I don’t usually do a lot of food photography, but it was my half-birthday last week, and I couldn’t resist picking up a cake from The Cheesecake Lounge. It looked great, and it tasted okay, but honestly it didn’t hold a candle to the cheesecake at Vanilla Lounge, which is still the best in Antalya, by far.

We’re finally starting to get some great Istanbul chain restaurants down here. I never thought I’d be so happy to see a chain, but SushiCo is certainly a welcome sight.

Fresh sushi hand-rolled by real Japanese sushi chefs.

They serve all kinds of Japanese, Thai, and Chinese food, and so far everything I’ve tried is amazing. SushiCo is a bit pricey, but if you want decent Asian cuisine in Turkey, you pay what you have to.

The beautiful outdoor dining area:

If you’re ever in Kaş, you must must must have the tavuk sarma at Lola. Don’t even bother with any other restaurants. I’ve eaten Turkish food a million times at a million different places, and Lola’s is so above and beyond the others that it feels wrong even to try to compare.

For once I managed to get a photo of my meal before I destroyed it.

Summer breakfasts: heavy on the fruit. Cherries are beautiful this time of year.

Yesterday I ran across this photo of some kind of tomato dessert. The photo is by Levent Şen, one of Antalya’s most prominent photographers, and it’s a gorgeous capture of a dish I’ve never even heard of before. I have no idea if this kind of dessert is common or not around these parts— I’ve certainly never seen it on a menu. Many of the best Turkish dishes, though, are things that are normally only made at home.

Traditional wine made in the homes of the Süryani Christians in Mardin. It’s a very special and very flavourful wine, and we order it as often as possible. It’s fermented for only 40 days in ceramic casks, but tastes surprisingly mature.

We got a little decorative Turkish coffee set recently. I love it.

I keep meaning to mention how much I love Burcu’s blog over at Almost Turkish Recipes. As a foreigner in Turkey, sometimes my fusion versions of Turkish dishes get frowned upon by purists. But I like the idea that cooking is organic in nature, and when you have two or more different cultures that play important roles in your life, it’s nice to be able to mix things up. Burcu does do traditional Turkish dishes, as well, but my personal favourites are the ones where there’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I find her cooking style both interesting and enticing. Link

Hürriyet Daily News reports that Turkey has signed some sort of agreement with Chile, by which we will be seeing a lot more Chilean produce imported into Turkey. I was hoping this would mean we could finally get things like limes or maybe even blueberries, but no. So far they’re sending nuts, apples, kiwi, grapes, pears, cherries, peaches, and plums— all things we already have. I get that it’s a way for both countries to have fruit year-round, but honestly I like the fact that fruits are seasonal. I’d prefer to have a greater selection of fruits and vegetables instead. I’ve always found it ironic that although we live in Asia, there are no Asian markets here like there are everywhere else in the world. If you want things like pak choi or durian, the closest place you can get those is Europe.

Yesterday I did something I haven’t done very often: dug out an old raw file for editing. I was playing around in ACR and just needed a file to work with, so I chose one at random. As it turns out, this is from a session I did last year at the Vanilla Lounge in Kaleiçi, and playing around with this picture reminded me of what great times I’ve had there, and that I really should pop in for a meal and a drink more often. If you’re ever in the old town and fancy some proper European food, I wouldn’t go anywhere else. Link

In December I reported the sad demise of Bey Baba, which was not only one of my favourite local restaurants, but also the automatic go-to place for feeding hungry houseguests. I expressed concern that such a tiny little mom-n-pop wouldn’t have anything as fancy as fire insurance, but it appears I was wrong— less than three months after the fire, Bey Baba is back and better than ever. I had lunch there the other day when I was in the neighbourhood, and the food is exactly how it’s always been: perfect. Glad to see them doing well, and glad to have my favourite dürüm place back in business. GMH.

