Cross-cultural Marriage Series Part 3: Variety! And more variety!

This is kind of predictable, but with a cross-cultural marriage you get a lot more variety. It’s most obvious with what we eat. I’ve definitely jumped on the eggplant wagon since getting married. Those things are tasty! Our newest eggplant discovery is eggplant soup. Delicious! Maybe I should start posting recipes on here? Let me know if that’s a good idea by posting a comment.

Moonpie munching on artichokes. In a laundry basket. On our balcony.

Turks, especially where we live, love to eat outside in the summer. This usually takes the form of eating on the balcony. Someone commented that there is a “balcony culture” where we live, and it is so true. In the summer you can see many families eating together on their balconies. Incidentally, people also love to eat outside in Arizona, although usually more in the spring than the middle of summer. There’s no balcony culture in Arizona, but there is The Backyard Barbecue! We have sort of combined the two into a balcony barbecue thing we do every now and again. We use an electric grill, so not quite the same as my dad’s awesome propane “grill the heck out of everything simultaneously” grill, but it’s still not bad. We also usually have avocado on our burgers, which my husband has discovered because of me and now loves, as does Moonpie. I already included a picture of grilling burgers in my 4^th of July post, so I won’t delight you with another image of raw meat.

Turkish Breakfast...on our balcony

Another big food culture thing here is Turkish breakfast. Now, I have to say, when Americans first move here we usually aren’t too enticed by the Turkish breakfast. The thought is usually that one has given up a breakfast food called “bacon”, which is not readily available here, and has been offered instead a breakfast food called “cucumber”. No thank you. However, I have found that once you take Turkish breakfast as a whole, it is really quite good. The flavors meld together into a perfect mix of yumminess. The traditional Turkish breakfast includes eggs in some form and meat in some form. If you’re lucky, this will be beef sausage. If you’re not, this will be bologna. Then you have the cheese, tomato, cucumber and olive plate, which is rounded out with a big basket of bread and something to spread onto said bread. If you’re lucky, this will be jam. If you’re more lucky, this will be honey and cream. There are variations on the way the eggs are cooked, types of cheeses, types of meat and sometimes there are different veggies or bread products, but basically that’s it. Oh, and of course, the tea. You usually have tea with breakfast and maybe coffee after. It is way more delicious than it sounds. It really grows on you!

And when we get tired of all this, we just make ourselves some blueberry pancakes!