Making Lunch, Goreme

This morning I went to a local woman's place to cook with her in her kitchen. On the menu: stuffed peppers, dolma and a dessert called aside, which is made from molasses, oil and flour. And of course you eat every main meal with bread and yoghurt.

My translator's name was Jihad. I am not kidding.

This grandma was really lovely and I think I managed to mind my manners well, walking the difficult line between eating seconds, but not too much, and praising everything. She made a lot of the ingredients herself including drying vine leaves, making capsicum paste, tomato sauce, molasses, and dried herbs, and it all tasted beautiful. At the end of the feast we took Turkish coffee and they told me when a man wants to propose he comes to the house of the woman to talk to her family, and the woman makes coffee. To tease the suitor she puts salt in his coffee to give him a surprise, and he has to still drink the coffee as though it is fine. Pranksters.