TURKISH FOOD

Many people comment on the food and how good it tastes and in particular if you eat in a tradition Turkish restaurant known as a Lokanta, where there cook several dishes a day that are ready to serve/eat in addition to having a fridge full of mezes or a menu full of a variety of dishes that will be cooked fresh for you.  You might find it interesting to click on the following website to see when fruit and vegetables are seasonal here in Turkey.

http://www.tekasya.com/products_season.htm

We live on amongst several Turkish families where they grown their own fruit and vegetables, even making their own bread, butter, yoghurt, tomato puree and a whole lot more - we were fascinated to see them making their own powdered soup stock last year.  You will often see red peppers, aubergines, chillies etc hanging on string drying in the sun - they are very self sufficient and are surprised at how often we eat out believing that home cooked food is the best!  Mind you when we've been fortunate enough to sample their meals, or they've very generously given us plates of some of the dishes they have cooked we can understand why they think like that.

You may find some of the following photo's interesting, Tom helping some of the family to mix pureed red peppers and tomatoes which over a period of time will be dried in the sun to make tomato puree concentrate - to avoid some additional ingredients from the Storks nesting nearby a net curtain covers the mixture!  Also, Grandma (Anne Anne - pronounced Annie) from the farm is captured making yoghurt, plus our Landlord's wife allows us to photograph her making butter - so much paler than shop bought butter and milk fresh from their own cows.  Our Landlord even grows his own wheat (they get it ground in a town nearby selling what they don't need) to make their own bread and even grows the food to feed his cows - can you imagine how labour intensive all that is?

There are some glorious photographs of our Landlord (Sedat) and his wife (Hulya) filling a sack with cotton that they have grown but there are few cotton fields in Dalyan now.  Sedat also has a field full of pomegranates that he nurtures like a new born babe, he takes such good care of them and is very proud of his crop come harvest time.  We are blessed to be their neighbours, to share and experience traditional Turkish life - we are filled with gratitude every day that we live here, walking around their farm and other fields nearby all filled with delicious produce and watered with the mountain water using the well managed irrigation system that they have here which requires a "Traffic Warden" to control!  Yes really we often see him at work from our rear balcony overlooking our Landlord's cowsheds and fields beyond with ancient rock tombs partially hidden in the distant mountains.  I best you wished you lived where we do - see photo at the end of this page!

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DALYAN, TURKEY