots of restaurants serving foreign food.

So far the best thing is the soup. Always the first course, always wonderful. Generally it's like a vegetable puree, bean, or pea or tomato. Usually served with the excellent bread for dipping, it is a meal in itself. In the school cafeteria (back when we were eating) they knew to give me two ladles full.

Vegetables are good. Very available and reasonable. I have already talked about the tomatoes, but others are also good. The cabbages are enormous -- like small pumpkins. Potatoes are good, onions, the lot. The only thing I haven't seen yet is celery.

Olives are very popular in Turkey, eaten at every meal and look marvelous. I wish I could acquire a taste for them.

The other thing they eat a lot of that I have never been wild about is cucumbers. I will say, though that they taste better here.

Meat and bread are what Turks eat the most of, oh, and cheese. Cheese is great, thousands of varieties but all white. No cheddar here. The bread is marvelous and meat is great. Heavy on lamb, beef and chicken. It's a long search for pork-based products!

Meat and cheese are both expensive, though, to buy. It is almost better to eat in a neighborhood restaurant than to try to buy meat and cook it yourself.

Diet Coke is available, the beer is okay. No wine that a poor teacher could afford but that's okay because they mostly only have red anyway.

Fruit is very good. Currently peaches, pears, watermelon and grapes are in season.

I will clearly not starve!