I love it when racist nutcases have their ignorance exposed, and here’s a story that really warmed my heart: a few years ago, Austrian right-wing populist party FPÖ issued a press release calling for a return to “traditional Austrian cuisine” (i.e. white-people food), citing the “regrettable proliferation of kebab shops” (i.e. brown-people food) throughout Austria. In the quest to determine just what makes makes food “traditionally Austrian,” Manuela Honsig-Erlenburg made an interesting point that Wiener schnitzel was not invented in Vienna, as one might expect, but rather in Istanbul. So there you go, nationalists— next time you take a bite of that lovely breaded cutlet, remember that you’re eating Turkish food.

And yes, it remains a popular dish in Turkey to this day. You can get schnitzel at pretty much any restaurant in Turkey, including at fast food outlets. My favourite lunch place up the road makes a schnitzel sandwich that is out of this world. Link

A million thanks for all the birthday wishes yesterday. It was overwhelming, to say the least, to learn that there are that many people out there who would stop their day for a few seconds to say hello or send a card or text message. In fact, at the risk of sounding like a whining first-worlder, toward the end of the day I had to switch my phone and computer off because I was feeling… er, bombarded is too strong a word. Maybe “snowed under” is more like it. Part of it was like, “aaaack, I’m never going to be able to respond to all of these individually!” Which is true, and I just have to accept that. I think maybe others had already accepted it and weren’t expecting personal thanks, but I come from a time and culture where after a celebration, you sat down and wrote out thank-you cards to everyone who did something nice for you. Nowadays I suppose it’s enough to say thank you a few times in relevant public forums, and assume people will get my message (as they assume I got theirs).

The other part was that a lot of people said some very nice, very specific things to and about me yesterday. Perhaps surprisingly, as narcissistic as I am, I have neither the affinity for mush, nor the talent for handling thick streams of compliments. It occurred to me this morning that it’s a good thing I never got my childhood dream of worldwide fame, because I realise now that I’m not the kind of person who would handle that very well. On the other hand, perhaps if I’d been famous for most of my life, I would have built up the skills to deal with attention more gracefully. Who knows.

In any case, many thanks to everyone who sent cards (both paper and electronic), SMS messages, Facebook comments and PMs, blog comments, e-mails…. what else… oh, Flickr comments and PMs, of course, and… everything. Just everything. Thank you.

Linguini aganta. Pasta with calamari, shrimp, octopus, and peppers, lightly dressed in a pesto sauce. Ample amounts of warm, fresh bread rolls on the side. Delivered to my door, and so good that I ate it straight out of the aluminum container without even thinking about anything as time-consuming as getting a bowl from the kitchen.

If ever you’re in Antalya and looking for a reasonably-priced place to get something other than Turkish food, I highly recommend Redi’s. It’s one of a handful of restaurants in Antalya that do this sort of generic faux-Euro fare really well. Just don’t try to order from their web site, because I found out the hard way that the form isn’t actually connected to anything right now. After a suspiciously long wait I called to check on my order, only to learn that they hadn’t received it. Nonetheless, the man who answered the phone was very apologetic, spoke perfect English (bonus— I didn’t expect that at all), and got my meal out to me in record time once he understood that I was hungry and waiting.

Pretty much as soon as I took the first bite, all was forgiven with the web mix-up. It was some of the best pasta I’ve had in Turkey, and 11 million is a ridiculously good price for any seafood dish, especially at this high standard. In the future, though, I’ll know just to phone them up to begin with, and save the trouble of wondering whether my web order went through.

What, the Los Angeles Kings? I think it’s unlikely they’ll be eating in Antalya anytime soon. But it’s good to know my meal would meet their standards.

Seriously though, this particular sign struck me as odd, because although Shakespeare Bistro is a Turkish company, they always go out of their way to print everything in English as well, and their English signage is usually perfectly worded. It’s rare to see them blunder, but it’s cute when they do.

Incidentally, I had a wonderful meal at the Shakespeare this afternoon, and the service was impeccable. Highly recommended if you’re ever in this neck of the woods and you’re having a day where you fancy something other than Turkish food.

