sazji

I made handcut ones lately too - They came out pretty well, but definitely different. I can't say if I like one particularly more than the other. But I can say that pulling them (even if it takes more prepartion of the dough and practice doing it) is definitely more fun than cuttin them! Cutting them exactly should be some sort of zen exercise in patience and mindfulness... Last time I did them, I had a big pile of quite reasonably even noodles, dusted with flour. I was reaching up to get some garlic out of my three-tiered hanging metal baskets, and I knocked a lemon, which knocked an orange out of the next basket, which fell and dislodged a potato out of the lower basket, which, in perfect Rube Goldberg fasion (but much faster) landed right on the edge of a pot with some daphne cuttings in it (that window is perfect for them...but I should have moved it), overturning it and flipping about 3/4 cup of peat moss and perlite squarely into the middle of my freshly cut noodles. Stoopid....

Offense? Are you kidding? I posted it here because it was offensive, I thought that was the point! If you had said "Oh, that actually looks really scrummy," then I would have been offended!

Ben and Jerry's used to do a Blackberry and Passionfruit sorbet that I really liked. Dark chocolate with candied ginger Mangosteen sorbet A tart really fruity orange sorbet with a dark chocolate swirl through it

The best treatment of Phoenix would probably be just as a tandoor warmer that would also add a bit of richness to your schmoo and smurf tikka.

My best were not books but: -Large warming/serving tray, .50; -Wok, $2; and (ta-DAA!) -Still-in-the-box "Little Pro" Cuisinart with chute and juicer attachments, never used $15! (Evidently had been a birthday present that was given shortly before a marriage, and one of the gifts was also a Cuisinart, and they didn't need His and Hers...)

I do to. (BCD for me) The companies that come up with this stuff know exactly what they are doing. They know Americans are addicted to greasy rich foods and sugar, which is why they put sugar in things like canned green beans for Chrissake. (And the diet foods industry is the other half of the equation.) So it was only a matter of time before they did it. I wonder what's next? Here are my candidates: Candied fried crispy bacon fat Fried chicken tenders with caramel dipping sauce I almost said fried beef with orange syrup, but the Chinese beat us to it... Fatty pork sausage with maple sugar cream filling

Out of those, I have only had Maranatha, I remember it being quite good. I grew up on the hydrogenated ones; Skippy and Jif were too expensive, we always got the local store brand (Hy-Vee in Iowa) or generic, which tasted funny even to me, then. I didn't like the first natural ones I tasted but when I moved to the West Coast, I was immediately converted to Adam's. I still have people bring it when they come visit. Trader Joes is also very good. Here, the only ones that ever show up are sweetened way beyond Skippy or Jif, and I can't stand them. I need to find a way to make my own. Tahini's nice and I have friends who grow sesame and make their own so I can get gallons of it if I want, but it's not a substitute for good peanut butter!

Ooooh, ah hate it when that happens... You must have really wanted that coffee! Wish you a speedy recovery...

I did a couple of good silly things this week. One of them tonight even. Can I say I'll never do them again...well, not purposely but... So last week I was making this big batch of hand-cut noodles. I'd just gotten them done, they were in a nice pile on the counter. Besides cooking, my other love is horticulture, and that means that window space is at a premium. I had a small pot full of peat and perlite with several slips of winter Daphne brought by a friend from Oregon. The north window of my very cool kitchen is the perfect place for them. So as I'm reaching up to get a piece of ginger out of my hanging wire baskets, which were a bit overloaded, something shifted, a lemon fell out of the middle basket, behind, bounced off the wall into the bottom basket, which (in Rube Goldberg fashion) destabilized the potatoes there, sending exactly one small potato tumbling out of that basket. It fell down to the windowsill, bounced off, and landed squarely on the near corner of the little pot of Daphne cuttings, flipping the pot upside down, neatly and perfectly into the middle of my just cut noodles. Perlite is crunchy but not a recommended garnish. The good news is, one of the cuttings had rooted.... The tonight I had friends coming over for dinner. I had *just* enough olive oil to make the salads with enough left over to make a garnish for the soup. I put it in a Turkish coffee pot with a bit of mint and had it heating at very low flame, then put on a big pot of brussels sprout head (the top of the plant...it's quite good) for a warm salad. I'd just been lighting the coal stove (the one that heats the house) and ran back to check it...the coal hadn't quite lit, so I gave it a bit of help with a torch. Came back, checked the greens...there seemed to be a toasty smell...but there was plenty of water in the pot still as they were steaming...the smell got even stronger and really rather evil smelling...Oh crap, forgot about the olive oil! And I was out, and didn't have time to run out for more. Luckily the neighbors had some...

