Everyday Treasures

It's hit and miss finding chestnut carts downtown where I live, but in Istanbul, they are all over the place in the winter, and I find them very hard to resist.  I think I am probably more attached to their sweet, smoky smell and the personal significance they have to my own heart than I am to the actual eating of them.  I love their flavour, but often they've cooled off or are underdone and get stuck in my throat.  It's not unlikely for me to buy a packet, eat a few, and then walk around the rest of the day with a half-eaten bag in my purse.  Still, I just like knowing they're there.  

Sometimes Google can lead you down the garden path.  A recent search to find the best macarons on Istiklal Street in Istanbul led me to a whole slew of articles about the police seizing hundreds of kilos of “makarons” that had been smuggled across the border.  

“Wow,” I thought, “the Turks have really gotten serious about their macaron habit!”

As it turns out, the word “makaron” refers both to the airy, ganache filled cookies I love so much, as well as the paper used to roll a cigarette.  It wasn’t boxes of cookies that cops seized in a raid, but paper, filters and cigarette rolling machines.  Now, that sounds more in line with the Turkish addiction I’m familiar with!

That said, I was amazed to discover how many cafes and bakeries in Istanbul DO offer the tiny French delights.  I’d set my heart on doing an Istanbul Macaron Crawl on a recent trip there, and Google Amca (“Uncle Google,” as he is called here) informed me that the district of Bebek is definitely the city’s macaron hot spot, with three different brasseries serving them, all within sight of each other.  I was especially excited that one of them was a Laduree, because I would have the world’s Makaron Ustası (expert) against which to measure all the others.

The Bosphorus sparkled like a sea of sapphires in the unexpected January sunshine as I made my way across to the European Side on the ferry the day of my Istanbul Macaron Crawl.  Perfect outdoor cafe weather.  I’d eaten a hearty breakfast, fortifying my stomach for the sugar-overdose I was about to inflict on it.  (My plan was to bring most of the specimens home to test with my Turkish family, but I had to try some of them at each establishment.  You know, to be able to rate the ambience...)  

Bebek is one of the Bosphorus “villages” that, with time, got eaten up by the metropolis of Istanbul.  Its name means “baby” but it is most definitely a playground for grown-ups.   Pleasure boats bob in the small harbour while women in pricey sunglasses, leggings and boots walk tiny dogs in designer sweaters on the promenade.  Patisseries and cafes line the shore road, their decks extending out onto the Bosphorus for a stunning view.  Bebek is a place to see and be seen.  And to indulge in sweet treats while you’re at it.

I was very disappointed to find this sign where the Laduree should have been:

A street sweeper told me that Laduree had closed down a few months ago.  There went my standard of excellence with which to compare the others.  And the violette cassis macaron I’d been dreaming of since London in November...

The other cafes on my list were Divan (a confectionary chain) and Kitchenette (a chill restaurant that has macarons on the menu.)  But as I strolled the main avenue to get the lay of the land and plot my sugary course, I was delighted to find that a chic looking cafe called Baylan also had macarons in their display window.  I decided to make this my first stop.  

I selected an assortment of flavours to bring home in a box - rose, apricot, strawberry, raspberry, lemon and pistachio - and then got a chocolate and a caramel to have with my latte out on the patio.  The sun on my back, Norah Jones on the radio, the purple-tipped yellow rose on my table and the laughter of the seagulls swooping over the waves let me forgive the cigarette smoke and the nasal Bağdat Caddesi accents of the women around me.  Most seemed to be locals, reading their papers with afternoon tea or checking Facebook on their smart phones and catching up with friends on a day that just begged to be enjoyed outdoors.

My macarons arrived at my table on a cute silver two-tiered truffle tower.  The chocolate one wasn’t nearly chocolate-y enough, and the only flavour that really came through was the almond in the cookie.  (Macarons may be made from almond flour, but if they actually taste like almond, that’s a loss of points in my book.)  Besides that, it was kinda chewy - gummy almost - which might be nice in a chocolate chip cookie, but certainly doesn’t suit a macaron.  The filling in the caramel one had a much stronger flavour which almost overpowered the almond flavour...but not quite.  And this one, rather than being gummy, was a little dry.  So...overall, the view was impressive; the macarons, not so much.  

In Baylan’s favour, though, I have to say that their truffle and chocolate counter looked amazing, the jars of multicoloured Jordan almonds gave the place a candy-shoppe feel, and the street-side seating (complete with stand heaters for when the day feels like, well, January) was definitely stylish, so it still gets point for atmosphere.  

