All posts filed under: Family Life

healthy meal, jujube, turkey

Turkey Necks with Ginger and Jujube: Cheap, Healthy Lockdown Meal

We are under the national weekend lockdown again last weekend. I was meant to write this post earlier but I have absolutely zero time these day to do anything else besides chasing after the little mouse, who crawls and tries to get into all drawers around the house. When she sleeps, unlike the pre-solids days, I’m busy either cooking baby food or searching for baby food ideas. I refrain myself from talking about baby stuff not to give the impression that this blog is turning into a mummy blog. However, it’s inevitable to mention her here and there since I spend all day with her and all I do involve her. I even did the 2020 harvest with her at the winery! Though it was an exciting and unusual experience, I felt sorry, even guilty for having put her through the tough situation where she was left in the hands of strangers while I was working and was restricted to the room without her favourite toys since the outside was too cold. I was absolutely …

Turkish food, caul fat

Happy Mother’s Day and Postpartum in Lockdown

Hello folks, it’s been a very long time. Too many things have happened over the past year for me to even recount everything. Last year I was fully committed to wine making and WSET diploma and, as if they weren’t challenging enough, I decided to have a baby and carried her through the harvest. I thought I could take advantage of the super sense of smell on the tasting exams, which didn’t quite work out. However, it was proven quite useful when I was sniffing the fermenting wines and during the blending process of 2016 vintage. If my baby grows up to be a wine girl, no surprises there! My pregnancy was smooth and I quite enjoyed tucking into sucuk, kebab, katmar, kunefe and all other naughty desserts that I didn’t used to eat without feeling guilty. My cravings were for fatty and spicy food, and hubby drove to Istanbul and Izmir to provide me with the best croissants in Turkey. After 40 weeks, however, I started to get frustrated, not having any signs of …