Eating by Season

We're back!  After a few weeks back in the UK to pack up our belongings, we are back and have moved into our new home.  A lovely 4 bed apartment close to my Big Brother's new school.  Its got an indoor and outdoor pool, gym, playpark and a lovely community of expats.  We are going to be happy here, that is, once our furniture arrives.

After a 2 week absence we noticed a definite change to the season when we arrived back.  We were in real summer now.  It was hot and the city was much quieter.  Everyone, it seems has gone on holiday.  And most interestingly was the change in food.  Where were the lovely juicy cherries on the fruit stalls?  How come there were no more strawberries to be found?  Or Apricots?

On our first morning out Mummy needed fruit.  We stopped at the little man with a cart on a side road just along from our apartment.  This man would come to be known as The Visne Man.  Feeling a little alien again after getting comfortable with our previous local supermarket and what to buy there, Mummy was happy when she found Cherries.  We'll take a small amount of the Kiraz, she told the Visne Man.  He shook his head and, in broken English mixed with Turkish, he told us "Not cherries, dead. Visne" and made squashing movements with his hands.  Mummy was rather flustered by now, in the heat and my brother going on and on that she said ok.  In the panic we walked away with a kilo of Visne costing us 8TL.  Back home and into the apartment, Mummy clicked the laptop on and googled "Visne".

Turns out Visne stands for "sour cherry" in Turkish (and in a few other languages). Although being similar to cherries, visnes have slightly smaller leaves and the branches of a visne tree are more spread apart. Ripe visnes are quite juicy and are close to deep red in color. Since it is quite diffucult to find visne throughout the year, visnes are often consumed as fruit juice, jam, marmalade, compotes and in cakes and desserts.

So here Mummy was with a kilo of visnes and a kitchen full of empty drawers (all our stuff being on the ship remember).  We sampled a few of them as a compot and now, a few weeks later they have all but disappeared from the fruit stalls.

In the few weeks we've been back all of a sudden there is a much bigger selection of fruit and veg available.  Stalls are packed with huge apples, enormous peaches (4 make up a kilo), figs, walnuts, plums and yes, Mummy even secured broccoli and leeks the other day.

Fresh juicy peaches!

When we first moved to Istanbul, Mummy was annoyed that she couldn't get the fruit and veg she wanted but now is learning to be patient and make use of what is ready, available, fresh and most importantly not likely to have been "brought on" or "artificial."

Annabelle enjoying a plum (she is small but that plum is also rather huge!)

She's bought huge tubs for our big freezer and has filled them with blanched brocoli, cooked plums and peaches, and punnets of blueberries.  We've never tried Figs but this weekend, too tempted by these velvety purple fruits, we are going to have them baked with honey and yogurt. Afiyet Olsun!