Two boiled eggs, a kiwi/banana smoothie (homemade), and a simit with cheese. Now, the simit thing— every morning in every Turkish neighbourhood across the land, a couple of kids come around with huge trays of simit balanced on their heads. Think bagel-meets-croissant and you’ll be vaguely in the right ballpark. They also sell these little spreadable cheese triangles, which are particularly popular in Turkey, but I think you can get them in other countries, too (don’t Laughing Cow make them?). Anyway, the kids come around two or three times every morning, once about seven, and again about nine, and maybe once more at tennish. They walk through the streets shouting “simitçi!” at the top of their lungs, and if you want some simit you just go out on your balcony and shout or whistle to get their attention.

Now, many people have a bucket on a string that they lower down from the balcony… when the simit boy gets to your building you shout what you want, he shouts the price, you lower the money down in the bucket, he puts your order in the bucket, and you haul it back up. We need to get a bucket, because I feel really bad that every time we order from our simit kid, he has to come all the way up to the ninth floor with that huge tray. Granted, we do have an elevator, but it would just be easier for everyone if we got a bucket like normal people.

Not sure why, but the buckets always seem to be either red or blue.

Anyway, you’re either a with-cheese person or not, and I am definitely a with-cheese person. Also, sometimes when Emirhan’s not looking I’ll do a very American thing and toast mine and put butter on it, or strawberry jam. I only do it when he’s not here, though, because it’s sort of un-Turkish to eat it any other way than plain or with cheese, and he gets panicky when his heritage is challenged and I blaze through with total disregard.

So that was breakfast this morning.

I know, right? It’s lemon poppyseed cake, and it comes from Cenk Sönmezsoy’s Café Fernando. Now, you guys know I’m a foodie; I subscribe to many many food blogs, including several Turkish ones, and this blog is just the best thing I’ve ever seen. There’s also a Turkish version if you swing that way, and of course any blog where The Honourable Sir Ralph McPuppersons gets his own category is 100% sure to gain the melissamaples.com seal of approval.

How come none of you told me about this blog before? I guess we’re just lucky that Cenk’s a friendly guy and got in touch, eh? link

One of the first things I like to do when I visit a new country is head to the grocery store and see what delights or surprises me, what is different from other countries. When I first came to Turkey on a group vacation with five of my friends (the vacation from which I sorta kinda never returned), we giggled with shock at the shelves of yogurt buckets— literally buckets of yogurt, 3kg each, with a handle on top like a container of paint. I thought, how on earth could anyone, even a family, consume that much yogurt?

Fast-forward three years.

In our little home we now regularly buy the 3kg bucket-o-yogurt, and it lasts maybe a few days at most. Turks use yogurt for everything, and I’ve picked up the habit. I come from a culture where sour cream is a common condiment, and I quickly discovered that Turkish yogurt is not a bad substitute. Also, Turks are not big on fresh milk; they tend to drink that boxed UHT stuff that tastes like it’s a month old, and on the rare occasions when you can find fresh milk it generally expires the next day and already smells a bit sour when you buy it. So if you live in Turkey and you’re concered about calcium intake (I suppose this is more of an issue for women than men), yogurt quickly becomes your friend.

When I first moved here, I used to buy a 350 gram container of yogurt, and it would pretty much last me forever. I’d eventually throw half of it away because it would expire before I got a chance to figure out how I was going to make use of it. As I became more familiar with and started to adopt Turkish dietary habits, however, I graduated to buying the 650 gram container, and when Emirhan and I moved in together we upgraded to purchasing a kilogram at a time. It grew from there, and now we can go through a 3kg bucket in less than a week, no problem.

Turkish yogurt has a fantastic flavour, and my favourite part of it is the crust. Yogurt forms a crust on its surface as it settles, which most if not all Western yogurt manufacturers scrape off and throw away during the packaging process. This makes me sad, because since moving to Turkey I’ve discoved that the crust is the best part (those who live in England will understand what I mean because clotted cream has a similar crust). Give me a bowl of yogurt crust drizzled with honey… heaven. Why yes, I am the girl who likes edge brownies and the corner piece of lasagne, why do you ask?

I wonder if there are any American or European yogurt companies that leave the crust on the yogurt— anyone know of any?

