Black Sea Khavaltı

 I haven't blogged in awhile...a long while.  Instead I've just been uploading photos directly to facebook.  So it has dawned on me that I only have a few months left here in Turkey now, and there's nothing quite like an annotated photo album...so here goes.  I make no promises for future blogging, but I will try!

This morning (a Sunday) I amazed myself by taking the bus up about ten minutes PAST my University (which is already about 1 1/2 hours up the Bosphorus coast by bus) about 10 minutes to the Black Sea coast.  Some friends and I decided to check out a local breakfast joint, with a castle nearby to boot, and it could not have been more worth it....

Breakfast took place in a rustic house that had all the Turkish breakfast staples, plus some lunch items and local goods, all served incredibly fresh and homemade.

sigara böreği (a flaky dough lightly fried with cheese and parsley inside), fresh mint and parsley, cucumbers, tomatoes, an array of olives, regular nutella, homemade hazelnut nutella (imagine nutella without the chocolate, just all hazelnut cream....), sausages for those meat-eaters, fresh homemade bread, including delicious cornbread (which Black Sea cuisine is known for, lot's of corn-based food), a zucchini-like casserole, a potato-filled pastry, kisir (a bulgur-based salad), homemade jams and jellies, including: fig, cherry, pomegranate, mini sweet strawberries, honey, marmalade, and the list goes on...

homemade fig and pomegranate jams and honey...

the owner of the restaurant was very eager to attend to us foreigners

lot's of tea, of course...

and more tea...

menemen - a slightly undercooked egg-based dish, with peppers and tomatoes

Minlama, a cornmeal, cheese and butter-based dish, in keeping with Black Sea cuisine of corn corn corn

eggs with sausage, Turkish style

some other patrons

seconds!

the jams

homemade pomegranate jam

Ashley and Lauren

Ashley and Jenny

toast!

After breakfast we walked around the village, whose economy and culture is centered around fishing

 fishing nets

almost to the Black Sea...

we stopped at a local market on the coast

they had about every kind of canned sweetened good, even tomato jam, chestnut honey, thyme-honey, you name it!

bulk goods

parts of the town are slightly in ruins

but it is so charming.

lots of families were out walking around by the castle and gazing at the sea

including the local pups

and sun-bathers

The Black Sea

my group of compadres

view of the Black Sea from castle walls

a boat coming in to the Bosphorus

view of the Black Sea from within the tower

on our way out, a man who is taking food trucks to the next level...

That's it for now.  A quick post but hopefully it will get me back into the swing of things for these last upcoming months.