My kitchen is a bit defunct this week owing to absence of both electricity and water :?/ hopefully to be taken care of within a couple days, so I'm going for vicarious thrills today. But what beautiful stuff today! The flowered cake especially was so beautifully done, I hope your grandmother appreciated it as much as we did! And congratulations Ling! (Mentally tasting lime and banana is somehow easier for me than beets and chocolate...gonna have to work on that one...hmmm...mmm..mm?.....um....

Here's my grandmother's recipe (from Greeks from Marmara Island, Turkey): 1 lb butter, unsalted 1/2 c powdered sugar 2 egg yolks 1 jigger whiskey 1 t baking powder 5 1/2 c flour (about) 3/4 c chopped almonds several cups of powdered sugar for garnish Cream butter, add sugar, egg yolks and whiskey. Add flour sifted with baking powder. Knead 20 minutes (She said this was very important to give the the delicate texture, and these certainly are delicate). Add nuts and knead to blend. Shape into ovals about an inch and a half long by an inch wide, or moon shapes, bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 350 for around 15 minutes, till they just start to brown. Roll when still fairly hot in powdered sugar. After they cool, pack into tins, with a thin layer of powdered sugar on the bottom, then put more powdered sugar in a strainer and shake over the tops. Put on a layer of wax paper, repeat with next layer and so on. ------------------------------------------------------- Another couple of our family favorites that were mostly around during Christmas: Finikia (Fee-nee-kya) My mom would make large batches of these to give to neighbors as well, and as they kept well, there would be a lot out in a container in our unheated garage, and it was our favorite cookie to raid. So she took to trying to hide them...packing them in places she didn't think we would look, like the old pressure cooker up on a shelf that she practically never used. We found them of course. 1/2 c sugar 1/2 c orange juice 2 c wesson oil* 2 c chopped walnuts 2 t cinnamon 1/4 t nutmeg 6-7 cup flour (start with 6, add more if needed) Syrup: 1 lb honey boiled together with 1 c water and 3 thin slices of lemon Blend oil, sugar and spices. Add juice. Add flour and make a smooth dough, knead gently, add nuts and knead to blend. Shape into app. 2" rectangular shapes, bake on ungreased cookie sheet for around 30-35 minutes till lightly browned. While cookies are baking, make syrup and keep warm. Take cookies hot from the oven and place directly into the syrup, allow to sit for 2 minutes or so to soak in syrup, remove with fork to drain. There seems to be lots of mystique about dipping in syrup - some ladies insist it must be cold cookies in hot syrup, others say "no, you got it mixed up, it's hot cookies in cold syrup!" My aunts did it with hot cookies in syrup that was kept hot. You can join the fray or just try the three and see if it makes any difference at all. I suspect it does not. -------------------------------------------------------- Koulourakia The name comes from the word "koulouri," which means "bread ring," the "akia" is the ending that means "small ones." I've seen them made in rings but my family never did. In Greece I've seen various recipes, most with all butter, some with the addition of some oil, but Crisco does not exist there so this must have been a post-immigration adaptation. I helped make them in a friend's house in their village in Kephallonia; they made all sorts of shapes and really had fun with it. (My brother and I always did too.) My friends' mother made one that looked like a baby, then thought again, grabbed a little bit of dough and turned him into a male baby, which was the source of five minutes of cackling. The dough is like, that, it begs to be moulded. This recipe makes a lot, but they are really good, and great with coffee for breakfast (the standard breakfast for many Greeks actually...a cup of Greek coffee and a bit of bread or a koulouraki or nothing). 1 c butter 1/2 c oil 1/2 c crisco 2 c sugar 4 lg eggs 4 t baking powder 1 t salt (optional) 1/2 c orange juice 2 T vanilla 9-10 c flour Garnish: sesame seed egg, beaten with 1T milk Cream butter, oil and crisco till fluffy. Add sugar and beat well. Add vanilla, then eggs one at a time, beating well between additions. Add orange juice in a slow stream. Add 9 cups of the flour, sifted with salt and baking powder, and mix in more till it's a good texture for rolling. (But keep in mind that it will roll much better after it stands.) Let stand 20 minutes. (If you don't, it will not roll easily but will crack and break) Take a piece about the size of a large walnut. Roll out into a rope about 6 inches long. Double the rope and twist twice, place on baking sheet. The ones they sell in Turkey are rolled much tighter but this was our way. Other rolling methods: Circles: take a smaller piece, roll into a rope about 4 inches long with tapered ends, and curl into a circle, ends overlapping. It's simple but takes a bit of practice to get elegant ones. Smyrna style - take a piece a bit bigger than a walnut, roll into a rope about 8-9 inches long, then fold into thirds in a "Z" shape, then pushing the Z flat, if that makes sense, and unite the ends. The result will be an oblong cookie made of three perpendicular ropes. Press lightly across the ropes with three fingers of one hand to give a "wavy" top. After cookies are formed, brush with egg white mixture, then sprinkle with sesame. My mom would just touch the top of the first brushed cookie, then dip her fingers into the sesame, then back on the cookie, and the sesame would stick. Then back to the sesame, on to the next cookie, etc. It gave a very even spread of sesame. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes, till light brown. (The recipe has "375" written on the side; maybe my grandmother's oven was a bit hot...I have always done them at 400.)

