Turkish Tuesday, #10?

Last week marked Turkish Tuesday 10, and I had a special guest to share the event with!

My friend, Ali came to visit Yalova from Trabzon, and she brought the cold weather with her.  Monday it had snowed and then melted, but Tuesday morning, it was back at it again.  Students were out on the balcony all morning having "snow wars" between classes.  (As seen in this picture snapped sneakily through the blinds of my office.) Luckily, it was colder here in Yalova than across the water at Sabiha Gokcen airport, and Ali was able to arrive without any problems.



After work got done, I met her down at a lovely little strip of businesses (a few restaurants, stores, a bar and a super-classy cafe!) that I'd never been to before along a marina I'd never known existed. Along the way, I was saw more snow-covered palm trees (weird-looking) growing next to beautiful snow-covered pine trees (perfect-looking).  Once I found Ali at the cafe, we rushed back outside to catch the tail end of a gorgeous sunset behind the marina. Our walk back to the apartment was nice and slippery because the melting snow from earlier in the day had started to freeze again.  Ali is a Grinnell grad, though, and our mid-west college ice walking training got us safely home.

 Once there, we warmed up with two steaming sleighrides (thanks for those Rumplemintz, Santa!) and some nice catch-up chatting.  We debated going out for dinner, but in the end opted to stay home for some low-cost, homey, cozy soup.

Though I believe it's been featured on a Turkish Tuesday before, I whipped up (literally! --I had to use the submersion blender!) some ezogelin soup for the two of us. This batch turned out great.  -A delicious balance of tomato, mint, lemon and onion.  To (also literally) top it all off, I made a little mint butter garnish. Yum! Afiyet olsun, friends!

p.s. On Saturday night, we went to Cafe the Kaisen--where we'd been debating going on Tuesday. It was well worth the wait because when we (both) ordered the manti, it came out on the coveted "lazy suzan." This bowl of yogurt-covered ravioli was our canvas--with just the right levels of spiced butter, dried mint, sumac, and thyme, we each created a delicious grand finale to Ali's Yalova culinary tour. We may look blurry, but we're so, so happy!