Turkish Mardi Gras (Tuesday #13)

Turkish Tuesday has been so festive recently! This week it landed on Fat Tuesday, and to celebrate I got real fat with the other Americans in town (+Firat) over a few batches of fluffy, golden all-American pancakes.

Though not exactly Turkish, this was actually a valuable cooking experience for me: it was my first time cooking pancakes.  Pancake mixes can't be found in Yalova, but I found this simple gem when searching online: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/good-old-fashioned-pancakes/  I liked its old-fashioned, Grandma's pantry ingredient list. Only seven ingredients, all of them were easily accessible in Turkey...and the cakes turned out great! (Even for the second batch when I miscounted my scoops of flour and almost baked a loaf of bread, before Deven and Margot convinced me to add like 3X the recipe's called-for milk.)  It's a flexible recipe, too!

Our table was decadent enough for Fat Tuesday: honey in a squeeze bottle, melty butter, mom's Oregon raspberry jam, Turkish raspberry jelly, apricot preserves, spicy sucuk sausage rounds, breakfast acika spread to go with the sana and a big loaf of ekmek (bread), plus OJ and peach juice.  Yum! Why don't I cook breakfast for dinner more often?

Luckily for my Fat Tuesday-self, I got to enjoy this feast twice. Margot, Clayton and I ate dinner together at normal dinnertime, and then after they all got done with work and came over, I got to do it again with the Dilko crew around 10:00!  Over the meals, we talked about our Fat Tuesday traditions, lent experiences, things we might give up this year, Clayton's crazy friends in college, and how awesome it would be to someday go to Brazil for Carnival.  In the end, I decided it would be so awesome to go to carnival...but also Brazil at any time of the year! On top of that, I decided to try to give up french fries for lent. Wish me luck!