Had my first really nasty cold in a couple years last week, and I just got my sense of smell (and taste) back! To celebrate, I made these apple whatevers with prepared puff pastry. <a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b60/sazji/MVC-882S.jpg" border="0" alt="Image hosting by Photobucket"></a>

Just to clarify, is this real sesame we are talking about, or Nigella, which is often called black sesame - the "kalonji" of Indian cooking?

Oh jeez, this is maybe a bit too easy, but this being Turkey ... imagine eating in a place that is fairly nice, clean, good service, then going back to answer nature's call and finding this: This is in a home (note makeshift heel supports due to floor angle that challenges even experienced squatters!) so it's acceptable; they're fine if they are clean. Toilet paper is an optional item here; that's what the little blue pitcher's for. On western toilets, it's replaced by a specially-placed little water jet that's aimed right for the exit point, a very nice addition. But I'm very often surprised at how little care is given to toilet maintenance at restaurants. (I'll spare you the photodocumentation; use your imaginations or check out the worldwide toilet link posted above.) Many smaller eateries don't have bathrooms; you have to go out and find a mosque (which always has public restrooms). But the staff will always give you good directions to the nearest one. Probably the best bathroom experience was in Seattle at the Coastal Kitchen restaurant in Seattle. They were having rotating theme menus that would change every three months. It was Singapore at that point. In the bathroom was a tape playing, like a Berlitz language course, with a phrase in English followed by the equivalent in chinese. But they were hilarious phrases, all in all about 60 of them (and not a single one comes to mind...). The next theme was going to be Greek, so being half Greek I volunteered my services and people got to hear me saying things like "C'mon Narcissus, I need to do my makeup now."

And (related to cowboy cooking, though not to beans), is Utah Phillips' famous story: The cowboys had been out on the trail with the herd for two weeks already and Wishbone's cooking was beginning to wear a little thin. The grumbling about his bad food was approaching mutiny status. Having had enough of everyone's pissing and moaning, the trail boss decided to do something about the situation. He ruled that all of the cowboys would draw straws and that whoever came up short would have to replace Wishbone as the company cook. But there was one caveat. Anyone who thereafter complained about the new chef's cooking would have to take over the job himself. The poor cowhand who lost the draw began his first day as the new cook by throwing together the worst meal he could think of. He wanted someone to complain right away so that he could get off this terrible assignment. Unfortunately for him, no one complained that first evening. Everyone just choked down their food in silence. This went on for several days as the new cook deliberately made the meals worse and worse every day. But still, no one complained. No one dared to gripe about the food because they knew they would have to immediately take over the cooking. After five days the new cook waited until all the hands were well out of sight as they hit the trail early the next morning. With bucket in hand, he went out on the prairie and started picking up moose turds. That evening, at the next camp, he baked a beautiful pie -- the filling of which was a pudding made from his collection of moose turds. After an especially bad dinner of burnt meat, moldy bread and weak coffee, the new chef brought out his pie. Still, no one said a word about how bad it was. In silence they all choked down the pie, some of them holding their noses, others almost throwing up. Again, no one complained. But one cowpoke had simply gotten to the point where he couldn¹t take the punishment any longer. In a fit of rage he stood up, threw his pie plate to the ground and shouted, "Goddammit, you can't fool me! I know what this is! This here's moose turd pie!" Dead silence. "But it's a goooood one!"

