Breaking Fast Fun

There is a story in Turkey - a visitor sits down at a restaurant and orders water and must say, "Please, no eggplant in my water." That is how ubiquitous that vegetable is here.

My cooking instructor at the Ataturka Cooking School, Mara, told our class this story last night as we made five courses: lentil soup, the eggplant, stuffed grape leaves, zucchini fritters and walnut-stuffed figs. Day Four was a turning point for me, the day my trip began to feel really fun. It began by sleeping through a severe rainstorm until noon (finally, catching up!) and ending with making four friends in my class: one Australian, one Norwegian and a pair of French biology teachers living and working on the island of St. Martin.

Here is the beautiful pot of eggplant, which we spent 30 minutes peeling, scoring and stuffing - so many secrets to the eggplant, not just "forgetting about it" in the oven...

And here is our Chef teaching us how to stuff grape leaves with lamb:

The class/dinner began at 4:30 and ended at 10 - one of those nights where travelers from all around the world discover more similarities than differences, especially when it comes to American HBO and Showtime.

After dinner, I witnessed my favorite cultural vision yet with my new friends: thousands of families breaking the daily Ramadan fast in the Sultanehmet (center) of Istanbul, laying Turkish blankets down in the square between the Blue Mosque (picture #2 below) and Hagia Sofia (#3). What a sight. Picnics, music, candy-makers and whirling dervishes everywhere, and the local/tourist ratio was about 300 to 1:

With these two monuments as a backdrop, I kept saying, "And this is not Disneyland!!" We strolled through a night market and just soaked in the culture. I really needed this - a night with Westerners and this exposure to such a cool cultural event. Like I said, corner has been turned.

I am typing this at 4:00 am. The drummer woke me up at 2, so I figured I would blog until the call to prayer. I even captured it on video but I can't figure out how to load 30 seconds of an honest-to-goodness local wooden house neighborhood call to prayer. Brian?