this month -November 2024

a birthday, visiting friends, joy, feeling grateful and blessed

I would label this particular month as an ongoing celebration on this year’s calendar. Yes, it was my birthday, actually my 57th, and thanks to my husband’s efforts and planning, he turned it into a party that went on almost a fortnight.

It seems regardless of November being my birthday month, it was also a time when many friends made plans to visit us and Thessaloniki. The first week saw my dear Ümit Hamlacıbaşı arrive. Ümit is an anthropologist who conducts sensory walks through Kapalı çarşıi {Grand Bazaar} in Istanbul and in Bozcaada {Tenedos island}. She is also a food researcher. of the traditions of Anatolia especially on the subject of tarhana. She was one of the regular guest lecturers at Cooks Grove specialising on this age old wisdom of tarhana, sharing her vast knowledge and samples she collected over the years and explaining everything on a map of Anatolia.

I lured her to Thessaloniki to look into the Greek varieties of tarhana which is called trahana. Over the course of my stay I figured the idea might be the same but the methods are much different. So we had a wonderful week sampling Greek trahana ending with this delicious new age version of a tarhana/trahana soup with kale and sour cream.

Then my days of celebration started with more friends arriving from both Izmir and London and we celebrated with gusto, laughter, getting dressed and taking selfies, not much cooking, plenty of eating, too much wine and dancing.

The only thing I kept constantly at was the feeding of my sourdough starter which I now feed with a 1:3:5 ratio, which means the conversion of liquid to stiff is complete.

After all the fuss I returned back to my routine for a week, shopping at the farmers’ market, cooking and baking. Martin’s [The Sassafras Curio] Pane Genzano became a constant in the house which we can’t have enough of but I try my hand at other loafs and mainly distributing them to friends and neighbours. We even take our bread with us to restaurants eating one half and offering the other half to the staff there for sampling. So far no problems, we are eating good bread and the restaurants seem okay with it. Maybe because the bread is better than anything they have here in Thessaloniki.

The last weekend of November I was a speaker at TED xReset in Istanbul. This year’s theme was “the choice is yours:start again” and my subject was “own your roots!” I am a confident public speaker but trying to squeeze in 17 minutes was quite a struggle I shoul admit, but the whole experience was overwhelming, thank you for inviting me for this year’s stage.

From Istanbul I drove back with my beloved friend Zehra who was going to do some sculpting in our new flat with her ‘Microlandscapes’ which turned out beautiful! Have a look, don’t you agree?

Have a wonderful December, enjoy life, friends and holidays.

Happy cooking!