This is what my housemates surprised me with this morning— an amazing Turkish breakfast on the balcony. We’ve each got a little omelet with chunks of sausage (chicken sausage, of course— it tastes a lot better than it sounds), there’s a salad for the table to share, a bowl of olives (my favourite), and of course plenty of fresh bread with stuff to put on it: chocolate cream, butter spread, honey, and cheese. To drink, there’s your choice of Turkish tea or freshly homemade ayran, which is a yogurt drink, but not sweet like the yogurt drinks we get in the West.

Needless to say, breakfast was great.

As for lunch, I’ve been eating a lot of salads lately because, well, it’s summer. I’ve been craving avocados— we only get them seasonally here, but when they finally start showing up at the bazaar they are unbelievably ripe and soft and flavourful. I searched and searched on Thursday and finally found one man who had a few avocados at an exorbitant price (it’s still very early for avocados here— another month or so and they’ll be much cheaper). But a craving is a difficult thing to overcome, so I paid the 4YTL and went home with two of the most delicate avocados I’ve ever held in my life. In fact, they were so delicate I could barely handle them at all, which means they were perfect. I cut one up at lunchtime with some locally-grown tomatoes and olives, and as a special treat I chopped some of the chicken sausage into teensy little pieces and fried it until it was crispy. Voilà bacon bits substitute! Normally I’d just drizzle some olive oil and a bit of salt and pepper over the whole thing, but since I was already going the decadence route with the baconesque bits, I decided to splurge and make a dijon-mayo dressing (I love mustard on anything, but especially on salads). I served the salad with toasted bread, and it made an extremely tasty and surprisingly light lunch. I’m looking forward to having the other avocado tomorrow, and if the bazaar guy has more next week, I’ll probably buy enough that I can have an avocado everyday. We only get them for a couple of months a year, so I have to take advantage.

I nearly got kicked out of the house today for calling this a “Greek salad.” But that’s what we call it! Well, apparently around these parts it’s called a “Mediterranean salad” or even a “Turkish salad.” Tomato, tomahto. Normally I would make this salad (from wherever) with black olives, but one uses what one has in the house.

Anyway, this was my lunch today, and whatever you call it, it was awesome.

After talking down the lime/lemon situation the other day, I thought I’d say something positive about Turkish produce. My housemate just brought me this bowl of fruit he assembled from stuff he bought down at the bazaar this afternoon. That’s ice on the top— bazaar fruit sits in the sun all day, of course, and so it needs cooling down before eating (unless you enjoy eating warm fruit in the summer, which I don’t).

The fruit in the photo is actually quite pretty as Turkish fruit goes. One of the things I noticed when I first moved across the Atlantic is that the fruit and vegetables are ugly on this side of the world. Fruit in the United States is very uniform and plasticky. Produce sections in supermarkets look like they were constructed in a wax factory. Oranges are all the same shape, size, and colour, as are apples, lemons, and every other kind of fruit. So when I first moved to Europe, it was a shock to see lemons that were twisted and bulbous and unevenly coloured. Strawberries were particularly mutant, coming in all shapes and sizes and looking like they had horrible birth defects. For a long time I didn’t really partake of European fruit because I was scared of it.

But as it turns out, the fruit over in this hemisphere tastes wonderful. It’s twisted and deformed because it’s natural, and the flavour is heavenly. It wasn’t until I went back to the United States for a visit that I was shocked to be re-introduced to cosmetically perfect fruit; I was impressed by the looks and bought a huge bag of it, only to be disappointed to find out that despite the vivid colours and beautiful shapes, it all just tasted like watered-down nothing. Blah.

A lot of our fruits and vegetables here in Turkey look nice by coincidence, but my favourite Mediterranean produce comes from Italy. When I first saw Italian produce markets I thought they had been attacked by some kind of plant version of bubonic plague. Produce in Italy is incredibly freeform— huge, twisty vegetables and fruits with bumps and knots and all sorts of other malformations. If you’re not used to natural-looking produce it can appear horrible at first, but in my opinion Italian produce is some of the best in the world. If you live in the United States and can find a farmer’s market or somewhere other than a supermarket to buy your fruit and vegetables, I encourage you to try that out and see if you can’t taste the difference, despite having to get used to the visual aesthetics. I’ll never buy produce in a supermarket again.