Next up was Divan.  The interior of the brasserie was classy and cute at the same time.  The area around the candy counter was dolled up with macaron trees and a mirror covered with macarons.  Seeing the three-tiered macaron-fringed cake, I asked if they did weddings, and the cashier seemed surprised, saying they didn’t.  But, seriously, how fun would a macaron wedding cake be? 

As all the other dine-in customers seemed to be outside on the balcony, I opted instead to sit at one of the storefront tables.  I watched the world stroll by through a display window still decked out with “New Years” fare - polar bears, snow flakes and baubles, mobiles of frosted cookies, all silver and white.  

I got a bergamot çay - wonderfully fresh - and one raspberry, one Turkish coffee, macaron to try on the spot, with vanilla, chocolate, lemon, mint, caramel and passionfruit to try at home.  The raspberry, while it had a nice, zingy flavour, was disappointingly hollow - so much so that the entire top of the shell came off when I took my first bit, revealing a whole lot of defrauding nothingness inside.  The Turkish coffee one, too, fell far below my expectations, tasting a lot more of almond than frothy coffee.  

I did get some good intel from the waiter at Divan, though.  When I explained my Macaron Crawl, he told me to check out Pelit up the street, that they also sold macarons, “though not as good as ours.”  (That was setting the bar low, but for the sake of thorough research, I would give it a shot.)  He also told me that Laduree was no longer doing business in Turkey period.  I wondered why - so far the local competition had paled in comparison to the original.

Pelit was only a take-out confectionary, so I bought a box of six to try at home, with kavun (melon) and yaban mersini (blueberry) being the only variations from the usual flavours.  

I made my way up the street to my last stop, Kitchenette, wishing that the walk had been a little further to give me a chance to walk the edge off my sugar buzz.  Kitchenette differed from the previous establishments in that it wasn’t a patisserie but a swanky bistro that happens to have macarons on their dessert menu.  Case in point:  when I asked to see their selection, the obliging waiter led me past their patio diners and the pool tables, big screen TVs and laptop-users inside, up a flight of stairs to the completely empty second floor, behind the counter to the pastry fridge where he pulled out a dinner plate containing about fifteen macarons covered in plastic wrap that looked like they’d been sitting there a week.  Still, research is research, so I selected a chocolate and a passionfruit and asked for a çay to go with them.  

I settled in at a low table by the window with brown and blue damask cushions on short stools and enjoyed the jazz on the radio and the Bosphorus across the street.  I smiled when my çay arrived on the same little blue and white saucer that surely every Turkish housewife in the nation has sitting in her cupboard.  (Only in a place like this, they know that people like me will pay two lira and call it “nostalgic.”)  

My macarons were the most well-formed I’d seen all day, with tall “feet” and a good amount of filling.  The passionfruit (orange in colour, with chocolate ganache and some cocoa dusted on top) was a little dry, but the subtle tangy flavour came through slowly and made for a pleasant surprise.  Now it was down to the chocolate:  the last specimen of the day.  I stared at it for a good while, feeling like if I ate even one more macaron it might make for a very unpleasant scene on the ferry home.  When I finally got up the courage to take a bite, I found it to be like a not-too-sweet brownie in taste and texture.  The dull, matte look to the ganache (I’m a sheen-girl myself) was less than appealing, but it was the least almond-y I’d had all day (major bonus points there) and I declared it the best of the bunch.  

The next day, after a prolonged photo session with my colourful little models (watched with amusement by a lady in her window across the street), my Turkish mom and sister and I sat down to rate and rank the selection of macarons I’d brought home.  Now, I have to say, these two were real troopers.  They dove in and took the point system very seriously and gave great commentary that, unfortunately, isn’t as funny translated.  Mom looked like she’d gone into a sugar coma by the end of it, and we all decided it was unwise to consume 16 macarons in one sitting, but we pushed through to the end and finished strong.

I’ll spare you the nitty gritty on each macaron and give you the highlights.

For all of Divan’s fancy mac decor and claims of being the best, none of us were impressed with them overall.  Cinnamon is not a flavour I would have picked for a macaron, but it was surprisingly good.  The mint, on the other hand, was toothpaste-y, the Turkish coffee too almond-y (what is WITH that?) and the vanilla was voted “an unnecessary waste of space in our stomachs” - so much so that between the three of us, we didn’t even bother to finish it. 

