Graduation Fear and Spiced Orange Shrub

I have been in Turkey for almost three years now. I've studied Turkish on and off since shortly after I arrived. I did three levels at one school then stopped for over a year I think. Wow now that I am thinking about it that was a long time. Then I took two more classes at a different school and quit because I thought I was leaving. Then when I wasn't leaving I had to wait for there to be enough students to make a class for the level I was in. Since about February though I've been steadily taking courses and last week I, along with my class friends, graduated. 

So I guess that means I speak Turkish, right? I graduated. I've finished. There are no more courses. Ergo I speak Turkish. I am so not ready to graduate!!

Aslan & me-ready for our close up!

Deli Kedi-how I feel about graduation

Ugh, no! Not ready!

Like many establishments in Istanbul, street cats are pretty free to make themselves at home at Turkuaz (which I highly recommend if you're interested in learning Turkish!) and there are many familiar faces among them. There's the cat that's always dirty and slightly sick but who just lays about sleeping. There's the deli (crazy) cat who constantly meows, zips around, and demands attention. And there's Aslan (lion) who I named when she first started hanging out with us this summer. Her paws were just so much bigger than she was and I thought she looked like a lion cub. She crawls around all of us during class wanting pets and cuddles and disturbs our note taking by trying to play with our pens when we're writing. She has a purr that's about three times her size.

 

No scurvy happening here!

My clever segue into alcohol is that a) my Turkish is always a little better after a few drinks and b) the thought that I now have to function in Turkish (since I no longer have the excuse that I'm just learning!) really makes me want to drink. Frankly so does the Turkish language. It's fracking hard! Like really, really hard. I know hard languages. I took five years of Russian,  three years of Mandarin, one in Taiwan, and a year and a half of Arabic. Turkish falls somewhere in the middle of all of those for degree of difficulty. The words just don't end, especially the verbs. You can pile suffixes onto words - INCLUDING THE VERBS - pretty much forever. I'm a little horrified even talking about it.

Cheap Turkish wine, vinegar...same thing really

Shrub, which is basically fancy drinking vinegar and is often made out of overripe fruit can be drunk on it's own or mixed with liquor and/or soda. E got really into making shrub over the summer. I think she made one peach and one strawberry. She likes things rather less sweet than do I so hers...needed to be cut pretty significantly. The first one I tried was sooo vinegary that my face did that thing where it basically caved in on itself. You know what I'm talking about...like when you taste something super sour and your mouth tries to retreat into your face, you wrinkle your nose, and squeeze your eyes shut like if you can't see it you can also no longer taste it.

Most people view shrub as a summer thing but I found a great recipe for spiced orange shrub. Call me crazy but the combined scents of oranges, cinnamon, and clove have always smelled like Christmas! What better flavor for making Christmas and New Year cocktails?! It's a bit sticky in the making and I've had to sponge off my counters so many times they've probably never been this clean...

In the end, absolutely worth all the stickiness. I like to mix it with vodka and sparkling water. And after it's been strained the orange slices make nice garnish!

Recipe (adapted from Cooking Stoned):

• 1 pound oranges
• 1 cup sugar
• 1-1/12 cups champagne vinegar*
• 5 black pepper corns
• 3 cloves
• 3 cinnamon sticks

Special equipment:

• quart-sized jar of some sort 
• sieve
• mortal and pestle (or other poundy tool)
• another jar, bottle, something

Preparation: 

1. Wash and dry the oranges. Quarter them lengthwise then cut crosswise about 1/4 inch thick.
2. Alternate layers of orange slices and sugar in the jar. Close it up and shake until as many of the orange slices as possible are coated with the sugar. Set aside for FIVE hours.
3. While you're being patient, crush the bejesus out of the pepper corns, cloves, and cinnamon sticks. Enjoy the scent because it smells great-the addition of the black pepper is surprisingly nice.
4. ....Five hours later add the vinegar to the jar, seal it really well, and shake the crap out of it to dissolve remaining sugar. Then add the crushes spices. shake it up a bit more, and store in a dark space for day.
5. Strain  the liquid into another jar, a bottle, a whatever.
6. Enjoy!

