Strolling along the Bosphorus

I had mistakenly thought that the nice weather was gone for the year, but last Sunday turned out to be sunny and warm, so Cagatay and I decided on an outing. (I had been sick pretty much the entire week before.) I already mentioned the flag seller peddling his wares to the street market vendors.

We started the afternoon at Ortakoy, home to the city's most gorgeous mosque.  Unfortunately it's being renovated right now and is covered by a tarp but it usually sits in all its Baroque splendor at the edge of the Bosphorus, right below one of the bridges. It even made the cover of National Geographic Traveler last year. More than that, it holds a special place in my heart as Cagatay and I had one of our first dates there last summer.  

On this particular afternoon, after sitting on one of the benches in the sunshine and watching the young and trendy preen, we had a quick lunch at Kitchenette, one of the restaurants in the square. After that, we took a stroll along the Bosphorus, walking all the way to Bebek. As usual, fisherman lined the pathways. I'm not quite sure why people are always fishing out there in droves as all they ever seem to catch are these tiny little fish; on this day too the water was chock full of jellyfish. See the photo? Now multiply that by a million. (Another reason why I wouldn't be caught dead swimming in the Bosphorus.)

 

One of the things I love about this particular walk, which we've done with some frequency, is the architecture you pass along the way. There's one area that has rows of gorgeous Ottoman wood houses. In my (mostly-ignorant-of-architecture ) opinion, they're generally very Victorian looking - and I'm not sure if that's a coincidence or there is actually a link.

Patriotism!

You may or may not know that Turkey has a "Kurdish issue" which I know far too little about to properly explain. (Time does a pretty good job though.) Although there are some 14 million Kurds living in eastern Turkey (and more in northern Iraq), what you mostly hear about is the PKK, the 30-year-old Kurdish terrorist group, which launches little attacks here and there in that area. As I gather, this entire issue seems to have simmered under the surface, in the sense that it always exists but nothing major (or decisive) ever happens.

Last week, PKK attacks killed 24 soldiers in the east, and for whatever reason, the Turkish govenment decided to launch a major offensive in retaliation. As an interior minister told a TV station last week (via the Daily Hurriyet newspaper), "The ultimate goal is to finish off the PKK." With 10,000 soldiers now in the border area, Turkey is now involved in a little bit of a war - although no one seems to be calling it that.

As a result of the now-escalated conflict, Istanbul is awash in red flags. All of a sudden, they're everywhere, strung across streets and hung proudly from balconies. I took the photos below on Sunday, in Ortakoy. The teenage boy was going around to all the vendors in the street market selling flags and from what I could see, people were snapping them up.

Bagdat Street and the Sea of Marmara

Two weekends ago on Saturday, which was perhaps sadly the last nice day of the year, we headed to the Asian side of the city, and ended up taking a late afternoon stroll along Bağdat Street and the Sea of Marmara with Cagatay's sister.

Bağdat Street is the big shopping street on the Asian side, and I think it has every single Turkish and foreign brand available in Turkey - MAC, Marks & Spencer, Mango, Muji, etc - plus a million places to eat and drink. It also seems to be quite the social hub - apparently the ladies dress to impress and everyone is there to stroll and see and be seen. (Cagatay was disappointed that he only ran into two friends.) There's a similar street on the European side called Istiklal where the old buildings tower over you and you feel stuck in the middle of a big city; Bağdat on the other hand feels wide open and leafy.

 

After we got an ample fill of window shopping, people watching and Starbucks, we headed a couple blocks down to the park that runs along the Sea of Marmara. In the late afternoon light, it was simply gorgeous, and it seemed like half the city was out enjoying the late-summer weather. Families were playing on the playground, dogs were running in the park, teenagers were skateboarding, while everyone else was walking, rollerblading or biking along the path, in addition to the occasional couple lovin' it up on the seawall. It turns out that we may have to move at some unknown point in the future (our landlord is considering selling the apartment) and that day, we felt pretty inspired to consider that area. It's pretty chill over there, and how nice would it be to have easy access to a seaside park?

Adventures in Cooking: Pappa al Pomodoro

Last weekend, Cagatay and I did absolutely nothing - partially because it was pouring rain out (and had been for the last week) but mostly because he came down with a cold/flu. So, like the good girlfriend that I am, I made him soup. I went with Martha Stewart Living's Pappa al Pomodoro, mostly because I had successfully tackled it once before.

In the version I have, the ingredients are pretty simple: olive oil, onion, garlic, red-pepper flakes, bread, tomatoes, chicken stock, and cheese. (Oddly, when I look at the recipe at marthastewart.com, it's far more complicated, adding leeks and white wine.) You essentially throw them all into the pot, stir it around some, and 15 minutes later, you have this wonderful, hearty soup.