I didn’t expect to be a fan of Pelit’s macs (I truly think the sight of plastic wrap over a tray, just like at Kitchenette, made me set my expectations low) but there were several of theirs I really liked.  Had it not been so dry, the coffee one would’ve gotten a nearly perfect score from me.  (Finally someone conquered the almond issue and hit the mark on caffeinated ganache!)  The caramel elicited a “Bu ne be?” (“What in the heck is this supposed to be?”) due to the fact that, had I not written down what I’d bought, we wouldn’t have any clue what flavour it was trying to be.  My sister, who possesses a lifelong disdain for the taste of butter, declared most of them flops due to its prominence in their flavour, but we all gave the melon rave reviews for being original and tasting like “a cookieful of fresh fruit juice.”

I thought Baylan’s macarons needed a lot more filling and wasn’t a fan of the way their too-smooth surface lent an artificial air, but the rest of the jury agreed that “these guys really know what they’re doing.”  I guess they have a higher tolerance for almond flavour than I do.  The lemon had a near-perfect texture - just the right amount of crunch to the shell, with a nice “give” when you bit in, though we all agreed we would have preferred lemon jelly to the light cream filling.  I did forgive the almond faux pas, though, on the apricot, to which we all said, “Mmmmmmm......”  The best kind of winner is the one you don’t see coming, and the real bits of apricot inside knocked our socks off, scoring a 9.5 and two 10s from the judges.  

So....in the end, I’d highly recommend Pelit’s melon and Baylan’s apricot.  I suppose which establishment you consider to be the Bebek Macaron Master depends on whether or not you’re a fan of almond, or butter, or plastic wrap.  And if I were to have to pick a favourite Istanbul macaron, it would actually be a more recently tasted caramel one from Beyaz Fırın in Kadıköy who, unfortunately, have yet to open a location on Bebek’s Macaron Mile.  Maybe they’ll open up shop where the old Laduree was and become the jewel in Bebek’s macaron crown!  

I’ve done a lot of things in my life that are on other people’s bucket lists.  I’ve walked on the Great Wall of China (multiple times), visited the Pyramids, and seen Mt. Ararat up close.  (Though I am not entirely convinced that the “petrified wood” we saw in Noah’s Ark National Park was the real deal....)  

I’ve done some of the things on my own list of  “things to accomplish before I die,” too, like starting my own greeting card company, becoming fluent in another language and, as of last year, eating Swiss chocolate IN Switzerland.  (Those truffles were totally worth the layover...)

Last month, after having been a longtime fan of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy on screen, I finally got around to actually reading Pride and Prejudice.  (If Kathleen Kelly in “You’ve Got Mail” has read it “over two hundred times” then I have a lot of catching up to do!)  Around the same time, I had another first:  my first ever batch of homemade applesauce.  (So delicious!)  And I got to thinking.  There are a lot of “normal” things that “normal” people have usually done, made or experienced that I have yet to do.  

So I declared 2013 my “Year of Doing Normal Things I’ve Never Done.”

I’d never learned how to drive a stick shift, for example.  It all sounded so complicated - too much to think about all at once - and I’d never really had the desire, despite living in a country where nearly every car is a manual.  But when I was going to be staying with my friends’ kids while they were in India, they wanted me to be able to drive their car. (Two kids and their overloaded school backpacks on my scooter wouldn’t be fun in the rain.)  And so I had my first lesson in driving a stick.

Yes, lesson.  As in one.  We couldn’t seem to co-ordinate our schedules as the time of their departure drew near, but since didn’t run over any goats or sheep during that 45 minutes or stall TOO many times, they figured I could handle running the kids to and from school, and off they went.

Needless to say, it’s one thing to do something new when you have someone experienced sitting beside you, and another thing entirely to have a pile of kids aged ten and under staring blankly back at you when you ask, “What am I doing wrong?!?!”  The car and I were not friends for the first while.  It took a huge amount of emotional energy just to get behind the wheel, and once I got so frustrated I actually ended up in tears.  

But I was determined not to be defeated by 5 gears and an extra pedal, and between sweet prayers from the backseat every time we got in the car and another hour of practice with a very encouraging friend, by the end of the two weeks I felt a hundred times more confident behind the wheel.  And while I’m still a million miles from joining the “I’ll-never-go-back-to-an-automatic” club, I do feel like I’ve crossed some kind of threshold that makes me feel like, well, a normal adult.

Several of the things on my list involve basic foods I’ve never made.  Moving to Turkey has turned me into more or less a total “from scratch” cook.  (I’m ashamed to admit I actually used to import Bisquick for pancakes when I first lived in Istanbul!)  I’m definitely adventurous in the kitchen, churning out exotic creations like saffron apricot chicken and cilantro avocado quinoa salad, but there are some “classics” I’ve never attempted at home.

