Discover Turkish culinary culture

Turkey has a very rich culture, involving religion, family, history and food. They are joyful people and like to celebrate everything. And how can you celebrate better than with a big meal. So there are a lot of things we can say about Turkish food. The most important is the taste, and trust me when I say it tastes good. There is something for all tastes: spicy, sweet, salty, colorful and all sorts of interesting mixtures. There is a lot of meat involved in Turkish cuisine, and each time they hear I am a vegetarian they look surprised and say that Turkey is not for vegetarians. But that is not true, because I found a lot of dishes without meat that I love.

Turkish cuisine has most of its heritage from Ottoman cuisine. Briefly I can say Turks love food. There is a lot of bread, meat, sugar (in everything), there is always salad on the table (at least as an appetizer), tea (black tea),  Ayran (Turkish yogurt drink) and Turkish coffee.

This is breakfast... or a part of it, because we couldn’t make everything fit on the same table.

And there is always desert on the table.

Regular breakfast ... bread, salad, borek with cheese or meat, and Turkish tea

Because everyone loves breakfast!

Bread, bread, bread!

Coffee and bagel breakfast

And let’s not forget Turkish traditional drinks.

And Turkish tea for breakfast!

 Because their families are very close to each other, most of them take dinner together. So there is always a big dinner in the Turkish families. They wait for all the family members to get home, so they can eat togetherJ. There is an unwritten rule, the oldest should be the one to sit first at the table. And if you want to please the host, you should eat all the food from your plate.

This was my first Ramadan dinner - traditional Turkish bread (pide) for Ramadan with cheese

Salad, Çiğ köfte, and salad! - vegetarian variety 

Salad and Sarma - We LOVE sarma!! 

Dinner time

Lentil soup, pide, fries, Ramazan juice and Turkish coffee

Because both me and my colleague volunteer from Spain, Miriam, are vegetarians, most of the foods we tried and photographed are without meat. So for all of you that said we have nothing to eat in Turkey, I have tons of pics to prove you are wrong.  

No Turkish dinner is done without Turkish coffee

Traditional bread for Sahour (breakfast name in Ramadan)