I remember now why I stopped writing this blog. The day to day was too tedious to record, while the interesting was too interesting to bother with opening up my laptop and writing about it.
So, today, a cracked earthenware oven dish. It didn’t even crack today, that was a few weeks ago, but today was the day I needed to use it as I wanted to try making a bread and butter pudding. I cracked it by pouring water in it to soak, boo. So now it’s a decorative dish holding onions and garlic, while I’m using one of the earthenware dishes that some Turkish yoghurt comes in for the pudding. I don’t have high hopes of the pudding as the cinnamon is an organic cinnamon which I got instead of the non-organic one from a reputable spice merchant and I suspect the latter was infinitely more potent as who ever heard of organic cinnamon.
There are now four good cafes within a few minutes of our flat, of which we frequently go to three, and most frequently go to one, and we learned that the barrista at the last has won international awards for her Aeropress coffee. Rather strangely she doesn’t make Aeropress coffee but did make a drip I enjoyed very much and which reminded me that I used to only drink drip coffees. So I shall return to them, at least at this cafe.
One of the interesting bits in the last few months was our trip to Mardin, a stone town on top of a hill overlooking Mesopotamia. It was one of the most beautiful towns I’ve been to, with its old stone mansions and pristine stone streets – though not so pristine when I went for a walk by myself, slightly down the hill from the cleaned up areas and found my way clambering over the rubble of houses collapsed in the earthquake.