Baklava, "Nightingale's Nest" type (Bülbül Yuvasi) Serves 30. This is a favorite of the many kinds of individually-rolled baklava types common in Turkey. This recipe is based on the one in “Türk Tatlı Sanatı” (The Art of Turkish Sweets) by Necip Usta (the Julia Child of Turkey I suppose) but adapted for American realities. Necip Usta’s recipe presupposes that you have made your own yufka (phyllo). As making true baklava yufka is a long, labor-intensive process that few people will undertake, here is a doable version with American-style prepared phyllo. It’s not the same; it can't be because the Turkish baklava dough has eggs, and is rolled to rolling-paper thinness, but it’s still quite good. This is a recipe for a 50 cm round pan. Such pans are easy to find in Middle Eastern groceries and aren't too expensive. You can of course make it in any pan, you can also cook it in batches as long as you keep the uncooked baklava from drying out. But a big round pan of this baklava, in concentric circles, is a beautiful sight, and you are going to a lot of effort... Pastry 2 pkg Prepared phyllo dough 2 lb butter, clarified Filling 1/2 lb ground pistachios, walnuts or almonds 1/4 c powdered sugar 1/8 c water Syrup 6 c sugar 3 c water 2 T lemon juice Garnish 1/2 c ground nuts, or 1/2 c blanched whole pistachios Put a pot of water on the stove and let it simmer; this will help keep your humidity up. (Ignore this suggestion if you live in or near a tropical rain forest.) Lightly butter the pan. Open one box phyllo, spread, cut crosswise into three equal parts. Cover with a damp (not wet!) towel and let rest for 10 minutes. This allows the phyllo to soften and be more workable. Take several sheets from the top of each of the three stacks to work with, replace the towel. Take a 10 inch dowel (or a new unsharpened pencil, or something of similar dimensions) and lay it on the table horizontally in front of you. Lay one sheet of phyllo vertically over the dowel so that there is about an inch and a half of the phyllo on your side of the dowel, and the remaining length on the far side. Put about a teaspoon of filling evenly along the far side of the dowel. Now lift the dowel over the filling, and roll the piece up around the dowel, not too tightly, leaving about 2/3 of an inch unrolled at the end. Now gently push the roll from the ends towards the middle, crimping it tightly. (It may take a few tries before you get it just right; too much and you will get splitting.) Now slip the dowel out, and bring the ends of the roll together towards the unrolled portion into a small circle, so that you end up with a little “donut” (the “nest”), with the unrolled portion forming a “floor.” Place in pan, cut side towards center. Continue around the pan making one circle, then another inside that, till you reach the center. Their edges should barely touch but do not pack them too tightly because they will expand some during cooking. (It's no disaster if they do; they'll still settle back down.) Continue with the remaining pieces, removing a few each time from the stacks to work with and leaving the remaining ones covered to soften a bit. When you run out, open the next box and cut just one third off; you probably won’t need more than this. Preheat oven to 390F, and melt the clarified butter, it should not be overly hot; a temperature where you can keep a finger in it. (Unclarified butter will make spots on your baklava.) Pour butter evenly over the baklava and bake for about 25-30 minutes till lightly browned, turning pan if necessary to ensure even browning. While the baklava is baking, make the syrup. Mix sugar, water and lemon juice, boil together 2 minutes. Keep hot. When baklava has browned remove from the oven and tilt pan, use a turkey baster to remove the extra butter that collects on the edge. Pour the hot syrup over the baklava, and let cool. Garnish with either a small spoonful of ground pistachios in the center of each piece, or a whole blanched pistachio. Or you can also use ground blanched almonds. This baklava can be formed in various ways. Instead of rounds, it can be simply doubled over, formed into a spiral, or left straight (çubuk baklava). You can also make a really beautiful pan of baklava by combining shapes. Keywords: Dessert, Vegetarian, Expert, Middle Eastern ( RG1643 )

You can do it in any pan, and as long as you keep them from drying out before you bake them, I don't see any reason why you couldn't do it in several batches. Right on the rolling. Just don't roll it too tight, it should be a little loose so that it will crimp well. (If it is too tight, you'll get splitting. It can also split if the dough is too dry. Actually, it's not a bad idea to have a boiling pot of water on the stove while you do this to keep the humidity a little higher in the kitchen.) The nut mixture doesn't really expand as you are only going to put a little in, a level teaspoon's worth at most, distributed in a line across the piece of phyllo. (Remember you are going to put more pure nuts into the holes of the finished product.) Have fun!

