Tuesday's Market

Every Tuesday, a road nearby my home is closed to traffic so we can have a market or pazar. As some rain was expected for today, the vendors had canopies over their merchandise. I went to this market to buy fruits and vegetables. They are very fresh and the prices are very good. With an Envirosax in each hand, I purchased a kilo of tomatoes, a kilo of apricots, a kilo of cherries, half a kilo of plums, 3 heads of lettuce, a bunch of dill, half of a kilo of barley and two large loaves of bread. All that food was about $10. I had to take a taxi home, as my arms were not strong enough to carry the bags back to the shuttle bus that brought me down from my home on a hill.

Clothing and housewares are also available at this market. I bought a thin rolling pin - less than an inch in diameter. I will use it to try to roll out some pie crust. The rolling pin is about a foot and a half long and is used to roll out a very thin bread called yufka.

Just about everything can be grown in Turkey. In the north, tea is grown. In the south, oranges and cotton grow. Everything else is in between. The fruit and vegetables are very tastey also. My guess is that they are picked once rippened, as opposed to days before.

I'll spend some time washing all of these goodies. I am using a fruit and vegetable wash, which has some suds in it as the first wash. Then I was the suds off with tap water. Then I wash again in tap water with vinegar to counteract the bacteria that may be in the water. It takes much longer to wash than to purchase or eat.