*I can't get champagne vinegar at my Carrefour. Or white wine vinegar. Just regular white vinegar which is far too astringent for this. Instead I used Sava brand white wine (which let's face it is basically vinegar anyway) and a few tablespoons of white vinegar.

Home Alone and Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate

With almost two years in Turkey under my belt now I have learned that Istanbul is not as completely devoid of everything Christmas as I thought it was. There are actually quite a few places that sell Christmas trees, ornaments, and various other decorations. However I have decided to remain decorationless. Sherlock loves too much climbing the hanging closet organizers, wood support beams, my leg...I am not about to tempt fate with a shiny, sparkly, potentially fragile decorated tower of climbing wonder.

 However there are some Christmas traditions that can be celebrated wherever you are and regardless of your demon cat situation. The easiest of these...movies. I have a pretty extensive collection of Christmas movies and no Christmas is complete without the classic Home Alone. Yes, Home Alone. Macaulay Caulkin's 1990 masterpiece. My first Christmas away from home was 2002 when I was living in Taiwan. At the time I didn't own the movie, nor did I have any Christmas movies with me. Our cable package included several English HBO channels and the day Home Alone was on was my holiday low point. Even though my awesome mom spent a fortune sending me gifts and candy I was so depressed to not be home and to not be inundated with Christmas everything everywhere. That scene at the end when Catherine O'Hara has finally made it to Chicago and walks into the house to see it all decorated and the tree, you know that part, I lost it. Burst into tears and sobbed my way through the rest of the movie. Thank goodness it was already near the end. Low point.*

I keeps your DVDs warm for you

Crying over movies that aren't sad at all isn't the only great way to celebrate Christmas though. While not really a Christmas tradition, winter + holiday calories (which we all know don't count) is the perfect time to enjoy hot chocolate!

My dwindling supply of pb

 I love that people are getting experimental with hot chocolate recipes; although I question the taste of the person who invented lavender lemongrass white hot chocolate. No. But to the genius who decided to put peanut butter in hot chocolate, I tip my hat to you ma'am.

 Recipe: (slightly adapted from The Messy Baker)

• 1 cup milk*
• 1/4 cup heavy cream*
• 60 grams dark chocolate, chopped
• 1 TBLS cocoa powder (opt)
• 1 TBLS sugar (opt)
• 2 big TSPS creamy peanut butter

*vary  measurements depending on taste

1. Heat the milk and cream over low until hot to the touch or bubbles form around the edges. Do NOT let boil.
2. Whisk in the chocolate, cocoa, and sugar until everything is smooth.
3. Whisk in peanut butter.
4. Enter chocolate peanut butter Nirvana.

From now until the end of the Christmas season check in and see what other movies and hot chocolates with which we're celebrating!

*Remember the part when Kevin is walking down the street and his grocery bags break, spilling everything all over the sidewalk? His face is so perfect. We've all been there, Buddy.

Thanksgiving in DC

Thanksgiving is usually not my thing. I don't really like turkey, green bean casserole should be banned, and cranberries rate pretty low on my fruits I like list. In fact they're not even on the list. The only part of Thanksgiving I've ever really liked is Lauren's sweet potato souffle. In fact, that was my plan for today. Make sweet potato souffle and eat it while watching whatever was on TV. The arrival of my friend Eva, who needed a place to stay until the Spanish Government gets around to giving her a student visa, meant that it wasn't just me anymore. I've never been happier to have my plans change.

The beginnings of herb butter

Since it was just the two of us (and neither of us like turkey all that much) we decided to make Cornish game hens instead. And while that solved one problem it also brought up another-who was going to touch the hens. We're both ok handling raw meat but the minute you throw in skin...ew. It's just gross.

Um, ew.

I was so happy to discover that the inside bits had been put in a bag. We were really worried that we'd have to fish them out ourselves. To be fair we decided each one of us would do our own hen so we could spread around the fun of touching the ickiness.