Baking bread, for example.  Except maybe in Grade 8 Home Ec class, I can’t recall ever making it.  That’s on the list for this year.  And roast beef.  My grandma used to make it for my birthday dinners when I was younger, but I can’t say I’ve ever done it myself.  (I’ll be saving that one for sometime when I’m in Canada, though, cuz beef is way too expensive here.)

Two things that aren’t all that “normal” but that I’d been wanting to try were red velvet cake and macarons.  They’re all over the foodie blogs and seemed like things I oughta know how to do.  My Valentine’s Day red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting turned out amazing and, well, addictive.  Won’t be making those again for awhile.  :)  The macarons....they were pretty much a flop.  Granted, they were from a box, and I made them in someone else’s oven.  And I should always re-read directions that are in Turkish, just to be sure.  :)  Still, after having introduced the kids I stayed with to “cookies that taste like clouds” they were excited to make them with me, and, wonky-looking or not, we had no trouble finishing off the whole batch.  

I hadn’t put homemade sushi on my list (I love it - it just hadn’t occurred to me) but when a friend came to stay for the weekend and brought rice wine vinegar and seaweed sheets (all the way from Sweden) as a hostess gift, I was excited to give it a shot.  I’m all about food that involves a lot of tiny pieces and looks amazing when it’s done, and these rolls were definitely yummy.  So, do-it-yourself sushi:  check.

My time as “temporary mom” provided me with a couple of “firsts” I hadn’t expected.  One was my first parent-teacher conference.  (It was fun to receive praise for “the smartest kid in the class” even if she wasn’t mine!)  The other involved a needle and thread.  I may be Suzi Homemaker in most other areas, but sewing is not my forte, nor have I ever desired for it to be.  Apart from making a pot holder and an apron in Junior High, I have probably sewed on a total of three buttons in my whole life.  (We have great tailors everywhere here, and I know they are grateful for my business!)  But when the reindeer fell off my little buddy’s sock, I decided surely I could handle reattaching it.  His reaction was priceless:  “You’re so good at this - I’m going to ask you to fix my stuff all the time!”  It certainly won’t fall off again anytime soon - just don’t look at the stitches on the inside!  :)

I’ve been trying to think of some classic movie that “everyone has seen” that I ought to watch this year, just to round out my list.  “The Godfather?”  Yeah, I could die happy without seeing that one.  “Citizen Kane” is listed as the best movie of all time, and I can’t recall watching it, though I’m sure my mom has it recorded on at least three different tapes.  Movies aren’t a big priority to me, but it seems I ought to have at least one on my “normal things” list, so I guess I’ll add that.  

Perhaps it’s also time I start compiling a list of “Things Most Turks Have Done that I’ve Never Done.”  I’ve memorized that national anthem, visited Atatürk’s grave and gotten pretty good at making stuffed grape leaves....perhaps this should be the year I run from Asia to Europe in the “fun run” part of the Istanbul Intercontinental Marathon!

Thirteen headscarves.  Thirteen pairs of şalvar.  And me.

I crossed and uncrossed my jean-clad legs, self-consciously tucking a piece of uncovered hair behind my ear.  

The teacher entered the library, nearly twenty minutes late.  He passed around an attendance sheet and began his speech with a welcome.  Around the time he switched topics from how wiggly the girls are now that spring is upon us to whether or not the school will allow street clothes instead of uniforms next year, the paper arrived in front of me.

“Name of student.”  I filled in her name.  “Name of guardian.”  My name in the blank space.  “Relationship to student.”  I glanced down the previous entries in the column.  Mother, mother, mother, mother....  I sighed internally.  “Mother’s friend.”

It was my first ever parent-teacher meeting.  Except the child I represented wasn’t mine.    I’d been braiding her hair, washing her ballet costume and tucking in her and her little brother for two weeks, and tomorrow I would be taking off my “temporary-mommy” hat and wistfully replacing it with my usual “favourite abla” (“big sister”) one.

People kept asking me how I was holding up. “Motherhood is a lot of work,” they’d say with a knowing smile.  Yes, my days were fuller than they normally are.  No, I hardly spent a minute on writing or my taxes like I thought I’d do “in all that spare time while they’re at school.”  But the truth was, I loved every minute.