So far it's worked well, despite my confusion about one major thing: How do you know how much an ounce of bread is without a scale? In my cut-down version (hers serves 6 to 8), the recipe calls for 3 ounces of 1/2-inch cubed bread. I don't know how to translate that into anything; I tried Googling it but got no help there. So instead, I've just winged it. This last time, I stopped when I ran out of bread. Which was this much:

Is that too much? Too little? My guess is that it's way too much. I am desperately waiting for your insight!

Trending: DIY Glitter Shoes (Three Ways)

You can't surf the Interwebs these days without running into an DIY involving glitter and shoes. Which is awesome - I might own a pair or two (or six) of shoes that have been glittered-up, and now I'm feeling like I should actually tackle this myself. (Running the risk, of course, that I won't be able to stop until absolutely everything in my closet has been be-glittered. I mean, have you seen Martha Stewart's colorful 24-pack palette?!?)

I realized this was an actual trend yesterday when I saw that even Martha has gotten in on the act. According to their blog, she recently showed how to dazzle up a pair of sneakers on her TV show with one of the bloggers from Honestly...WTF, though the result was a little too Atlantic City for me. (And, according to the comments, the sneakers pick up ugly creases after you wear them for a couple of hours.)

More stylish examples have appeared recently on the blogs a pair & a spare and Le.Fanciullle. It seems like all you really need to do this is a blank pair of shoes, ample glitter, and some craft glue.

Now get to it! After all, as the immortal songstress Ke$ha said to Entertainment Weekly, "If I smear glitter on my face [or, er, on my shoes], you don't have a choice - you will be more attracted to me." And isn't that reason enough?

Adventures in Cooking: Spinach-Ravioli Lasagna

While we were home in August, my mom made an incredible Spinach-Ravioli Lasagna that came from Southern Living (August 2008) via myrecipes.com. The dish was amazing - thinking about it now makes me want to hop into the kitchen - and she gave me the recipe to try back in Istanbul.

The recipe seems simple enough - it's essentially a pack of baby spinach, store-bought pesto and Alfredo sauces, and frozen cheese ravioli. I thought all of these items would be easily acquirable at the local grocery store. HA HA HA. There wasn't any cheese ravioli so I went for these little flower pod-shaped beef-filled raviolis, which didn't seem like a big deal. The main problem was the lack of Alfredo sauce; Cagatay says it's just not available in Turkey. Which seems odd but there's really no rhyme or reason why some things are available here and some aren't. (In the aren't category, as far as I can tell: onion soup, paprika, frosting, oatmeal, most salad dressings, and now apparently Alfredo sauce and cheese ravioli. But then there's peanut butter, chocolate chips, and the same brand of gnocchi I used to buy in Dallas, which is why I haven't tackled it again.) But I digress. Lacking the Alfredo sauce, we decided to try a powdered mushroom sauce that was in the pasta aisle.

So a couple of nights later, I tackled the recipe, starting before Cagatay got home. I thought I understood the directions on the mushroom package - it seemed simple, just add cold water and stir. But the result was this really watery sauce which just seemed all wrong considering that this is the bottom layer, supporting the next layer, the spinach-pesto mixture. I imagine Alfredo sauce, being pretty thick, would act as a proper layer. At this point, I started to panic and was pretty sure I was going to have to throw the entire thing out.

Cagatay came home just as the spinach layer started to swim in the mushroom sauce and pointed out that the instructions also say to heat to the sauce before cooking with it. Alas. We cooked it up quickly and used the heated version for the rest of the recipe although frankly, it wasn't all that much thicker.

But miracle of miracles, somehow this recipe actually worked...and it was amazing. On the first go-round, it was a wee bit salty (mushroom sauce) and the tops of the raviolis on the top layer had gotten a little crispy. I adjusted both of those factors during the next try (by not using about 1/4 of the sauce and moving my baking rack about halfway through) and then stopped freaking out about how liquedy it was. The yummy results:

Little Kid Says: Babies Are Sneaky...

For whatever reason, I was thinking about the highly underappreciated Away We Go yesterday. Have you seen it? John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph play an unmarried couple expecting a baby but they feel behind everyone else in notching life's stereotypical accomplishments, and they go on a multi-city trip to figure out where they should move to "start" their lives. There are so many great moments but my absolute favorite is the scene-stealing little kid that they encounter at a hotel while visiting Verona's sister in Arizona:

Umm, yeah, so this post has nothing to do with anything. Except that you should see this movie! Hmm, maybe I'll make Cagatay watch it tonight when he gets home from work. :)