Which reminds me, it’s that time of the week and I should head down to do the shopping— those bazaar goodies don’t find themselves.

Here’s a mystery perhaps one of our Turkish friends can solve: I’ve never, ever, ever seen a lime in this country. My guess is they just don’t have them here, which hardly makes sense because Turkey is a huge citrus producer. But if you order a shot of tequila, it gets served with salt and a wedge of lemon. Wrong. I asked the bartender, “can I have a slice of lime?” He looked at me blankly. I tried to explain about limes. Same shape as a lemon, but green, and tastes different. He just continued on with his blank look. I finally gave up and reluctantly drank my tequila with lemon.

That incident happened a long time ago, and to be honest I’d forgotten about it until about a week ago when we bought some henna and lime shampoo. The label was written in English, with a Turkish translation below. I noticed the Turkish text said “henna and green lemon.” No, no, no! Not the same thing at all. To say that a lime is simply a green lemon is like saying that a grapefruit is just a big orange. No!

So I asked Emirhan, and he didn’t seem to know what a lime was, either. We looked it up in our Turkish-English dictionary, and the respective translations for “lime” and “lemon” were exactly the same— both are called “lemon” in Turkish. I’m frustrated about this, because a lime is certainly not a lemon, though many Turks have looked at the photos of limes I’ve shown them and said, “that’s just a lemon that’s not ready yet.” Sigh.

The reason this annoys me is because in almost every instance that one might use a lemon for something, I would prefer a lime. This is particularly true in the summer— almost every summer of my adult life I’ve made watermelon with lime syrup as a light snack or dessert. Lemon syrup is not the same; it’s like eating watermelon with furniture polish. But I can’t find limes here.

I know some of my readers are Turks who have moved abroad to Europe or the United States, where limes are in abundance, so for those of you who know what a lime is: is it possible to find them in Turkey? I’m pulling my hair out here, because the watermelon season is upon us (as is the tequila season), and it’s just not the same with lemon. I also like lime in my Coca-Cola, and on certain types of fish, and in countless other dishes. I’d also be interested to know if readers in surrounding countries (I know a few of you are reading from Arab nations, and also some from Israel) have limes in their local markets. Perhaps it’s just a conspiracy to keep limes out of Turkey. Maybe I’ll have to smuggle a lime tree in and grow some myself.

Back in May I made public the formula for TurboCoffeeWOOWOOWOO, my homemade rocket-in-a-cup recipe for getting yourself launched during bouts of overwhelming laziness. Problem is, summer is here now, and I don’t care how much the Turks argue that hot drinks are refreshing in this weather, there’s no way I’m going to sit here in the 38-degree heat and drink a cup of boiling anything. That’s just insane, and it’s not gonna happen. We need cold drinks, people— stuff with lots of ice in it! Caffeine the volume of which would fall under “intent to distribute” probably wouldn’t hurt, either.

So without further ado, I bring you TurboCoffeeICEICEICE:

• Got a cocktail shaker? Yeah, I thought you might.
• Start by spooning a single serving amount (or double, what the hell) of some sort of iced coffee or chocolatey drink powder into the shaker. I personally use Nescafé Ice, but I’m vaguely aware that this may not be available in your area unless your area is here. I’m sure you can find some substitute— they must have these sorts of things everywhere. If necessary you can use Nesquik or even pre-mixed bottled cold coffee drinks. Be creative, think of something.
• Add three heaping spoonfuls of instant coffee (the kind you would normally use for instant hot coffee, Nescafé works fine but there are dozens of others)
• Scoop in as much sugar as you dare (for me, this means about eight sugars). If you’re using sugar cubes, you might want to dissolve them in cup first with a tablespoon of hot water and then pour the solution into the shaker.
• Fill the shaker to the top with cold milk (not necessary if you started with a pre-mixed coffee drink, obviously), shake vigorously for about a minute, and pour over copious amounts of ice.