Trying to loosen the skin

Several hours before starting we mixed the herb butter to let the flavors meld together. We chopped fresh sage, rosemary, thyme, and garlic and mixed them together with butter. That was the easy part. Then we had to rinse and dry off the hens to flavor them. We both managed to loosen the skin over the breasts enough to slip some butter between skin and meat and then we massaged the hens, completely covering them with herb butter, inside and out, before sprinkling them with salt and pepper.

Eva shoving butter under the skins

It took us forever to figure out if we were supposed to cook them breast up or down. The packing on the hens just said cook for an hour and I almost resorted to calling my mom before Eva's Googling suggested we cook them breast down but turn them occasionally.

It was gross but we managed

After those went into the oven Eva began putting together her chestnut stuffing. We both did some prep work yesterday which for Eva included covering most of the flat surfaces in my kitchen with cubed bread pieces.

Drying out bread 

I also helped her shell chestnuts. I have never before shelled chestnuts and can pretty confidently say that I'm not ever doing that again. There's a blister on my left thumb from doing it! Eva also did all the necessary chopping and sauteing yesterday so today all she had to do was combine everything.

The stock pot was the only pot big enough

The stuffing went in the oven in two batches because her crazy recipe was enough to feed a good two dozen people. While the stuffing was in I started Lauren's sweet potato souffle.

Once again using ingredients off the list

It's amazing that a recipe this simple is so darn good. The original recipe (below) makes a 9x13 pan full but with just two of us, and me leaving tomorrow for a week, it didn't make sense to make so much. I did make a full recipe of the topping though!

I love having a camera person!

We did really pretty well on timing and getting everything into the oven in the correct order. Even after 12 or so years away from my parents I'm still a little flabbergasted as to how people cook with just one oven. Growing up we always had two. And two refrigerators and two deep freezers. One of the deep freezers is dedicated to meat. It's a beautiful thing even if most of the meat is venison.

There was a lot of chopping

In lieu of pumpkin pie I made ice cream for dessert. It was supposed to be a sweet potato ice cream, but I underestimated how many cups of pureed sweet potatoes I needed and didn't quite have enough. So I ended up with a sweet potato/pumpkin ice cream. Which turned out to be a pretty decent idea.

Want to taste?

Like Eva, I did my own prep yesterday for the ice cream. Making ice cream is always at least a two day process for me as I find that the colder the custard is before putting it in the ice cream maker, the better it freezes.

I've never had that happen before

The custard was already really thick when it went into the machine so I let it run extra long, basically until the ice cream maker refused to rotate anymore. I scooped everything into a tupperware and put it all in the freezer until we were ready for dessert.

Digging out the rest of the ice cream

I also pan dry roasted some asparagus, adding a little rough sea salt and black truffle oil at the end. But that only takes about 12 minutes so I did it as we pulled things out of the oven. Until it was time eat we took a nice break to watch TNT's Castle marathon. It doesn't matter that I own all the seasons and have seen every episode multiple times. I love you, Nathan Fillion. We'd be perfect for each other...you're Canadian, I'm...from a state near Canada. Sigh.

Yes I've already decorated. Wanna make something of it?

And because I love the opportunity to use all the crazy stuff I have, I set the table with chargers and cloth napkins and napkin rings.

My table looked pretty

Since we eschewed the traditional turkey we also felt no need to buy a beaujolais regardless of how traditional it may be. Instead we drank one of our favorites, a Ravenswood Old Vine Zinfandel (available at Trader Joes for $8.99!).

Mmmmm

And then we proceeded to do ourselves proud. We both decimated our hens and put a respectable dent in both the stuffing and the sweet potatoes. The asparagus, in addition to being scrummy, also let us pretend that we were being mildly healthy. Never mind that every other dish is full of butter.

It was such a nice, low-key dinner. Thanksgiving usually seems fraught with pressure to make a huge dinner, or impress your family/friends. Eva and I certainly got ahead of the game by prepping so much the day before and she's a good laid back foil to my hyper tendency to panic.

