White Rice

Our family is back in Turkey, but not in our own place yet. That means that although I can take pictures, I can't download them to my computer to share with all of you (boo-hoo!). Whatever doo-hickey it is we need for downloading is somewhere in the piles of boxes that I'm not brave enough to unpack, and so you and I will just have to wait for the pictures, mmm kay?

A few nights ago James and I went out to eat for our anniversary. Oh, the dining choices we have here in the capital, Ankara. . . so vast, so amazing! The smaller city we moved from didn't have near the selection. When we went out in Kayseri (which was rare) the choice was Turkish food, or Turkish food, or that other kind of Turkish food, plus some hit and miss chinese at a Turkish restaurant or pizza (but don't picture a pizza like you'd see at Pizza Hut or even Murphy's Take n Bake... it really doesn't compare), or McDonalds. . . can't forget McDonalds.

Anyway, the other night we chose Chinese. We ordered a main dish and then pointed to the first item on the rice page of the menu, asking for the plain steamed rice to go along with it.

Waiter: Tilting his head slightly and raising his eyebrows, That rice is cooked in steam.

James: I understand, that's what I want to order.

Waiter: Lowering his pen and pad of paper. No, I don't think so... it doesn't have any salt on it.

Me: Right. That's what we want.

Waiter: It's not normal rice. It was cooked in steam, it wasn't cooked in butter or oil.

James: We understand. We want to order the plain steamed rice from your menu.

Waiter: I just want to make sure you know what you're getting. It's flavorless. Are you really sure that's what you want?

James and I: YES!

Waiter: Reluctantly writing our order on a piece of paper while shaking his head. Okay, if you're sure.

Two things were going on here.

First, Turks LOVE rice. They eat it all the time. It's a great side to almost any Turkish meal. But they (obviously) DON'T love steamed rice. Turkish rice is pilaf. It starts with melting plenty of butter or oil in the bottom of your pan then frying up some small noodles until they're brown and crispy. Next you throw in your white rice (sorted and washed) and fry that in the butter for a while before adding water and salt (or bullion) to the whole thing. It's flavorful, it's oily, and it quickly adds inches to my thighs. Steamed rice is plain. It's flavor is subtle. My Turkish friend Isil told me it was disgusting when she happened to stop by right around dinner time one evening.

Second, in general, Turkish waiters LOVE to make suggestions based on their own tastes. They would probably feel really horrible if a customer got some really gross food and they could have prevented it. Since James and I had asked the waiter to describe a few of the main course items, maybe he assumed we were new to the whole Chinese food thing and had no idea that plain rice is actually repulsive. And even after it was crystal clear, he still could hardly bring himself to have any part in bringing the yucky stuff to us.

In the end, our food came, our rice came, we enjoyed our meal.

Hmmm, I just remembered that in Kayseri, at the hit and miss Chinese place, steamed rice was always on the menu, but never available when we tried to order it. I guess they just couldn't bring themselves to actually make it.

Explanation of some of the randomness

Fact #9.  Arranged marriages.

Not everyone has an arranged marriage, in fact if you're in a big city, it's probably more common for your marriage NOT to be arranged.   As far as I know, marriages aren't arranged from childhood, but as kids become adults, their mothers may get antsy and start looking around for suitable matches.  This can take a few different avenues...

Turkish newlyweds...  don't they look happy?!

1.  I've seen women go door to door in a neighborhood that looks like a good socio-economic match for their son/nephew.  They knock on the door and ask whoever answers, "Is there a girl in your home?"  I don't know how often this method actually works out.  I mean it seems to me that a girl's mom would have to be amazingly desperate to consider marrying her off to a family that goes around like salespeople trying to peddle their son.

2.  Here's a common one:  If a friend or relative is getting married, then the moms, grandmas,  and aunts check out all the eligable young maidens while they dance at the wedding or engagement party.  This way the prospective bride is somehow connected to you.  She's a friend of a friend or a relative of a relative.  It's easier to trust people who are connected to you. 

 I went to an engagement party once.  All the women were separated from the men, and the girls had an amazing dance party (I took pictures, but they were lost when our computer crashed... drats!).  All the younger unmarried girls got up and danced,  and they really put on the moves.  Meanwhile, the older women sat back, watched, and picked out a few prospects to ask about.   I think it usually goes something like this:  The boy's aunt asks who that pretty little thing in the red dress is.  After she's told, she finds that girl-in-red's aunt and asks her about the possibility of a union.  If things look positive, then the boy's aunt will tell the boy's mom and dad, who then find a way to check out the girl.  

3.  Many mothers of eligible bachelors are just ALWAYS on the lookout.  I've been asked multiple times if I know any sweet American girls for someones son.  I've gone into shops with single friends and watched older women approach my poor girlfriends (who are just trying to buy sausage or parsley) and tell them about their son.  

Bubbly cup of coffee

Whatever the method of finding the prospective girl, once she's been spotted, the boy's family makes an official visit to check her out.  I'm not sure exactly what happens on that visit except that the boy looks at the girl, and his mom looks at how clean the house is (she has to know if the girl is a good house keeper) and everybody tries some Turkish coffee that the girl has brewed up in the kitchen.  It has to taste just right and have lots of bubbles.  I'm sure I would fail at this part.  I am a horrible Turkish coffee maker.  Good thing James' family didn't know that!

I think that the next step is often for the boy and girl to go out once or twice just to make sure they can tolerate one another, then once all the okays are given a wedding is planned.

