OPENING MY BLOG

Have I actually started a blog? Have I pressed the right buttons? I am on a technology roll just having had a SKYPE chat this evening as well. This will probably just be ramblings until I get the hang of it. Will anyone want to read it? Seems a bit presumptuous to think anyone really wants to know that much about our lives in Istanbul and whether there are baked beans here. There aren't actually, so please bring some if you come and stay.



In fact there are wonderful fresh beans in the abundant greengrocers and market stalls - stripy red and white pods with matching beans nestled into their woolly insides, but the stripes disappear when you cook them. Not the same as Heinz on toast, the children say. That's what they miss most in the food department - and veggie burgers and veggie fingers and all those processed veggie foods! Here we cook from scratch every day as the Turks do. The freezer section in Carrefour is two rather damp cabinets with unidentifiable brown things in it - plus some sickly ice cream (made by Dave's company - Algida (Walls)).

But...there are the most succulent small, crisp cucumbers bought by the kilo by Turks who eat them at every meal including breakfast. They are peeled, chopped into batons and arranged into dewy fans alongside glowing tomatoes - fat and juicy and so sweet and tasting of sunshine. The peaches are dusky and huge and drip juice down your chin. Strawberries are dark red and small and stuck with straw and remind me of my mother's jam. Chillis bitter and limey green and eaten with white crumbly fresh cheese. Trucks are parked on the streets overflowing with melons freshly picked from a farm ten minutes from the city. On the way to the children's school we spy plots of land tended by headscarved women with gnarled hands and bent backs: lines of crisp lettuces and glossy spinach. Is it organic? Who knows? But it tastes so good......

More to come.......