Food is always one of the most interesting things about traveling. We always want to know what the food was like. In Turkey we had some amazing food! Sadly though, a lot of the time we ate the same things. We had a tight budget and most of the time we had to eat out, so we did the equivalent of Turkish fast food. It was good but it made the times when we got to eat at fancy places or in a home extra special.
   Most days we ate the hotel's breakfast which was good and pretty traditional. We would have Turkish tea, or instant coffee to drink, a selection of cheeses, olives, tomatoes,cucumber, boiled eggs, honey, and rose flavored jelly's to pick from. At the table there would be a basket of bread and that was breakfast at every hotel. Lunch was almost always the same thing which was donars which are sandwiches or you could get them as a wrap. They were either chicken or lamb, but lamb was more expensive. They came with veggies and a sauce and sometimes they would have french fries in them. We found that every city would make them slightly differently. Dinner was always the most interesting meal since it was the only one that really changed. Sometimes we would get another donar but other times we would go to a grocery store and eat snack food, or maybe get a lahmacun or some soup.
   To get a donar we went to a little shop like this one. This is how they cook the meat and it is really good. After cutting it hot off the large chunk they would put it on the bread and add the veggies. It was quick, easy, and cheap.

 

Kiwi tea and donars. 

     Another thing we ate a lot was what we called Turkish pizza; it was not much like American pizza. They called it lahmacun. It is a flat peace of dough that is backed with a meat and tomato mixture spread over it. They serve them right out of the oven with lemon to squeeze on them and some cabbage and tomatoes to eat with them.

         I loved the Turkish coffee although it was expensive I only had it as a treat.

  Tea was very common and we drank a lot of it. Everywhere we went and every morning we would be served Turkish tea. We would be given a cup if we hung out around a shop or in a carpet store. We often drank around 5 cups a day. There was also a large selection of teas in flavors I had not seen before.  This is orange tea. At this same cafe we could also get apple, banana, strawberry, or kiwi flavored tea.

  This is a good meal. It is lamb, fries, yogurt, veggies, bread and usually a dessert. I only got it a couple of times because it was expensive to get on my own. I would have to get someone else to pool their money with mine and share. It was enough food for two girls but a guy could eat it all.

                                                            Eating at a cheap restaurant

                    This is pide or simply bread with either meat on top or cheese inside it.

    We would pass many street vendors during the day and would sometimes buy the cheap bread or others things they were selling. This man is selling bread but there were many different foods available like hot corn, roasted chestnuts, and clams.

    This is Abraham bread they said they make it the same way they did in the bible with the recipe passed down through the generation. It was really good.

 
   This is a baked clam, put back in its shell with flavored rice. We bought them from a street vendor outside a market. They were really good.

      In Istanbul we found a cafe right by our hotel that had decent food for a good price. Several of us started eating there at least once a day and in return for our loyalty they started bringing us a plate of koft every time before we had even ordered. At first I really didn't like it but we ate it to be polite and pretty soon most of us started to actually enjoy it. I am still not quite sure what is in it but some claim it has raw meat.

     We served bread before the meal as well and it was really good. Often we would combine the bread and Koft and eat them together.


    There was lots of interesting desserts to try. I loved baklava and we tried it in every city we stayed in. There was also lots of Turkish delight and different pastries. A lot of the sweets looked very different and we did not try them but it was still fun to look.

                                                                 Turkish delight

                                             

    We were told that when we were in the bazaars we should look for something called love tea. We only found it once here in this spice bazaar. It is the one with the heart on its tag. This was one of our favorite bazaars and it was filled with bright colored spices, teas, and other loose foods like dates, figs ect.

    I really enjoyed all the food I did get to try and I did get to try many things that I did not get pictures of. Two of the places we stayed had kitchens we could use and we enjoyed trying to cook with the many new ingredients. I got invited into a Turkish house so I did get to try a traditional Turkish meal too, which was a very good experience.