Sweet potato/pumpkin ice cream

After our stomachs returned to a normal size it was time for dessert! I have to say, the flavor for the ice cream was really nice. I was worried that the pumpkin would over power the sweet potato, but not so. The only thing I didn't like...texture. I may have to make this again and see if I can get it smoother. Eva likened it to the texture of a frozen pumpkin pie.

Also to accompany dessert, wine. But not just any wine. Pumpkin wine. That's right!

Clay Ave Cellars pumpkin wine

I found this wine with my mom on a trip to Muskegon, Michigan. Clay Avenue Cellars winery specializes in fruit wines and all the fruit is sourced from local farmers in a 30 mile radius of the winery. We did a tasting at their shop (and I bought a bunch of wines) and they told us they had a heck of a battle with the FDA over the label. Apparently the US Government isn't willing to recognize that pumpkin (like tomatoes and avacados) are a fruit.

The wine didn't go over so well. I think I recall buying less because of any awesomeness and more because I was amused by it. But everything else went well so this one little miss wasn't too upsetting.

Recipes

Eva's Chestnut Stuffing:
(I havlved her recipe here so you should end up with a normal amount)

• 2 onions
• 3-4 stalks celery
• sage
• thyme
• rosemary
• parsley
• 1 loaf thick cut bread (like a country white)
• 2 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 3/4 pound chestnuts
• salt and pepper

Ahead of time, cut bread into cubes and leave out to dry. Eva did hers nearly a full 24 hours in advance. alternatively you could put them in an oven that's on the lowest setting possible to help them dry out. Also ahead of time, carefully cut an X into each chestnut and boil for 20-ish minutes. After draining them let them cool until you can handle them, but not too much because they're far easier to peel when hot. Good luck here.

Finely chop onion and celery and saute until soft. Then finely chop all the herbs and combine the vegetables, herbs, dried bread cubes, and chopped chestnuts. Combine well then  add chicken stock salt and pepper.

Pour into greased pan, at least a 9X13, and cover with tinfoil. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes, remove the tinfoil and bake another 20 minutes uncovered.

Lauren's Sweet Potato Souffle:

• 4 cups cubed sweet potatoes
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 t salt
• 4 T softened butter
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 t vanilla

It's up to you if you want to go through peeling and cubing and roasting the sweet potatoes. More power to you if you go that route. I totally cheated and used canned potatoes. So basically, just mix all that together until it's smooth. I used a little less than twice the amount of vanilla and also added 1/4 t ground vanilla bean.

Pour into a greased 9x13 pan.

For the topping:

(I've already doubled this for you. You're welcome)

• 2/3 cup flour
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1-1 1/3 cup chopped pecans
• 6 T softened butter

Mix well until everything is a little squishy and crumble over the top of the sweet potatoes and bake at 350 for roughly 35-40 minutes.

Sweet Potato Ice Cream:

• 1 cup pureed sweet potato (or 1/2 cup potato and 1/2 cup pumpkin...or all pumpkin I suppose)
• 2 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup milk
• 1 T vanilla
• 5 egg yolks
• 3/4 brown sugar
• cinnamon
• nutmeg
• clove

Heat cream, milk, and sugar until hot. In a separate bowel, whisk the eggs yolks. Once the milk is hot, add about a cup to the eggs and whisk well then return everything to the pan. Heat over medium-low heat, stirring or whisking constantly, until it thickens. This is the part I hate because I'm mad impatient, but it really is important otherwise you run the risk of having the eggs curdle and that's gross.

Once it's thick, or you're fed up with the stirring (Eva and I took turns and I still didn't make it too long), add the puree and spices. Let cool in fridge a few hours to overnight then freeze in ice cream maker.