This makes a nice (albeit bracing) summery drink that will get you going no matter how terminally sluggish you are. As usual, I’m keen to hear and see your remixing efforts, so please feel free to share your favourite variations with the group. I’ve been known to throw the whole mix in the blender with a banana, but I’m crazy like that. Enjoy!

When you live your life moving from country to country, the longer you’re nomadic and the more places you go, you start to forget which place has which things and which place doesn’t. So it was in the interest of pure scientific research that I felt the need to buy one of these new Chocolate Disc Cornettos, because I honestly can’t remember whether we had Cornetto in the United States or not. They have them in England, certainly, and all over Europe and the Middle East, but it’s been so long since I’ve bought ice cream in the US that the only thing I recall is that I loved Blue Bell (and those of you who aren’t from Texas won’t have a clue what I’m on about with that).

In any case, for those of you who haven’t seen a Cornetto before, for whatever reason, this new Chocolate Disc variety is a fine specimen indeed. On top is the chocolate disc (natch), which has some kind of nut pieces embedded in it. Below that is chocolate chip ice cream with a thick rope of caramel running straight through the middle from top to bottom. The whole thing sits inside a chocolate sugar cone, and inside the bottom of the cone is a solid inch of chocolate, which serves the additional purpose of blocking the ice cream from dripping out. All in all it’s a master piece of engineering. I only bought it because I felt it was my duty to report it to the masses, just in case you hadn’t seen one before.

This might freak out the vegetarians, be warned, but it’s one of my favourite dinners, and since our housemate Emrah made it tonight I couldn’t resist sharing. What you see above is breaded and fried chicken lungs with Turkish rice and fried potatoes. Chicken lungs taste pretty much like liver, so perhaps that doesn’t sound so freaky now. Normally I would say no to two starchy carbs in the same meal (not to mention bread on the side), but since I’ll be running later it’s okay.

This isn’t the healthiest meal in the world (salad was served on the side, does that count?), but we don’t do it very often, and I’m exercising a lot of portion control at the moment, so I don’t feel so bad about it. And anyway, anything that tastes this good has to be enjoyed without guilt.

No sooner do I express my worries that Turkey is being assimilated into Britain… now Turkish Daily News reports that Coffee Republic is to start opening stores all over Turkey in July. Great. And yet we still don’t have a Starbucks or a Gloria Jean’s (either one enormously superior to Coffee Republic) down here. I bet we’ll get a Coffee Republic, though, you watch.

I’m officially annoyed.

This is what my housemates have for breakfast most mornings, and it’s pretty standard Turkish fare. I don’t normally have this much food so early in the day, but today I was pretty hungry and Turkish breakfast sounded great.

• Salami: I know the salami meat is pink, but I assure you it’s made from chicken (as are a majority of processed meats here— Muslim country and all that). We even get chicken sausages and chicken ham, and the flavour is amazingly accurate to the real thing.
• Olives: yes, that is a large amount of olives for such a small plate, and I’m ashamed to admit I went back and got some more out of the fridge when I finished these. I have something of an olive… issue, if you will. Okay, it’s a problem. I have made myself physically sick before from eating too many olives. If no one takes the olives away from me I’ll eat all of them— it doesn’t matter how big the container is. You may have to stage an intervention.
• Eggs: Turks tend to serve these hard-boiled, but I like mine medium-soft, not quite runny.
• Tomatoes: usually there would be cucumbers, too, but I like tomatoes so much that I’d rather have double the amount of tomatoes and no cucumbers.
• Cheese: this is where you can get into vocabulary trouble if you’re a foreigner. Despite the mild flavour, crumbly texture, and ultra-white colour, I assure you this is not feta, it is Turkish white cheese. Those who call it feta get expelled from the country or somesuch. Turkish. white. cheese. Actually, in all fairness the flavour is not exactly like feta, and there are different varieties of Turkish white cheese (but having said that, there are also different varieties of feta). I learned this nomenclature lesson the hard way when I first moved to Turkey— I went down to the corner market and asked for “some of that fantastic feta you guys have”; the market owner told me she didn’t know what I was talking about, and then she asked me to leave. It wasn’t until a Turkish friend explained the terminology to me that I understood what the problem was.

