Lady's Thigh Meatballs (Kadin Budu Kofte)

Turkish cuisine is full of foods which has funny names. It is one of them. Today after i decided to cook kadinbudu kofte, i searched why they gave this name? but i couldnt find.. Maybe it is because chubby:)) i really dont know. If you think this is funny name, also hear there are turkish desserts called "A Beatiful woman's Lips" (Dilber dudagi), "Finger of the vizier" (Vezir parmagi), "Ladys Belly" (Hanim gobegi) and etc.. I really dont know why this kinda names were given or who gave but funny.. isnt it? :)

I like kadinbudu kofte, very delicious and filling.

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Anchovy Rice (Hamsili Pilav) Recipe

As i have mentioned yesterday, in black sea region , you can find thousands recipes with anchovy. The rice is one of them . I never tried it before neither in a restaurant or at home so it was nice for me to cook this. I felt it was a real challange for me, i cooked it in a pan not in the oven , so i needed to turn the food and fry both face of it. But i was succesful, honestly i was afraid to screw it but didnt. The result is perfect either look or taste..

I cooked it in a medium pan , wish i have done more:)

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Anchovy Recipe (Hamsi)

For the who dont know about, Turkey is a country surrounded with 3 seas; Black Sea at north, Aegean Sea at the west, and Mediterrian Sea at the south. For this reason, it is very rich with the fishes and fishes products, but unfortunately we arent so fan of sea foods. We are mostly bread, wheat people as anatolian culture. It is like , although it is surrounded with 3 sea, most of turkish people dont know to swim!

This season is very generous with the fish, yesterday on the news they were anouncing that it is anchovy season and it is so cheap, and bla bla bla. A chef gave 12 recipes with anchovy which is so easy and tasty.

In Turkish we call it "Hamsi". In black sea region there are thousands recipes are avalible with it, whatever u think ; anchovy bread, pickle, rice ,everything..

When i surprise to see Americans use pumpkin in a lot of ways, if you have known about how anchovy is used in Turkey, i am sure you would be really surprised!

It is very easy and tasty way to eat fish.

I got 1 kg anchovy , was planing to use some part for Hamsi Kusu and rest of them for the rice with anchovy, but the tast of it was soo amazing and my family asked me to cook just this and tomorrow we will buy some more and use it for rice. This is winter time and the weather is cold and rainy, i dont wanna go out, so my sister promised to go out and buy it for me tomorrow, so we were agreed and all of them cooked as hamsi kusu, Win Win game !everybody happy:))

It was a real challange for me , because when my mum brought the fish and it wasnt cleaned so i needed to clean inside. I have never done it, first try was disaster, i almost mashed the fish!

I learnt the way from my mum.

First i had to break off the head , one finger has to clean inside of it,and take the bone out with the tale. I felt so weird , it was hard for me to do it and was a challange to see my hands with some blood although it is fish. Anyway i was succesful , just it took much time as i had to wash my hands quite often:)

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Belated "Happy World Pasta Day"&"Happy Birthday"

Yesterday,25th October was so important day. One ,it is one of my best friend' s birthday who is actually my manager, my friend&my sister.. She tought me a lot as much as she can with patient. She tried to make me convinced with the job and made easier my boring day at work. I am sorry to tell this but i havent heard any good things about lady managers all my life, everybody told lady managers mostly, jelous, aggresive,who has complexes and so on.. But she is the opposite of all of this.. Very kind,helpful, and try to make my life easier..
Happy Birthday Ender! you deserve all the best, hope God gives you what you deserve in the life..
And second important event at 25th Oct was World Pasta Day. I recognized there is a "World Pasta Day" exist. It has been celebrated from 15 years. I havent noticed it before but as the pasta is my favourite food , i thought it s good for me to cook a pasta to celebrate this nice day. Pasta is the cheapest, easiest and the most tasty way to get full..
My coughing getting worse. I dont like this dark, rainy weather, i should live in somewhere always warm and sunny. Although i am always so careful , i always get cold very easy, i think it is coz of what i eat , i should eat more healthy foods, but i love to eat pasta and patato:) i can live with just that 2 in all my life, can u do that? :) I
I cooked pasta yesterday with cream,garlic,basil,cheddar,parmesan,and some vegs.. It was so good , my family loved it. Unfortunately no pic coz of my pc&internew screwed:(
Btw when i was searching about this day , i learnt Turkey is the 2nd pasta exporter country in the world.
Happy World Pasta Day!!