And so the post ends on an up note...I remembered that the wine makers at Clay Ave Cellars said that if you microwave the pumpkin wine for 30 seconds it tastes like pumpkin pie. So I tried it, why not, right? No. That didn't help. Clay Ave Cellars has a lot of very very good wines though so if you ever find yourself in western Michigan, check them out!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Learning How to Fly a Broomstick

On this trip to the UK rather than spend the weekend in London (I mean I've been twice already, *obviously* I've seen everything) my friend and I took a trip to Northumberland to go castle hunting. First stop was the seat of the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, Alnwick Castle.

Alnwick Castle (pronounced  A-nick) is not only rich in interesting history, but has been the site of several movies including Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves; a movie I love despite Kevin Costner's attempt to ruin it with his atrocious acting; and Harry Potter! HARRY POTTER!! And appropriately enough, our journey from London began at King's Cross Station.

Our train did not leave from Platform 9 3/4 but that didn't stop me from trying!

A four-ish hour train ride later, we settled into our room at the Oakes Inn on the outskirts of Alnwick and the very nice proprietor gave us a lift to the castle where we were greeted by this character.

Harry Hotspur, famous teenage knight of the Percy family 1364-1403.

Then you walk through the outer bailey and BAM! CASTLE!

The sun played peekaboo with us all day but it was largely overcast, rainy, and flipping cold. I had packed for the Middle Easter, not for northern England which apparently had not realized that it was the end of April and therefore spring.

View of the keep from the inner bailey.

Entrance to the estate rooms. This is a working castle which means that the family still lives here.

The tours we went on included some really interesting information. For example, not only did we learn that the Duke and Duchess still actually live here (which was evident in that the library not only includes tombs of well cared for books and first editions, but also a flat screen TV and fuse ball table) but that they have to ask for permission to use their own things! The family evidently need written permission to use certain rooms in the castle, including the library, so that conservationists can keep track of wear and tear on the furniture.

The 14 GBP entrance was well worth it. In addition to the historical tour, the estate room tour, and the tour of the Lost Caves (oohh spooky), there were plenty of activities to keep you busy. One of the most fun was the Dragon's Quest area where you put your skills to the test! Ok perhaps it was largely for kids but it was still fun. You get to dress up in period costumes and play games and make crafty things (there were even adult size costumes-which we put on).

What you can't see (because I took no pictures) is the Dragon's Quest lair which was like a mini fun/horror house with fun house mirrors, monsters, skeletons, etc. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

And the best part-Harry Potter activities. The castle does different Harry Potter things throughout the month and we happened to be there on the weekend they were doing broomstick Flying lessons. So if you remember your Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone movie, this is where their first flying lesson was filmed!

With a poster to mark the spot!

So it's possible that flying lesson was me, my friend, and six-seven kids who ranged from about 18 months to maybe nine...but it was still fun. The lesson involved: learning how to mount the broom (which wasn't even three feet long), making 'whooshing' noises while running up and down the wet, muddy bailey, having a relay race, and playing stop-and-go. It's possible that we were the same age as some of the fondly watching parents but I was still glad to do it. And everyone was paying so much attention to the cute little toddler that no one really seemed to notice my giant self :)

The best part of the lesson? I have photographic proof that I can both make a broomstick respond to my Up command and that I can fly.

Yes that is me flying.

After a day of tromping about the castle grounds we crossed to the other side of what I think was the Aln River to get a good full view of the castle.

Sheep are freaking everywhere!

Another one of those interesting facts we learned during our tour was that the first Duchess of Northumberland, Elizabeth Percy, turned the castle, which had been used almost exclusively before her as a garrison, into an actual home. That includes tearing down part of the curtain wall (i.e. the tall wall that surrounds the castle) and MOVING THE RIVER so she could see it from the lawn when she wanted to picnic.

You can see the short wall there-that's the curtain wall the first Duchess had torn down and above that is where she would picnic.

She moved the river. I'm still not over that.

After we left the castle we walked back to the hotel through the village, which, despite the cold and severe overcast sky, was very charming.

With day one of castle hunting done we went to be early so as to prepare ourselves for day two and the trip to Bamburgh a little farther north.