All posts tagged: family

Turkish food, caul fat

Happy Mother’s Day and Postpartum in Lockdown

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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 …

korean wedding

Korean Traditional Wedding and Tastes of Seoul Streets

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Sorry, the second part of the Korean trip was delayed. The 2 weeks of the Turks’ adventure can’t be summed up in one post, right? So here’s the more interesting one. Our Turkish guests were lucky to attend two weddings during their stay as my brother’s modern wedding came only two days after my traditional Korean wedding. Two completely different styles in two far distanced cities. The traditional Korean wedding, though more complex and less glamorous(?), was fun and even educational for the guests, the old and the young together. It was most likely their first and last time to experience it. Having done it myself, I can understand why it had gone out of favour. However, with the rise of international marriage, the tradition is said to be coming back and it was indeed a very memorable experience, and the best part of it is unarguably trying on the beautiful traditional clothes, Hanbok. Three tough Turks flew all the way to Korea to carry my bridal carriage and to throw wild chickens into the air for blessing. Have you cuddled a live chicken …

Turks go to Korea: Cultural and Culinary Shock, Pleasure, and a TurKo Tie

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I’m back from a long and exhausting trip. The 2 weeks of our time in Korea were divided into two; a road trip and a family affair, which I’ll write about in the next post. But first, I’ll share stories from our trip out of Seoul. For those who are not familiar with Asian culture and who visit Korea for the first time, there are two challenges; first, chopsticks, and second, sleeping on the floor. The first wasn’t a big issue since most restaurants had forks available, and as time went by, the Turkish guests got better and better with chopsticks and even got to love them and bought some to use in Turkey, with some thinking that they will probably lose weight by eating chopsticks, hahah. But everyone refusing to sleep on the floor often complicated things when booking an accommodation. Most Koreans sleep on beds nowadays but there are people who still prefer to sleep on a warm floor like my mum, and many hotels have options for a room with a bed or under-floor heating. The fact is that you …

chocolate raspberry cake

My first book and the kids cake

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Knock, knock… are you still there? It’s been a long break once again. My apologies… You can guess why I’ve been away, right? I got married and left for honeymoon without the ‘honey’. I spent 5 weeks in London for a wine course! Am I crazy? Yes, maybe I am. You need to be crazy in order to follow your heart and dreams, not money and fame. It’s challenging but more rewarding, no doubt. So I left the unpacking the boxes to Mr.O, the now-hubby, after moving to our new love nest, and off I went. I’ll share my experiences and discoveries in London soon. When I came back, I had loads of work to catch up on including the book. In addition, I had to organise the wedding – yes, I got married in May but the actual wedding ceremony was held last week – and also had to spend time with my family, who came earlier to travel around Turkey before the wedding. When my publisher sent me a photo of the book …

New Year’s Eve / 2015 Manifesto / Süryani(Syriac) wine

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Third day into 2015, I’m still writing my new year’s resolutions, feeling slightly bad that I hadn’t made them before New Year’s Eve. In a way, I’m glad that I didn’t because I’d have felt worse for having broken them in the first days of the new year. Koreans have a great excuse for this, “The real New Year is on Feb 19th!” The year 2015 is Sheep so I’ll be celebrating the lunar New Year then again. I would like to give big thanks to our hosts, Filiz and Onur, for the fantastic NYE feast, which far exceeded my expectations. I was so surprised by how much food Filiz managed to prepare in just a couple of hours after work with some help from her sister-in-law, Ozge, who made the most artistic presentation of potato mash. The roast turkey was great and also the meze Omer, one of rare Turkish men who cook. I brought Cheesy Polenta Sticks and Christmas Fruit mince Pies, and as I’m writing this, I got a recipe request for …

Ramadan, can’t go without mentioning it?

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Ramadan kicked off last Saturday here, and on Sunday, Mr.O and I went to his parents’ place for dinner, which I’d thought was a casual stop-by thing but turned out to be a feast of sumptuous food prepared by Mr.O’s dad. There were so many people at the supermarket stocking up for a big feast and packets of rice starch sheets, which are used to make the special Ramadan dessert, Güllaç, were piled up on the shelves, and above all, the roads were empty as people were either already home or heading home for a big feast, which I like about Ramadan! Also, you can see long queues outside bakeries with people waiting to get fresh loaves of Ramadan pide. When I arrived, I was surprised at the sight of his sister and her friends, and then at the table laid with delicious healthy food, a true Aegean feast! I’d always praised how great a cook Mr.O’s dad is but he is just amazing with food. All the girls at the table were enthusiastically throwing …