The morning was sunny after several days of living under a steel bowl. We went to Postane, the neighbourhood community centre and vegetarian cafe (which also provides our weekly vegetable box, yoghurt and, when available, fresh milk) for lunch. Postane can be hit and miss but is generally wholesome and today they had yayla corba, […]
Bus bhai bus
This morning we caught a bus, unusually, but something we has tried last weekend, and we’ve been rather slow in using the city’s bus system. There are a lot of buses, but there is also a lot of traffic and the buses are often crowded and their routes are not the clearest. The morning’s bus […]
Crack in the pan
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 […]
Gathering forces
In Lahore. The flight was long and, rather to my annoyance, my seat was one of the bulkhead ones, which are much desired by the longer limbed, and pay a premium for them. I didn’t pay a premium, but the plane was changed so found myself assigned a far more expensive seat than I’d have […]
Market day
This morning, or rather early afternoon, the GF and I went off to the Ferikoy organic market, though first to the small restaurant nearby which only serves one meal, breakfast, consisting of freshly baked naan, eggs, honey, cheese, butter and salad, all sourced from their village in Erzincan. It’s a nice breakfast, but it was […]
Climb down jump off
Having bashed through an obscene amount of work the last few days, and missed more deadlines than I probably have in years, today was, finally, a quieter day. Well, I say quieter as I did finish an article and then go off with the GF to run a series of errands, most of which had […]
Post office lunch
Strolled down to the post office today, which has been converted into a sort of community space with a low key zero-waste restaurant. Pleasingly, the food was good and it wasn’t too expensive, so I think I will be going back there. Work remains overwhelming, though I’m slowly making my way through it. A few […]
Dipping a toe
I started dipping a toe back in Istanbul life yesterday by going down to the best local coffee followed by a stop at the best local cake/antiques shop which sadly doesn’t have the best coffee otherwise I would be there all the time. For dinner we went to the neighbourhood manti shop in Cihangir, which […]
Pachinko
Read The Pachinko Parlour, which had been lingering for a couple of days despite being short enough to read in an hour. Quite good, though I preferred the other book recently recommended to me, about the laundries. This one had a pair of very good grandparents, Korean-Japanese, and some of the least appetising food I’ve […]
The ways of fruit
Is fruit a snack, a meal or a dessert? In my mind definitely a dessert and I rarely think of it as something to eat between meals and almost never for breakfast. Struck me this time when in the UK where the people I am staying with definitely think of it as the first two, […]