For two weeks I got to be someone I’m not, but long to be.  I got to test drive all the ideas I’ve stored up for my own kids that have sat collecting dust inside my heart for so many years.  I got to be the one posting all those “My kid said the funniest thing” Facebook statuses.  I got to be “that mom” who makes cinnamon rolls with the kids on Sunday morning (and lets them lick the frosting bowl), who takes them hiking up to the caves behind the house and laughs as they conquer rocks and dodge hungry goats, who helps them create their very own Mary Poppins board game (complete with bonus “spoonfuls of sugar” to help your umbrella cross the finish line faster), and who writes lunch box notes on the day when Girl has a big exam that she’s worried about.  

I remember a time a few years ago when I was having coffee with a friend who is a mother of two active boys.  I was telling her how very ready I was to have a family of my own, and she kept having to put me on pause to go chase down her two-year-old.  When she finally got him to sit still, she looked down at her now-cold cup of coffee and then back up at me and said, “Are you sure THIS is the life you want?  It’s exhausting.”  

“I’m sure,” I replied, knowing she’d give anything for an hour of my single-person free time.  “That’s the kind of exhausted I want to be.”

These last two weeks, so many times as I was hanging Scooby Doo footie pajamas on the line, squirting nasal spray into stuffy nostrils at bedtime, or simultaneously French braiding and flipping pancakes, I thought to myself, “This is the life I was created for.” 

I felt like, for thirteen days, I got to live inside of my most cherished dream - one that I’ve longed for from the outside for what seems like an eternity.  I suppose it was really only half the dream, since the other half is the husband that made the children possible in the first place.  But waiting with the other moms at the school gate as I scanned the crowd for “my” little dark heads, carpooling home (amidst encouraging cheers for “not stalling the car even once today”), and sitting on the couch with a head on each shoulder as we watched “My Three Sons” episodes on You Tube, I could pretend that the place that fit me so well was mine, even if only for a little while.

The night of the parent-teacher conference, the power was out for several hours, so we scrounged up all the candles we could find and the kids finished their homework by flickering light.  Papa called from India during the blackout and said that Mama was on the plane and would be home in the morning.  They wrote one last entry in the “Meanwhile, Back in Turkey” journal we’d been keeping and then we settled around the gas heater with gingersnaps and milk for their bedtime story.  I found myself wanting to read “just one more chapter” of Johnny Tremain before tucking them in - partly because we were right in the middle of the Boston Tea Party, but mostly because it was our last night together and I wasn’t ready for my coach to turn into a pumpkin just yet.  

The kids got up extra early the next morning, practically dancing with excitement over the fact that Mama was almost home.  I stuffed away the tinges of sadness threatening the corners of my eyes and focused on getting breakfast on the table and helping them hang their artistically scribbled over “Welcome Home” poster on the front door, along with the special decoder glasses with which to read it.  When I dropped them off at school, they gave me extra big hugs.  “Now we’ll have a new problem,” said Girl.  “We’ve missed Mama so much, but now we’ll be missing YOU!”

I’ve seen them twice now since I put my “abla” hat back on.  They’ve kept me up to date on what’s been happening with Johnny Tremain (“The Revolutionary War has started!”) and My Three Sons (“Katie had TRIPLETS!”).  And yesterday Girl proudly informed me that they got the results back from that exam she’d been so nervous about and she not only got first in her school and the city, but in our entire province!

I know I had it easy with these two well behaved little gems.  And I know that there’s a whole lot more to motherhood than just inventing games and going on picnics and singing lullabies after nightmares.  But I am more convinced than ever that this is the life I want.  And while I’m grateful for all I’ve learned through my extended stay in the tension of the “now” and the “not yet,” my two weeks on the other side of the dream have got me spending more fervent time on my knees, asking the One who “graciously gives us all things” and “opens His hand at the proper time” to hurry up and provide the one who will do French braids and footie pajamas with me.  

And, as Boy and Girl have reminded me, right about the time I’ve got my own little munchkins, they’ll be old enough to babysit.  So when my mommy-glasses are no longer so rose-coloured and I need a break from clothespins and lunch boxes, I’ll know who to call!

When I woke up this morning, I rolled over and found a raccoon staring me in the face.  Behind him, two pairs of coffee-brown eyes blinking back at me, the nearest pair crinkled up til they almost disappeared when their owner smiled his missing-tooth smile.  

“We’ve been quiet for a whole twenty minutes waiting for you to wake up!”