Stuffed Cabbage Leaves (Zeytinyagli Lahana Dolmasi) Recipe

Today i feel so sick , have fever, throat pain and coughing:( dont have too much energy but we had some cabbage at home and cooked it , it was so tasty so i couldnt avoid to share with you.

I cooked it veg but also you can cook it with ground meat as well..

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Haricot Beans with Turkish Sausage Recipe(Sucuklu Kuru fasulye)

I was busy last days with a lot of things including some dates;)
it is pity that i just dont have enough time to cook. I try to follow a lot of blogs and try not to miss anything but unfortuantely sometimes i do. One of them is green girl and her recipe Bulghur pilaf recipe, i got upset when i recognized late. It is really look tasty.
And if i dont comment at your recipes ,doesnt mean i dont read, i defintely enjoy to read all of bloggers recipes , and try to follow as much as i can, just not enough time for everything.. Today dish is great Haricot beans which is a King at Turkish cuisine..
Haricot beans which has lots of type a kinda national dish of Turkey:) especially when the cool weather starts , at almost every home legume dishes are cooked include haricot beans.

And it is very healthy food which is rich carbohydrate, protein, and B vitamins.
When you ask someone here where to eat Kuru fasulye, they will all tell you "Comlek". It started in istanbul with a small place and now, they have big place to serve it. Their kuru fasulye is best in Istanbul. If you ever visit in Istanbul , dont forget to eat kuru fasulye at Comlek.

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Roasted red bell pepper salad

Here is another easy to make,delicious recipe..
I like red bell pepper. And all recipes with it. At home we make this salad quite often . Hope you all like it..

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Celeriac with orange juice

As i have told before , i started a kinda diet. Actually i cant tell it is a diet ,it is impossible for me to diet because i really enjoy to eat . But at least i try to eat light foods at least for dinner. I really like celeriac and this recipe is from my mum. I have ate celeriac out ,restaurants and i have hated it and was avoiding to eat it till my mum cook it in this form. I really enjoy with this dish , hope you like it too..

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Cheese Stuffed Zucchini

I have been busy for sometime , no time or energy i had to cook. And even i dont wanna eat anymore,i feel i am getting fat and i dont like it. It is better for me to stay away from my loves;pasta-potato and this kinda tasty and fatty things. Also i will stay away from frying foods for sometime. If you have noticed most of foods i cook and eat a bit fatty, already most of healthy foods arent delicious , what can i do:) But today i cooked and ate as dinner very light, healthy and tasty dish.

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Potato&Carrot Crocket

I love potato, i can eat it everyday ,i dont think i am gonna get bored of it. Today morning my mum has made potato salad for breakfast. But it wasnt enough potato for me i guess and i wanted to eat more potato :)) I like potato crocket, i wanted to try something else. I added carrot in it.. The taste was good. I reccomend you to try..

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Pilaf/Rice with green bean (Fasulye Dible)

All the areas in Turkey has different kinda food culture. In north east of Turkey which is Black Sea Region ,they cook almost all geens' "Dible". Dible is rice with veg. And Fasulye(green bean) Dible is one of them. Black Sea Regions is the most green areas in Turkey, so they cook a lot with green,vegs and so on..
Rize/Turkey

Normally i dont like to add recipes which i didnt cook in my blog. But after i started blogging thing and my mum saw that i got comments and Top 9 bla bla bla, she started cook better , unusual foods than normal times. I think she thinks that she has been cooking from 30 years and nobody appriciated in proper way:) and now she has a kinda chance with me to show her foods more people and got claps:) She is really great cook, best that i knew. Honestly she didnt want me to go in kitchen too much because she was afraid from the mess after i cooked.. But she couldnt do anything about it:) After she cook , always ask me to add the foods in my blog but i reject, but this time i thought i can make privilege for one time:) i liked the fasulye dible too much (normally she wasnt used to cook it, i think she cooked for you:) ) The taste is so good.. It is fillig,tasty and easy to cook. What you can ask more from a food? :))

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Is your job what you have dreamed??

If you ask to a kid "what you want to be when you grow up", they will probably reply you to be a teacher ,doctor,pilot,astronaut.. How many people working in their dreamed jobs? or i am not sure if there is such a lucky person. I studied economics, had master in financial markets and currently work for a bank. Am i happy? is this what i wanna be? i really dont know nowadays. I query myself too much recently, about my life, what i wanna be.. I am 26 but i am still not sure.. everyday i wake up at 6.30 am.,take 3 busses and going work in 1,5 hour and is it worth?? what if i quit? what i am gonna do?i dont know .. do i enjoy with my job as much as cooking, or if i was a chef/cook, would i be happy that time?? This kinda questions in mind.. I dont know everybody ask this questions to theirself time to time.. If you lived same feelings, share with me please..