Anyway, that was breakfast this morning, quite a far cry from any breakfast I ever ate back in the United States. Try it sometime and let me know what you think.

I mentioned a couple of days ago about my annoyance with fad diets… it still amazes me that even in this age of information, reasonably intelligent adults will go on fad diet after fad diet, lose weight and then immediately gain it all back again plus an extra twenty pounds, and still latch onto whatever the next fad diet is as if this one is going to be the one. As my doctor once told me, “if any diet worked, there would only be that one diet, and it would be called The Diet, and everyone in the world would be on it and there wouldn’t be any fat people.” Well said. I’m constantly baffled at the awful things people will do to their organs and systems (ketosis, anyone? my stepmother got ill from that) because they think a fad diet will solve all their problems.

The above picture is me, believe it or not, back in December 2003, just before I moved to Turkey. I was 240 pounds (109 kilograms) in that photo. I came to Turkey in May of 2004, and by the one-year anniversary of the above photo (i.e. in December 2004), I was down to 160 pounds (you can see a current photo of me on the about page).

So how did I do it? Well, I promise you I wouldn’t have kept the weight off this long if I’d lost it on a fad diet. No, it was moving to Turkey that did it, the entire lifestyle change. Especially when I first moved here, I had some friends who ran a restaurant up the road from me, and I ate there all the time because I don’t cook. I didn’t know how to ask for things in Turkish (still don’t to a great extent), and so I just had to eat whatever they brought me, which was the same thing they were all eating— lean meat or fish, rice, and salad. I didn’t know how to ask for sauce or mayonnaise. I didn’t know how to ask for seconds. So I didn’t have any of those things. I also didn’t have my car (I sold it when I moved to Turkey), so I walked everywhere. Everywhere.

I also didn’t have my scale, so at first I didn’t notice what was happening, but eventually it became clear that my big-girl clothes were falling off of me. So I bought some smaller stuff. And then two months later I had to buy smaller clothes again. And again. And now, three years later, I can’t remember what it was like to drive everywhere, to drive to a restaurant and order a giant meal with gravy all over everything. I still walk most everywhere, and I still eat the standard lean-and-healthy Turkish fare.

When I tell people how fat I used to be, at first they’re surprised, but then they say, “oh yes, of course you were fat, you’re American.” But that is their mistaken stereotype— I was never fat when I lived in the United States. I didn’t get fat until I moved to England in 1998. Gravy and creamy sauces are very popular in England, as are fried potatoes (or some other kind of potato) with every restaurant meal. I’m a fan of all of those things, and if you offer them to me, I’m going to eat them (or at least, I would have at that time). Another unfair stereotype is that English food is bland and tasteless— I can assure you that’s not the case. England has some of the most amazing restaurants in the world. I should know, I ate at most of them. It took me six years to gain all that weight, and not a pound of it was gained on U.S. soil.

So I guess what I’m saying is that although it may seem like an extreme solution to sell your car and move to a Mediterranean country where you don’t speak the language in order to train yourself to change your lifestyle and eating habits, it is one way to do it, and though for me it was an accidental side effect, I’m so thankful to Turkey and Turkish cuisine for helping me pull myself together and realise what a toll Western overeating and laziness had taken on my body. I do still enjoy my treats, but I walk them off, and I now understand the importance of moderation and balance in my meals. For me, this is a change for life.

Ever since I moved to Antalya this has been one of my favourite cocktails— amaretto and milk. It’s simple, but it’s very tasty, and a lot of people here drink these, especially in the summer.

I have a friend on twitter whose screen name (but not real name) is Natasha; I turned her on to this drink and she liked it so much that I decided to call it a Blonde Natasha, after her. Of course, in this part of the world, the word “Natasha” has a double meaning (other than just a girl’s name), but I assure everyone it’s just a coincidence and that if her screen name had been Jennifer I would’ve called the drink a Blonde Jennifer.

As for the double meaning, well, have a guess in the comments if you think you know what it is, what else the word “Natasha” is sometimes used for in this area. I’ll give you a hint: it’s very very politically incorrect. But don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just reporting.