for lunch today

two very yummy
home-made apricot jam sandwiches

that lasted about..
2 minutes

(well, they were only very small)

let us be lovely

every morning, shortly after breakfast, it is my special time for coffee.
it's my special coffee time. and i love it.
maybe it's the coffee or maybe it's the feeling that here i am having my special time that makes me feel so good about it.
but sometimes, when things don't go as planned or when i don't feel like doing anything or when there is an internal fight going on inside me, or when nothing makes sense anymore, even this special coffee, this special coffee drunk at this special time, even that doesn't help.
at those times, however, i have a secret little thing:

a little coaster that i put my perfect cup of coffee on and that when i lift the cup to take a sip, jumps into my sight
and immediately brings me back to life
and makes me...
how to say this... oh yeah... LOVELY.

p.s. if you want to be lovely go to edward monkton's website.

be lovely be very very lovely.

Tine and Turkish dough

Tine came and stayed with us for Easter. We had so much fun!
She brought Fawlty Towers dvd for us which we watched almost every evening and that set us off in good moods.

At first the weather was a bit disappointing. I sort of had promised Tine that it would be hot and sunny, but it actually was cold and rainy. Tine complained that I didn't keep my promise. So I asked the weather to please improve, and it did!

We ate so much. Tine quickly realised that Turkey is a country of dough. There is dough dough dough everywhere and anywhere you go, and whenever we felt hungry - it was easy to find some form of dough.

We started off in a nice place in a village outside of Antalya, where there is a food market on Sundays and lots of little outdoor places offering all kinds of dough.

Next day we went to the Antalya museum and from there we had a lovely walk through a seaside park to meet with Kemal and because we were a bit hungry, we got some dough on the way.

And the next day we went to the old part of Antalya. It was lovely - we visited lots of shops and sights and lovely cafes there. And of course - we had some dough.

And the next day we went to a market famous for cheap clothes. From there we walked to the beach because the weather started to get really nice and hot. Before that, however, we sat in a cafe for a glass of tea and a big piece of very greasy albeit yummy dough. But on the beach - we had FRUIT.
And the next day was Kemal's day off so all the three of us went to the old part of Antalya for a boat trip. It was really great. So great, in fact, that after that we felt so hungry we went to a little restaurant and had a lovely home style meal with .... lots of dough, as is customary in places like this, in any place really.

And the next day...well, did we had any dough? Wrong question. We had dough ALWAYS. In fact, we had sweet dough we bought in the village on Sunday that we ate every single day. Apart from that sweet dough though, we had lovely lovely warm dough with butter in a little fish restaurant near waterfalls we went to that day.

And on the last day of Tine's visit the weather was so great, we spent a lovely morning in the beach. Tine even went for a swim, though the water was still quite cold. On the way back - we stopped in a small place for a bit of ... dough.

Turkey truly is a country of dough, isn't it Tine?
It was great to have all that dough with you...normally, it's just simply bread or borek or pide or katmer or bazlama or simit. But it really depends who you eat all those things with that makes them into very special, very yummy dough.