I’m on Day Four of my Twelve Day Crash Course in Motherhood.  My friends needed to make a trip to their home country and didn’t want to pull their kids from school, so I have the extreme privilege of hanging out with a ten-year-old princess, a seven-year-old charmer and a goldfish called Prince Abooboo.  I’ve been looking forward to this time for months as these two have been a great source of entertainment and delight to me since they were itty bitty.  Besides the sheer amusement of their company (Boy does a great impression of an American speaking Turkish with a mock hillbilly accent...) it’s been nice to be able to give my “I can’t wait to be a mom” wiggles some relief, and sobering to get just a glimpse of the grace and supernatural strength required to shepherd little souls.

The raccoon episode came about as a result of a scary tarantula on a Brady Bunch re-run which prompted a request to all sleep in the same bed.  After a good tickle fest and some stories about the “stuffies” I had when I was little (“Tell us the one again about how you put your mom’s hand cream on Snowy and Leo and pretended they were wearing sunscreen to go to the beach...”) Girl went into the living room to work on a sewing project and Boy and I headed to the kitchen to mix up some apple cinnamon muffins for breakfast.  He’s a little baking natural and was a big help measuring out the flour and mixing up the sugar and pekmez (molasses) to make brown sugar.

Since it’s the weekend and the sun was out, we decided a little adventure was in order, so over breakfast, we made plans to head over to a nearby gully to climb around and have a picnic.  The “sinkhole” is massive, with a creek flowing through it that heads underground and appears again several miles away in the form of a waterfall.  Making our way through a rocky field of newly awakened daisies and poppies, we stood on the edge, oohing and aahing over the layers of striped rock of the cliff face opposite us.  We spied out a patch of grass on one of the lower levels and climbed our way down past goats and other picnickers enjoying their lunches to our spot in the shade.

We were sitting there, enjoying our picnic, no greater worry on our minds than whether or not a bug would poop on our sandwiches, when suddenly the peace was shattered by a rock falling from above and landing right beside Girl.  We looked up just as another one sailed down, this one (thankfully small) pelting Boy on the back, followed by the howls and scary noises of a pack of boys up to no good.

I hurriedly helped the kids get their shoes on and hustled them under a nearby overhang, frustrated that all I could do was shout back, “Stop throwing rocks!  Shame on you!”  Our attackers were a good thirty feet above us - too far away to grab them by the ears and march them home to their fathers, but close enough to nail me in the head with a pebble as I gathered up the picnic blanket.  A head peeked over the edge, and then pulled back when he realized I could see him.  What made me more angry than the fact that they were deliberately trying to hurt us was the fact that I recognized them as the same seemingly polite boys we’d talked to just a few minutes earlier when one asked if he could leave his backpack with us while they explored by the creek.  

Grateful for the overhang, the kids and I stayed under cover, hoping the boys would get bored and leave.  The kids were shaken and I felt a welt coming on, but we were safe.  Wanting to prevent fear from taking root in their hearts, I tried to keep things light while we waited.  We prayed - not only for protection, but also for the boys, forgiving them, knowing that they must have been bullied themselves to be so violent at such a young age.  The kids’ compassion towards the boys amazed me, and I was proud of them for how they handled the whole thing.  

We weren’t exactly in the mood to explore the gulley anymore, so when the boys had apparently tired of not having a target at which to throw things at, I made sure the coast was clear and then we climbed up to the top.  The little hooligans were nowhere to be seen, so I gave up on my fantasy of giving them an earful, and we headed home.

All danger and drama were quickly forgotten when the landlord/upstairs neighbour of our apartment had a relative come to till the soil in the garden with his tractor.  The guy put on quite a show for the kids, singing silly songs and lolling his head around, acting as if he’d fallen asleep at the wheel.  I laughed along with them for a bit and then left them downstairs with the neighbour kids to watch the “silly farmer.”  

Not long after I’d come up, Girl appeared at the door with a look of panic on her face and an “Um, I need to talk to you.....”  

She and all her little friends had been standing on the back balcony when she spotted a pair of her cupcake underwear directly in the tractor’s path.  They must have fallen from the clothesline at some point.  She didn’t figure it was safe to jump out and grab them, so she just willed everyone not to notice and then watched in horror as the tractor blades scooped them up and then ground them into the dirt.

We waited until the tractor had rumbled off down the road, sent Boy out front to distract the others and give us some privacy, grabbed some beach shovels and started digging.  We turned over a good pile of soil, giggling the whole time, but alas, never came up with the sought after “buried treasure.”  In the end, we decided the tractor must have made crumbs out of the cupcake underwear and decided to stop digging and just hope it didn’t turn up anywhere embarrassing.  

