the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

Bayram is a word for "national holiday," or so Wiki tells me, which makes sense because there is more than one in the course of a year. This one is the Ramazan Bayramı, the end of Ramadan (or Ramazan, as it is called in Turkey).

For those who don't know, Ramazan is the holy month of fasting for Muslims. From dawn to dusk, they cannot eat or drink--even water. After dark, they can eat but still must abstain from alcohol. I think the more dedicated of them will also refrain from tobacco during the daylight hours, as well.

Ramazan is the ninth month of the Muslim calendar, which follows the cycles of the moon and thus shifts (backward) on the usual western calendar about 10 days every year. This year, it hit during a very hot summer period with very long days, and it'll get worse in the next few years before it gets better. Faithful Muslims will offer more prayers than usual during this month, which means, what? 10 a day instead of 5?

So anyhow. About noon tomorrow, my world will shut down for a week. This holiday is usually only three days, but since it's Tuesday through Thursday this week and only a half-day Monday, the government gave everybody the entire week off. If you do the math, that comes to an inpromptu 9-day holiday for Turks.

Can you imagine the western world doing that? Me neither.

During this holiday, the people gobble sweets. Can you imagine the western world not doing that? Me neither.

Apparently, if I want to get into the spirit of the thing, I should stock up on chocolates or Turkish delight, a treat that is the gummy bear equivalent of shoveling pure sugar into your mouth. The Turkish kids will come by in their best clothes with little bags and say, "Bayramınız kutlu olsun," which means "May your Bayram be blessed!" and I'm supposed to give them treats. It's an expensive, well-dressed trick-or-treating in broad daylight. I'll probably just hide in my apartment, as that is my traditional response to Halloween in the States. I might need to look into a way to temporarily disable the doorbell, though.

Adults come around, too, I'm told, and share pastries with each other and such. That's right: this is their "gain 5 kilos" holiday.

So this will be an interesting time, during which no one but I will be at work in Turkey. I'm slated to be duty officer.

Nice, huh? Yeah. I'm hoping they'll do it on an on-call basis, since everywhere that even hints at work will be deserted while everyone porks pigs eats a lot. Besides, I can't take my Kindle to work (I work in a controlled area, natch), and there's only so much one person can pick her nose each day, and I've usually hit my quota before noon.

A propos of nothing, I've cooked lately. It turns out I still can. Seriously...you lose your touch when you go too long not handling knives and seasonings. You're prone to get all excited and carried away, stabbing the meat repeatedly with a frenzied jerking motion instead of slicing it cleanly.

What I did to keep myself from dumping all the garlic and red pepper in the house into the pot, first time out, is that I actually measured. The gramma measure, of course. You know...dump into my palm, put some back, then toss what I imagine is not quite enough into the pot and force myself to accept it.* The cabbage--I love cabbage--was fabulous.

* Turkish has an expression similar to ours that describes this phenomenon, which most people experience over Thanksgiving dinner: karnı doyar gözü doymaz. Directly translated: "Belly of the rapacious heart." We say "your eyes are bigger than your stomach."

I'd give you the recipe but there was nothing terribly interesting about it. I didn't slice through a thumbnail or toss cumin or chili powder into the dish (although...hmmm). It was the usual cabbage with kielbasa in chicken broth with garlic, red pepper, black pepper, and a bit of seasoned salt.

Today's experiment wasn't as successful. I had some tomatoes, see.

OK. I love tomatoes. I have a lifelong addiction that surpasses my love of wine. I'm not kidding. Where I grew up, we grew our own, and we did it right. We used real fertilizer, had the perfect climate (hot and rainy) and ended up with just tons of organic tomatoes. One of my favorite things to do is slice up a plateful then douse them with salt--tomatoes are a salt delivery system for me, you should know now--and eat them raw. Until I was full as a tick that hit an artery.

I will walk past a good bottle of wine for a plateful of fresh organic tomatoes. In the spirit of true hedonism, I'd have them together, but given the choice....

So a couple of days ago, I cycled to the kemeraltı and bought some veggies. I couldn't reach the tomatoes from my bike, and I had nowhere to leave it, so I asked for two kilos of tomatoes. The guy loaded me up. I paid him his 2TL (that's roughly $1.15 for 4 pounds). Some of them were good, but some were a little too ripe for my taste, which'll teach me to let someone else select my tomatoes. Today, I decided to use what was left in some creative way, so I tried these garlic-roasted tomatoes. The picture on that recipe, by the way, is "before"--not "after."

What happens to tomatoes sliced in half, doused with butter and garlic, and cooked at 400F for about 30 minutes? Well, if you can get past the texture, they taste amazing.

Somehow, I knew in advance the texture would be a problem, but I went through with it in a flash of boredom coupled with a rare exercise in positive thinking. What emerged had the texture of snot. I guess that was a wasted 4TL. And it didn't teach me much about positive thinking.

Also, I'm sure I now reek of garlic, so it might be unwise to leave the house. (I seriously considered going biking this morning, but I only know one place where there is a good bike path, but the horseflies think I'm a horse.)

Enough for now. Y'all be good.

d