The taste of initiation

At my women-only gym, the middle-aged Turkish women I do crunches with talk about pastries. It reminds me of my first summer in Turkey, where instead of crunches, my neighbors would knit or crochet in our garden while talking about baked goods.

Is there no bad time or place to talk about pastries?

My vocabulary has become peppered with the Turkish versions of pastry dough (börek), cake (pasta), and salty or sweet cookies (tuzlu and tatlı, respectively). Baked sesame seed rings (sımıt) are a daily part of our life.

Sımıt, for Pukka Living

Eat, and then work it off. Bonding in the form of locker-room chat. On the aerobic floor, commiseration over leg lifts and latent stomach muscles. Chats about tattoos, taboos, and domestic routines.

Food was my initiation into Turkey - hours in my mother-in-law's kitchen taught me the aromas and textures that filled the Turkish table - but my gym in Turkey is a social sphere of my own choosing. 

What's one surprising place you go that makes you feel at home?

Free Recipe Cards

From my design archives I dug out a set of vintage-inspired recipe cards I made last year. Download the free size A4 PDFs by clicking on the images below or browse my Mediafire folder for downloading. Please share and enjoy! Bon Apetit! Aftiyet Olsun!

A4 Set of two Recipe Cards (Form-fill PDF)
A4 Set of two Recipe Cards (Print and Fill PDF)

A4 Set of four Recipe Cards (Print and Fill PDF)

Fall Delights

Staples at a Midwestern Thanksgiving dinner table? At our house in Wisconsin: turkey basted according to a timing method made by my engineer-father, champagne for the adults to sip while waiting, broccoli/cauliflower and cheese-whiz bake, canned cranberries, mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans, butter on French bread, and pumpkin pie. For a saucy tale of secret ingredients at the holiday table, read cultural producer Anastasia Ashman's post here.

Here in Türkiye, I do what I can to recreate our meal, but it is never quite the same (though I've become much better at making gravy than I used to be!). I tend to throw in some healthier alternatives, but canned cranberries have never disappointed me, despite how unreal they look coming out of the can, ridges in the cranberry mold shaped like the aluminum can. Food and fall go hand-in-hand for me because the kitchen seems to come to life, me and the kitchen less sweaty and grumbling than in the summer when cold soups and salads are staples. In the fall, rich flavors mingle with our expectations for sharing meals together, sheltered against the cold. What keeps you fed body and soul during the fall? Afiyet olsun!

Drawing diary

Pumpkin + soy sauce + feta cheese? On a bed of pasta it has three of my favorite things: sweet, salty, and nutty with a dash of hazelnut oil. Top with walnuts.

Harika

Last night I interrupted the making of roasted pumpkin and carrot soup (with coconut milk, onions and garlic, in case you are interested...) to check my email and found my very first official rejection letter for a story I wrote. These days things happen so quickly that I have little time to actually react before I jump to the next thing, like making sure the navy beans in the pressure cooker didn't explode while Topi and Lina take turns putting tiny balls of play-doh under everything, but I did actually think a few things that came rapidly: oh, okay, and wow, they actually sent a response instead of letting it disappear in the void (or spam). And then, I felt it was official. I've finally joined the ranks of other writers because I've officially been rejected. This is great! Now I only need like ten more rejections and then I'll start to think I'm getting somewhere.

 

Turkish fabric - edgy florals

So far has been a week of some doors closing and others opening (though I'm still kind of waiting for the green light somewhere) in many ways, and just when I think I can get away from some kind of shift in the universe making each and every hour a taxing test of my patience, I find little reminders that it's not over yet. So bodes this week. In the meantime I'm reading French Women Don't Get Fat thanks to Tara who lent it to me after a wonderful Sunday brunch at her house and employing all my best procrastination techniques to avoid doing whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing this week. Getting Things Done was not in the weekly forecast.

Over at IC, I wrote last week about the editing process for artists and designers. While writing it, it gave me an opportunity to see just how I work and why. I'd say I'm in step 8 of my own list, going back to work and examining all the possibilities of what could be new projects. In my opinion, this is the most uncomfortable stage. All the previous projects are done, the clean up is finished and now it's time to focus on something new. Like my toddler's birthday bash in an hour... 20 toddlers and cake, oh my.

*Harika means amazing, fabulous, splendid...