I sipped
non-homogenized chocolate milk
straight from the bottle
and listened to Jolie Holland
sing sweetly about morphine.
I contemplated old friends,
and distance,
and time.

We headed over to the spice bazaar first thing, passing along the way a really neat shop that had handmade shoes (they are really neat, comfy looking and artisanal, tho I'm not sure how practical)... the spice bazaar sells all manner of spices, herbs and teas, lokum (turkish delight), sweets, perfume oils, resins (amber, musk, myrrh), sandlewood, indego, etc. The press of people in that place was insane, and everyone wants to make a deal with you. I found some of the turkish chili in one shop, went in to inquire (ka-cha??), and then was introduced to several different kinds of it (each smelling different). I smelled cumin, curry, garam masala, cinnamon, cloves cardamom... then I saw the perfumes and started alternating between smelling oils and coffee- the shop keeper got us cay (tea), and helped us find things we liked- so I went in for chilis and ended up getting chili, cardamom, amber resin, an amber perfume oil, and some kohl.
From there we went back to the grand bazaar to do some searching for presents- evil eyes, pashmina among the most popular choices... It's interesting to see how far shop keepers will drop their prices to make a sale- the first price they say is usually double what they want , so a typical exchange could go something like this:
Customer: kaca?? (kah-cha: how much)
Shopkeep: 50YTL
C: whats your best price?
S: 40 YTL
C: I'll give you 20
S: Ok, for you 35
C: 25
S: 30
C: (walking away) maybe later I'll come back
S: Ok, you take now, I give for 25.
So we had an exchange like this with one shop keeper, and the whole time you could see how its like a game- we ended up laughing a lot, and he eventually came down to very reasonable prices, and then offered us tea and wanted to know if there was anything else he could help us find- so at that point he took us over to a friend of his who gave us a very good price on pashmina, and the wanted to set us up with a carpet/kilim seller... of course carpets and kilims are very expensive (hundreds of dollars) so we said thank you, but no. and gule gule (gew-leh- see you!)- which i have since found out is what you say to someone who is leaving, not if you are the one leaving)
We have also discovered that apparently I have a convincing Turkish accent- I say one word in Turkish and then all of a sudden people are rattling off paragraphs to me, or asking "oh, you know Turkish", at which point I bust into giggles and have to shake my head explaining that I only know a handful of words, I just know them really well.

We decided to take a Turkish cooking class at one of the hotels in the Sultanahmet area... were a little nervous that we'd be doing meatballs and not much else, but it turned out to be authentic Ottoman cooking, and there was a large amount of class participation. Other participants were old ladies from different parts of the states and a few ladies from Belgrade. We tied on our aprons and followed directions for slicing and dicing all the ingredients we would have to use.
In total we made five dishes- I don't have my notebook with me right now so I couldn't tell you the Turkish names of things)
First dish was meadow soup, which is a yogurt and dried mint soup that is very similar to the Greek lemon rice deal. We started with a fresh chicken stock, and then added dried mint leaves fried in butter with a little bit of chili- i should mention that Turkish red chili is quite different from those found in North America, smells almost smoky and sweet and hot, and adds heat without killing all the other flavors. Next we combined yogurt and lemon juice with cumin, salt and pepper, and eggs to make somthing like a liason which we whisked into the hot broth... sounds like it'd scramble/curdle/break/turn into a disgusting mess, but it didn't... stayed velvety smooth.
The second dish we made was one of the very common meze dishes which consist of some vegetable in olive oil... we made one with green beans- basically we layered beans with tomatoes, onions and garlic, drizzled with with olive oil and then steamed the whole lot in its own liquid- at the very end we added fresh dill.
The third dish was something between an Indian pakora and a latke. It was made with grated zucchini and a mild white turkish cheese what was like an unsalty version of feta. We also added a ton of fresh dill, parsley, mint and scallion. those were made like silver dollar pancakes, panfried on both sides until they were golden brown. We served them with yogurt.
For a main dish we made a lamb stew with tomatoes, mildly hot peppers, onions and carrots. To accompany it was a charred eggplant puree which also contained a little bechamel and some cheese. It was super rich and creamy, and very smoky.
Dessert was little semolina sponge cookies soaked in lemon scented simple syrup and garnished with hazlenuts. The dough was simple to make, like a standard sugar cookie dogh almost. The dough was rolled into walnut sized balls, and then baked in an oven that was still preheated. as soon as the cookies came out of the oven, we poured the hot syrup into the pan and watched them soak up the syrup. I am already trying to devise a way to subsitute some ground nuts for some of the semolina and then make a syrup using maple, for a canadian version...
The best part was sitting down and eating the meal afterwards- we figure that to have a 5 course meal at the host hotel we would have been paying nearly what the class cost us.
The rest of the day was spend switching pansyons (yes, we left our crazy Ottoman mansion) and playing a game which we are calling fake yahtzee since we added a bunch of strange combinations like getting two 1's, one 3 and two 5's for 100 points. I whispered to the dice a few times, and somehow managed to bewitch them into making all of our weird combos, slaughtering Marni, thus making up for the ass-kicking she gave me in cribbage. We had pide for dinner- a Turkish version of pizza- kinda like getting a thin crust pizza, but instead of crispy, it is chewy. And no sauce on the bottom.