Here's the "nightingale nest" recipe. It's based on the recipe in “Türk Tatlı Sanatı” (The Art of Turkish Sweets) by Necip Usta (the Julia Child of Turkey I guess) but adapted for American realities... Since it's based on another's recipe, I wasn't sure about the ethics of posting in recipe gullet but here it is for those who want to give it a try. It's not that difficult, just a bit labor-intensive, and the results are beautiful. (Do it, Ling! I wanna see photos, too!) Necip Usta’s recipe presupposes that you have made your own yufka (phyllo). As making true baklava yufka is a long, labor-intensive process that few people will undertake, here is a doable version with American-style prepared phyllo. It’s not the same, but it’s good nontheless. With 2 pounds of butter and sugar and pistachios, how can it be bad? And people will fawn endlessly over it and talk about how it's too pretty to eat....and then unhinge their lower jaws and engulf it. Bülbül Yuvasi (Nightingale’s Nest Baklava) This is a recipe for a 50 cm round pan. 2 boxes phyllo 2 lbs butter, clarified (yes, really...!) 1/2 lb ground pistachio (or almond or walnut) filling (1/2 lb ground nuts, 1/4 c powdered sugar, 1/8 c water, mixed well) About 3/4 cup or more ground pistachios, or whole blanched pistachios for garnish. Syrup: 6 cups sugar, 3 cups water, juice of one lemon. Open one box phyllo, spread, cut crosswise into three equal parts. Cover with a damp (not wet!) towel and let rest for 10 minutes. This allows the phyllo to soften and be more workable. Take several sheets from the top of each of the three stacks to work with, replace the towel. Take a 10 inch dowel (or a new unsharpened pencil, or something of similar dimensions) and lay it on the table horizontally in front of you. Lay one sheet of phyllo vertically over the dowel so that there is about an inch and a half of the phyllo on your side of the dowel, and the remaining length on the far side. Put about a teaspoon of filling evenly along the far side of the dowel. Now lift the dowel over the filling, and roll up around the dowel, not too tightly, leaving about 2/3 of an inch unrolled. Gently push from the ends towards the middle, crimping the roll. (It may take a few tries before you get it just right.) Now remove the dowel, and bring the ends of the roll together in a small circle, so that you end up with a little “donut” (the “nest”) the unrolled portion forming a “floor.” Place in pan. Let their edges touch but avoid the temptation to cram them too close together as they will expand some during the cooking. Continue with the remaining pieces, removing a few each time from the stacks to work with and leaving the remaining ones covered to soften a bit. When you run out, open the next box and cut just one third off; you probably won’t need more than this. Preheat oven to 200C, and melt the clarified butter. Pour butter evenly over the baklava and bake for about 25-30 minutes. While the baklava is baking, make the syrup. Mix sugar, water and lemon juice, boil together 2 minutes. Keep hot. When baklava has lightly browned (don’t overdo it) remove from the oven and tilt pan, use a turkey baster to remove the extra butter that collects on the edge. You may be amazed, shocked, dismayed or ecstatic at this point, when you realize just how much butter has remained in the baklava! Pour the hot syrup over the baklava, and let cool. Put either a small spoonful of ground pistachios in the center of each piece, or a whole blanched pistachio. Or you can also use ground blanched almonds, or both. This baklava can be formed in various ways. Instead of rounds, it can be simply doubled over, formed into a spiral, or left straight (çubuk baklava). You can also make a really beautiful pan of baklava by combining shapes. Edited to remove a Turkish font character that would just display all wonky. But you get to keep the umlauts.

I have had it - as someone else said, it's truly another species. Similar to a Turkish "kuru baklava" (dry baklava) but the presence of cardamom really sets it apart.

