Sugar Cookies

These are some of my favorite Turkish cookies to pick up when I occassionally drop into the Pastane. They are like floury sugar cookies and have powdered sugar sprinkled on top. They are plain and simple and go great with a cup of coffee or tea.

Persimmons - Havanin Meyvesi

There are so many lovely fruits in Turkey that I have never eaten. Sometimes I'll walk through the street pazar and notice fruits or vegetables that I've never even seen before. Maybe I'm just not savvy on my fruits and vegetables, but I'm always seeing new things and it makes me so excited.

I tried a persimmons for the first time last year and I fell in love. Its really sweet and we always eat it for dessert when its in season. In Turkish they are called Havanin Meyvesi (Eve's Fruit, as in from the Garden of Eden). Persimmons are in season right now and I noticed this one the other day and it was huge and I had to try it.  So good!

Bread

I don't fully understand the obsession with bread in this country. If you don't have bread, you can't have breakfast, lunch or dinner. Its like trying to eat an Oreo cookie without the cream in the middle. You just can't.

Tonight Enes cooked dinner. It was a kind of chicken and rice soup. We didn't have any bread and Enes complained a little about it, but we were both starving so he let it go...or so I thought.

About 2 minutes into the meal, Enes stops eating and looks at me. "I can't do it. I can't do it." he says. "You can't do what?" I say totally confused. He gets up in a hurry and I hear him mumbling something about bread. I tell him we have Lavas (like tortillas) and he snuffs at me and shakes his head. He wants REAL bread...

He takes off to the kitchen. He comes back and you know what he has?

Cornflakes! Yes, he puts them in his chicken soup, because he can't find any bread. I'm disgusted at the thought. He asks me why it is so weird, because I eat cereal with milk. He then tells me I should try it because maybe in fact I have been taught wrong and this is the perfect combination for the perfect meal. I shake my head and continue eating as he crunches away eating all his cornflake chicken soup.

Just a normal evening in the Demirci household...