Traditional Turkish Breakfast

 

This weekend Lady Hiva and I had a traditional Turkish breakfast. Over the last few weeks we have eaten all of the ingredients here and there, but this was the FULL experience.

Turks use so many tomatoes and peppers for their foods. They sell tomatoes here like Americans sell bananas—they are sold in bulk and no matter where you are, they have them for sale. Naturally, a Turkish Breakfast includes tomatoes! Other items are several flavors of cheese, bread, fruit, nuts, eggs, and cucumber. All of these ingredients I LOVE—oh I forgot to mention the olives (which I don’t love ever since I threw up a whole can of black olives on the back stairs of my Aunt Heidi’s wedding, but hey, that leaves more for someone else, right?).

Typically, Lady Hiva is anti-tomatoes, but ever since we have been in Turkey she has learned to love them. One of her favorite dishes so far was a raw salad with diced tomatoes, onions, parsley, and walnuts. I was happy to see her even try it because it was 75% tomatoes and then the next day she bought all of the ingredients to make it at home! I guess things change…I am still not liking olives though. I have really tried too. I eat  a few and then the lymph nodes swell and my gag reflex begins to make me salivate and I have to stop before it gets too far. So props to Lady for loving tomatoes now! HEHE

One of our friends booked a beautiful restaurant for the breakfast and we all went. The view was spectacular! The restaurant was in a private club park on the Asian side of Istanbul that overlooked the Bosphorus. We sat right next to the window as we ate. The waiters brought out plate after plate of foods that you eat until you are full—we all wanted to try and eat as much as we could and soon were full but still had SO much food left.

It was a a gorgeous day so we sat by the pool and enjoyed the view and the sea breeze. Lucky did not appreciate that we were so close to a blue pool and we were not letting him into it. I promised him we would go when we arrived back home.

However, that changed when we stopped to shop at the street market for some vegetables and the beautiful sunny day suddenly turned to lightening and RAIN! We were soaked by the time we pushed our cart of vegetables up the hill to home. Memories, memories. I guess any normal day needs some type of adventure!