Well, you don't have to, and you can still get something pretty nice, but so much of the difference is in the extreme delicaty of the phyllo. I've done "bulbul" (see below) type baklava from ready phyllo though; it's passable but I'd say the commercial stuff you find in the US is easily twice the thickness of baklava phyllo here. And of course the eggs in the dough make a difference. It's kneaded, pulled out, folded and left to rest 4 times, then divided into small rounds, these are opened out to around 6 inches, stacked 2 by 2 with cornstarch, opened to around 50 cm, then left to rest. The doubled pieces are then rolled one by one onto the oklava - a long wooden cylindrical rolling pin, which is rolled back and forth about 5 times pressed from the edges. Then you unroll it, leaving the first three in a separate stack. The rest is stacked in a single stack, and the three you left before are put on top (meaning that what was outside is now inside when you roll; this is important from the standpoint of making them uniform). This new stack is now rolled all at once, bring it out to 90 cm. I can post particulars if anyone wants to try it; but it's more to give you the idea of just how thin this stuff is - like rolling paper. This kind of phyllo is available occasionally in Greece; it's known is "phyllo Virittou" or "Beyrut phyllo." Another difference from the typical Greek stuff is, instead of laying each phyllo and brushing with butter, the baklava is (in the case of flat baklava) assembled in the pan and cut, or (in the case of individually rolled types) laid out in the pan, and a *lot* of clarified butter is poured evenly over the top. (It has to be clarified or the bits of milk solids will brown faster and give your baklava a spotty look.) It's then baked for around 25 minutes, and when lightly brown (or in the case of white baklava, hardly browned at all), removed, the extra butter is drained off, and the hot syrup is poured over. One type of individually-rolled baklava is "bülbül yuvasi" (nightingale nest), which looks like little round nests. Sometimes whole skinned pistachios are placed in the "nest" to resemble eggs; other times it's filled with ground pistachios. I haven't heard of cooking them first in clarified butter but it seems a wonderful idea. I'll post a "bülbül" recipe soon. It's not that hard to do, but looks so beautiful! Here 's a picture (on Mado's site - they aren't really known for having the best baklava but it gives you an idea.) bülbül yuvasi The syrup is variable - for what are the "typical" baklavas here, the syrup is lighter. There is also "dry" ("kuru") baklava which has a denser syrup and a bit less of it, so that there is no drippy syrup. This sounds more similar to what Nicolai describes. Besides pistachios, fillings may be made of walnuts, hazelnuts, as well as in combination with a very thin layer of "cream" made of milk and a very fine semolina. You almost don't notice it there, but it gives a different texture.

In the neighborhood markets here, there are many, many people selling any one item. Some let you choose individual fruits/vegetables, others don't. The ones who are really confident in their produce will be saying "seç al!" (choose and take it!). Sometimes they will have a sign there saying "seçmece," which means also that you can choose. I have no time at all for the ones who won't let me. Last fall, towards the end of the persimmon season, , there was a big pile of persimmons at a not-too-bargain price, and a good half of them were going bad. I looked through them and the kid said "no choosing." I asked him "what, I'm going to pay you 2 lira a kilo for rotten crap?" Oranges have been a little more varied this year in quality, lots of dry ones. As I choose oranges I always check their weight to size, to make sure they are juicy. I got yelled at by a fruit seller for that the other day and I said fine, sell them to someone else. Most are just fine about this but you always get a few who are trying to palm off bad produce. (To say nothing of the fish dealers from whom you choose, say, four bonitos, and find that they have replaced one of them with one you didn't choose and never would have chosen...)

Seed Savers' Exchange has the original item. There seems to be a problem that the rainbow chard from many companies has interbred so you only get red, orange and maybe some yellow. The pink and the darker mauve one tend to cancel out. Seed Savers grows the five varieties separately. It's a great combination of ornament and flavor in the garden. My favorite eating one however (besides the wild one that grows like a weed here) is the local large flat-leaf variety. It's preferred here also because they make sarma /dolma with it.

(Ah Ling, fancy meeting you here just now..) I've made Ling's caramel apple pie three times... next are the gingerbread biscotti.

When I was a kid they weren't so strict about things. I remember being really embarassed as we stood in line to see "Jungle Book," each carrying a brown grocery sack full of popcorn made by my thrifty Greek-American mom. (Now there's no reason to buy that expensive popcorn when you can have better popcorn cheaper from home!) Yeah, she was right of course but it just wasn't cool! The weirdest thing I (along with friends) snuck into a movie theatre was baked sweet potatoes. I don't remember what the film was but I remember us sitting there eating really good warm sweet potatoes.

Ooooh, baby.... I was at a food fair recently held by Turkey's main upscale food wholesaler and importer. There were all sorts of things I don't normally see in the markets here - like plain old western celery (completely unknown here). But the best stand was from a tropical fruit wholesaler. Perfectly fresh pineapple, fresh litchis (how long has it been...), mangos... They also had some sort of ground cherry that was very very sweet and more fragrant than any I'd tried before. We were there at the end of the last day so they were giving away lots of things...we took home a great haul! And I saved lots of seeds of the ground cherry to grow them this summer.