We’ve been keeping a journal about what we’ve been up to while Mom and Dad are away - stories and pictures so they don’t miss out on anything fun that’s happened.  When Girl sat down to write about the day’s events, I was happy to see that the rock-throwing boys took up very little space compared to her dominant memory - the hilarious “Underground Underwear” episode.

Her closing sentence:  “I sure hope Uncle Ismet doesn’t find a surprise when he goes to plant his eggplant!”  :)

The age-old riddle about why the chicken crossed the road used to puzzle me as a child.  What business did a chicken have near a busy road anyways?  To this city-kid, chickens belonged on my uncle’s farm, in a cage, or on the table surrounded by potatoes and carrots.  

When I moved to rural Turkey, however, my horizons were broadened.  With greenhouses and small farms making up the majority of the neighbourhood, chickens run freely around here.  Seeing a chicken cross the road is no longer a curiosity but a daily occurrence.  I share the street with them on my morning walk, and it’s not unusual to find them poking around the yard of our townhouse.

My nearly six years as a village girl have taught me a thing or two about chickens that I didn’t know before.  For one, they eat garbage.  When paying a visit to the dumpster across the street, I usually toss my trash bag from a few metres away so as to avoid being alarmed by whatever creature might be snacking inside, and it’s fun to guess if it will be a cat or a chicken.  Secondly, they aren’t fans of getting wet.  I learned this after getting a little playful with the garden hose while squeegeeing the balcony.  Thirdly, that whole thing about roosters crowing at dawn?  I think that’s just the time most people are aware of it, due to the lack of other sound at that time of morning.  The ones around here crow at all hours of the day and night with no regard for the position of the sun.  And finally, I’ve learned that if you throw a chicken out a third story window, it will flap its wings (I daresay it will fly) and land safely on its feet.  It’s best not to ask how I know this.  :)

During its eleven years in power, the ruling Justice and Development Party has certainly lived up to the second half of its name, and our neighbourhood’s face has definitely been enhanced as a result.  Recent years have seen improvements such as a sewage system, paved roads, some sit-down bus stops, and a new park on the corner with fancy one-size-fits-all exercise equipment.  And last month, another development:  we got a sidewalk. It’s not on our street, exactly - ours is still a mixture of gravel and asphalt that’s been flattened into something vaguely resembling pavement over the last few years - but on the bigger road that our street connects to.  When we moved here six years ago, that road was just a wide stretch of dirt that turned into one big mud puddle when it rained.  There was one squat apartment building with a bakkal (corner store) on the bottom floor, and another apartment complex down at the end, and in between that, a whole lot of rocks and nothingness.  

When they paved it several years ago, the kids were all thrilled.  Aside from the bus four times an hour, a few cars and the occasional horse-drawn gypsy “recycling carriage” there was hardly any traffic.   It was a perfectly flat open playground in which to play and ride bikes, and they were more likely to have to pause a football game (soccer, for you North Americans) for a passing herd of sheep than anything else.  

The village is being dwarfed by the city Ever year, though, the city has crept closer and closer to the village.  The urban planners must think the current population boom is going to continue, because the sound of construction is our daily background noise, with a new apartment building going up in our neighbourhood almost every month.  We’re keeping our fingers crossed that they don’t change the law that permits buildings on our “block” to be no higher than four stories because it would be a shame to lose our view of the mountains.

Every time I pass a new foundation being laid, I like to prophesy the arrival of Starbucks to our neck of the woods, but so far all we’ve ended up with are apartments, a curtain store, a cracker factory and a furniture store that I’m convinced is really front for some mafia operation, as I’ve only ever seen a total of maybe three customers ever walk through the front door. 

Our lives changed most radically when, after a few months of living here, they built a Gülgen - a big-ish grocery store (think halfway between a 7-11 and a Safeway) - about an eight minute walk down the road from us.  At that time, we didn’t have a car yet, so it meant the difference between having to do a big shop whenever we were in town with vehicle-endowed friends and being able to pop down the street to grab chicken for dinner.  There is a big sale on the sixth of every month, and our neighbours likely wonder if we are hiding ten extra people in the house for the amount of toilet paper and boxed milk that goes from the car into the house that day.  Even after a stock-up trip, we still seem to need to make a run there every couple of days, and as a result of us being such loyal (or is it forgetful?) customers, the cashiers know our names, and vice versa.  