Stuffed Eggplants with Mince (Karniyarik) Recipe

That is the one basic recipe of Turkish&Ottoman Kitchen and this is my favourite dish that can be cooked with Eggplant. I really like it, and i reccomend if you cook it , you should cook rice also, they are very good friends i guess:)

This dish is normally served warm , but for vegetarians we have another version ,it is filled with onion,garlic&parsley. This dish is served cold and we call it "imambayıldı"(imam:prayer leader,bayıldı:to be fainted). I know it is so funny name. There are a lot of rumours about this name; someone tell a lady cooked this dish for her imam husband and he got fainted because of the delisious taste, some others tell imam fainted because of the cost of the dish and so on :)) this kinda funny stories about foods. But i like both ways of eggplant dishes. As you can understand from the stories ,it is very well known , old and important dish for Ottoman&Turkish kitchen..

Enjoy!!

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Dates&Cinnamon Cake

There are some free courses which is supported by Municipality. Yesterday evening after work i went one of them to get web designing course. You know i am not so good with PC ,coding, web etc and sometimes i wanna do smth about my blog , but i cant do it because i am not familar about it, and for that i need to find an IT guy and ask and wait for respond and bla bla bla which make me nervous, so i thought i can get one of these course and make smth better. But when i went there , i saw there are too much people i guess who are thiking same with me, there were more than 100 people but they just get 20 people, so i got an exam and if i can success ,i will start a web designing course.. please wish me luck, i will learn the result after 1 week.. anyway lets talk about food abit:)
you know i am not so fan of sweet,dessert.. if you bring me a cake and pasta and ask me to choose i would never choose cake:) so that is why i guess i am more conservative about cooking sweet,desserts, cakes etc.
But there is one sweet called "mamul" which has date inside. We dont have it here, i order from arab countries, i am not sure if it is available any other place.
And when i was checking last day other people is blog , i saw a recipe Date Bread , the blog adress http://treatntrick.blogspot.com/ ; i really liked it and thought to cook it. but i cooked it a bit different.. and the result was really good , the taste is amazing... and one thing, i didnt add any sugar in this cake:)) but date and cinnamon enough sweet. it is as i like no so so sweet.. but great taste..
I should confess the above the cake a bit burned but it s because of my stupid oven:) but result is really good, i reccomend you to try..

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Homemade Pickle (Tursu)

I am not sure if the pickle is right word for this, because when i write pickle in internet it just give me the one is cucumber pickle but when we make pickle at home normally it includes a lot like;cucumber,cabbage, tomato, gherkin,red cabbace,green pepper,beet,unripe melon and so on..we call it in Turkey "Tursu". My mum make pickle in big cans , after they been, we eat them with our dinner mostly. I like the salty taste of it. Also the water' s flavor in pickle is amazing, in Turkey there are some stores which sell pickle, and also the water of it.

If you never drunk that water ,at least once give a try if possible.. you will not regret.

Our can was for 5 lt. And the amounts we put in can is for that..

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Falafel & Tarator Sauce

Here is another delicious dish that i have tasted in Lubenon. It was soo good, they serve it in the bread with tomato, radish, lettuce and tarator sauce. One of best thing also i have just paid less than 2 usd:) it was so cheap and great taste. It is famous food in Middle East. Good food also for vegeterians.

One of my Egyptian friend told it is called as food for poor people.. but i dont care, i like it:))

maybe i should open a place to sell falafel , i am sure i d make good business:) in Egypt, Mc Donald sell a special called Mc Falafel:)))

I went a place in Beirut which is famous with falafel called BARBAR.. and they are open 24 hours i guess , you cant guess how much it is full. You never find it empty.... always someone wait to get falafel:)

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Assaha Hotel&Restaurant-Beirut

Assaha is the maybe nicest hotel i have ever seen, it has unique design, it looks like a castle, very authentic, fully stone . I felt so great there. I had chance to see the rooms as well..

All the rooms has different country concept; Morocco , Egypt, Lubenon,Africa, America and more ... and all were perfect, and i can say also prices are so reasonable.

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