One more day 'til Harry Potter (and Grandparents)

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Geo: 37.0391, 27.4302

As you may have had a hint from the blog yesterday, we needed to shake things up a bit yesterday to combat Bean Ennui. After swimming around down at the beach for a while, I shipped them off to an are that has sand to build some castles and whatnot, which they haven't done for a while. After that we made our way over to a restaurant for a dinner out at the beach. The kids each ordered a burger and I ordered Gözleme, the textbook definition describes it as "a savory Turkish pastry made by rolling dough with a thin roller and repeatedly folding it. It is filled, and browned in a pan." I've seen pictures of ladies rolling out the dough and they use a big round table to do it. It can be filled with all manner of things. Mine had some meat, some potatoes, some onions and some greens in it. Honestly, it was reminiscent of a White Castle burger in flavor, but much tastier and probably a tad healthier--not greasy at all. All of the kids tried it and gave it a thumbs up, so add another item to the "Things we love in Turkey" list. I have to guess that the woman who made it was a real pro, so you might not want to trust your Gözleme to just anyone. This might have been a mistake though because now the siren's song will be calling me when we are at the beach. Luckily, Gözleme is about $2.75, certainly very reasonable.

After we finished, I went over to thank the cook and dazzle her with my newly acquired phrase: "Thank you very much, the food was delicious." I already knew the first part, actually, but she seemed mildly impressed and complimented me on my Turkish. The kids have learned this phrase too (a 1 Mento bribe was all it took), but they haven't had a chance to use it yet. I found this page that does a nice job, I think with running over the basics of Turkish cuisine and has pictures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_cuisine. The woman rolling out dough about halfway down is making dough for Gözleme.

We scampered home for movie night. It took two days to download Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy on iTunes, but we got it up and running and I made popcorn. My laptop speaker is kind of quiet so the kids had to stay very quiet to hear the movie--bonus! Today I need to get down to the market earlier so we have a better selection of bread. Yesterday I showed up at lunch time and they place was practically cleaned out. Early bird and all that...

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Photos

Someone is spearfishing
We haven't seen a whole lot of fish big enough to warrant spearing, but there are some sea bass (Levrek) and some other critters. Kate found a very cool shell yesterday.

Scuba Josh
Since Kate found a very cool shell yesterday, Josh had to suit up today.

Playing the Turkish game they learned
All the little beach cafes have games to play while you hang out. We like it!

Banana tree!
Who knew? I wonder if pomegranites will come into season before we leave.