For all the convenience of a big store with good prices, Gülgen’s arrival hasn’t been good for everyone in the neighbourhood.  Of the four bakkals (corner stores that sell essentials like flour, oil, Coke, bread and cigarettes) within walking distance of our house, two of them closed down due to lack of customers after Gülgen opened.  It feels a bit like those made for TV movies where a Wal-Mart arrives in town and the bakery and the Candy Shoppe with an ‘e’ are forced to close their doors because they can’t compete.

Looking ahead to the changes that are sure to come as the city arrives in our “village,” I have mixed emotions.  Sure, I like the fact that there is now an ATM a ten minute walk from my house.  And, yes, I’ll be happy when we get a cafe in which I can sit and sip coffee while I work.  But I also know that the advent of traffic lights and the inevitable McDonald’s will change life here for good.  And in the end, I’d rather keep my dirt road and take the bus into town for my coffee.  I like things the way they are.

What are the chances that I’ll still share the road with goats and sheep on my morning walk or be blessed with a bag of greens from my neighbour’s field as I pass her on my way home?  Will we be able to hear the voice of the eskici (collector of “old things”) and the watermelon seller and the carpet fixer guy above the din of car horns and storefront music?  Will there be room left in the olive grove for the ladies to make fires to bake their flatbread?  And will the chickens be able to learn to look both ways before crossing the road?

If the fact that I saw these chickens using the sidewalk the other day is any indication of their ability to adapt to city life, I’d say they’ll fare just fine.  I only hope I can make the transition as smoothly.

One of my New Year's resolutions was to create myself an official writing space in my room.  A contest on writersdigest.com in which writers described what was on their writing desks gave me incentive to pull mine together in time to submit an entry.  So, here’s what I came up with.

Until recently, I’ve done most of my writing on my bed, laptop on my lap. But I’ve decided I’ll do better at focusing during my designated writing time if I have an “office” to go to – even if it’s only two feet from said bed.  I’m trying to train my brain to know that when I sit down in my “office,” it’s time to churn out artfully arranged words.  I don’t use that desk for anything but creative writing, and I even went as far as buying a new coffee mug to be used solely during writing sessions.

My freshly transformed desk (which, up until last month, had been mostly one more surface on which to pile my piles) is a wooden desk with a bookshelf attached to the top. I’ve fashioned a dry-erase board out of a large glass picture frame and scrapbook paper underneath to separate it into sections for writing down the names of projects I’m working on and blog posts I want to write, as well as freelance pieces I plan to submit. I’ve also written there the quote by W. Somerset Maugham – “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” Beside that is a monthly calendar (clipped up with funky clips that I got on Granville Island this summer) on which to record my daily plan for which pieces I’ll work on and track my word count goals.

There are two little cork board squares stuck to the back wall of the bookshelf on which I’ve pinned pictures representing pieces I am working on – currently, a postcard from the eastern Turkish city of Mardin and a photo of a rainbow of French macarons. My pens (all Staedler fine point blue....that is, until I run out of my stash - my lifelong love of a pen has been discontinued!) and scissors sit in a chopped off Starbucks-Anniversary-Blend-bag-turned-pencil-holder. Beside that, I’ve got a colourful array of Sharpies and dry-erase markers in a mug bearing the signature of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, our national hero and founder of the Turkish republic. (Inspiration towards greatness, I suppose.) Next to that is a framed card from my dear friend Libby featuring a pair of legs in roller skates and striped knee-socks with the Oscar Wilde quote, “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”

I’ve got a stack of notebooks in the corner of my desk – my ideas notebook, the little one I take with me to jot down notes as I travel, and the larger journal in which most rough drafts are born. My laptop – when it’s not on my lap on my bed – also lives on this desk. (And when I’m actually writing, beside it sits some good coffee in my new mug.) The upper bookshelf portion of the desk is filled with writing and photography-related books, my notebooks and journals, past and present, as well as travel paraphernalia I’ve collected from around the globe – a little wooden Kyrgyz yurt, a porcelain soup spoon from China, a cezve (Turkish coffee pot), a tiny Albanian bunker, and various other knick knacks that inspire me as I endeavour to grow as a travel writer.

I am happy to report that, so far, my plan of “carving out time in a specific place” is working nicely.  I really do feel more focused and “in the zone” when I’m at my desk, and having a system for tracking goals and projects is very motivating.  I’d set myself a goal of writing every day, and producing at least 2000 words a week in notes and drafts.  While I didn’t quite hit the “every day” target, my word count goal for January was 9000 words, and I exceeded it by 2,396, which was definitely satisfying.

Here’s to a year of crafting a writing habit that will help me reach my goal of finishing my writing course and being published in a travel magazine in 2013!