I have one friend who met her husband-to-be during a 20 minute Ramazan visit (she was a relative of his sister's fiance).  He came back to her house with his parents for a taste of frothy home brewed coffee a few days later, and they were married about a week and a half after that. I think they skipped the go out alone and make sure you can tolerate one another part.  Apparently it was SUPURB coffee and they were pretty eager to get hitched.   

Our neighbor's son, on the other hand seemed to put off his wedding forever.  He was well into his thirties when his mom finally coerced him into an arranged marriage.  He met the chosen girl and seemed to like her alright, but really dragged his feet about getting married.  I think he was engaged for at least 9 months.   Before the engagement his poor mother's main goal (and she let everyone she ran into know it) was finding him a bride.  She asked me for names of friends, and thoroughly grilled me about every girl who entered my home.  She told me about meeting girls on busses or in shops and trying to lure them into a wedding with her son.   

Arranging a marriage can become an all-consuming venture.

Twenty-five Random Facts About Turkey

I was inspired by my friend Kristal and her stories about Albania...

1) Saint Nicholas lived in Turkey, but Turks don't celebrate Christmas.

2) Turkey has more mosques per capita than any other country.

3) Turks eat fresh baked bread with every meal.

4) Unlike Americans, Turks don't eat bread with pasta.

5) Turks answer the phone with the phrase, "My Master?"

6) Although 99% of Turks are Muslim, Turkey has a rich Christian heritage.

7) Most Turks drink 10 or more cups of tea a day.

8) Turkish homes have one room containing all their most beautiful furnishings.  They only go in it when special guests arrive.

9) Arranged marriages are very common in Turkey.

10) Three percent of Turkey is in Europe.  The other 97% is in Asia.

 

11) Turkish is an agglutinative language, meaning that base words get lots of affixes and suffixes, making them longer and longer.  For example, the sentence, "I will be able to come" in Turkish is only one word with lots of endings added to it, gelebilicegim.   Supposedly the longest word in Turkish is: Cekoslovakyalilastiramadiklarimizdanmissiniz, meaning, "You are said to be one of those that we couldn't manage to convert to a Czechoslovak."  

12) The Turkish word for lion is aslan (anybody a fan of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe?)

13) Jelly beans got started as an American form of Turkish Delight.

14.) Turkey is bordered by eight countries and three seas.

15) Turks are very hospitable.  It's not unusual for a perfect stranger to strike up a conversation with you, then invite you over for tea.

16)  Baklava, shish kebab, stuffed bell peppers, zucchini, and grape leaves, rice pilaf, olives, lots of fresh fruit and veggies.... Turkey has amazing food.

17) There are about 70 million people in Turkey.  That's double the population of California.

18) Bob Dylan is of Turkish decent, and Dr. Oz (the Dr. that Oprah has on her show a lot) is Turkish.

19) You don't really know the definition of sublime until you've tried pistachio ice cream that's been hand churned in southern Turkey... I don't know how or why, but it's so thick and stretchy that you have to cut it with a knife.  I also don't know the actual definition of sublime, but it's the only word that comes to mind when I think of this amazing ice cream.  I'm pretty sure I'll eat it in heaven...

20)  Turkey is full of amazing Roman ruins.

21) Noah's ark landed on Mr. Ararat, which is in Turkey.

22) The first church ever built (St. Peter's Church in Antioch) is in Turkey.  The seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelation, in the Bible are all in Turkey.

23) Turks gave the Dutch their famous tulips.

24) Here's a good one to remember next time you sip a mocha.  Turks introduced coffee to Europe. 

25) You may have been wondering about this one:  A case of mistaken identity resulted in the American bird (turkey) being named after the country of Turkey.  The Spanish first brought turkeys to Europe from the Americas over 400 years ago.  The English mistakenly thought it was a bird they called the "turkey," so they gave it the same name.  That other bird was actually from Africa, but came to England by way of Turkey (lots of shipping went through Turkey at the time).  The name stuck even when they realized the birds weren't the same.

Nacho cheese!

My sweet friend Neriman came to my house one day and told me that her building's storage area had been broken into.


Me: Oh no! Was anything stolen?

Neriman: Well, the whole area was a mess when we discovered it. He went through drawers and tubs. He really messed things up. Lots of us keep things down there - pickles, cheese, onions, ya know, that sort of stuff.

Me: Did he take it all?

Neriman: (smiling) Just my cheese. Out of all the food down there he just took my cheese. Some of my neighbors had cheese down there too, but he only took mine.


Turkish women make a lot of foods from scratch. In my entire life I've never made my own cheese, but these women do it all the time. Neriman lives in the city, but she (like many Turks) still has lots of relatives in the village where she grew up. When she visits her village, she comes home with plenty of fresh veggies (tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, cabbage) that she'll pickle, and a bunch of cheese she's started. She keeps the cheese down in the building's cool storage area until it's done, which I guess means it's finished firming up, or fermenting, or cheese-ifying... you know, whatever it is that cheese does. Anyways...

Me: So what did you do?

Neriman: I took my daughters with me down to ghe station and tried to file a police report.

Me: (laughing) Really?!

Neriman: (with a big proud grin on her face) Yeah, They told me there's no way they could get my cheese back. But they said it must have been great cheese if that's all the thief took, especially because he left everyone else's there. Jamie, I wish you could have tasted that cheese.


I'm sure if Neriman had gone down to the basement storage and come across that evil, greedy, cheese eating theif, she would have chased him right up the stairs and out the front door shouting, "That's not your cheese! That's not yo' cheese! That's nacho cheese!" Or at least the Turkish equivalent...

I know it's a really bad joke but I just couldn't pass it up.