A bad coffee is the perfect way to spoil a good dinner. Eighteen hours on, and my innards still feel pickled.
It’s obligatory. Every visit to our old neighbourhood must end with a trip to our old grocery store. We must replenish the kitchen cupboards after all, both the essentials and the luxuries. Fruit and veg a bargain compared to the local supermarket. These bags of produce should tide us over for a few days. Yes, …
I was pleased with myself on Saturday, congratulating myself for doing a proper weekly shop. But it’s only Tuesday, and already supplies have been depleted, the fridge all but bare. What would have been a week’s supply of fruit now lasts barely days. Any treat, polished off within hours. Either we’re a household of very …
Feels like Christmas: I’ve been gifted a brand-new box of teabags. Small pleasures.
Standing in front of a wall of booze and cigarettes, the shopkeeper points at my flapjack. “Careful, my friend,” he laughs, “it looks like you’re getting an addiction.” It’s true. The secret morning flapjack on the way back from school really is my guilty vice. Though you won’t find a single wise sage reciting a …
Eat where the locals eat. Good honest food, freshly made on site. Honest, friendly service. Honest, fair prices. Will fill you up. No bad aftertaste.
Unfortunately, in Karadeniz, the tourist industry is chasing Gulf Arab money, and so prices follow in kind. A family meal out, which might once have seemed a bargain, now costs more than it would back home, and for a very small portion at that.
It’s only taken me about thirty years, but I think today I finally discovered the secret of non-stodgy rice. You have to rinse off all the starch at the start. When the water turns clear, you’re done. Kudos to some random bloke on YouTube for setting me straight on this one. I wasn’t going to …
Clever lad made a fry up for breakfast today. Eggs and halloumi. Smells delicious. Did he make a serving for me? Don’t be daft.
We’ve been spoilt all this time, not worrying about what we’ll eat each evening. Now it comes to the end of a working day, and I’m wondering what I will cook us tonight. If it achieves nothing else, I hope it will make our lad more grateful for everything his mum does for him. I …
At the very moment that millions are ill from malnutrition, here we are, ill from gluttony.
So, our big hungry caterpillar munched through a week’s supply of fruit in twenty-four hours, and polished off all the goodies bought for our guests. Just waiting for him to turn into a butterfly now. For sure, we have nothing left for him to eat for the rest of the week.
Always the same mistake: consuming food from outside the home in Ramadan. Never can I resist that momentary temptation, succumbing to the spices and fried delights gifted by generous friends. But without fail, in the coming hours, I will be reminded of my folly, as my body recoils in discomfort and pain. A month of …
As true northerners, we break our fast with Yorkshire puddings.
