Civilization and its cuisine has absorbed influences from many places such as China, Persia, and Africa. When eating a Turkish meal you are often reminded of Greek or Middle Eastern dishes...for example, grilled lamb skewers, thick and creamy yogurt, and flatbreads.

Turkey is an agricultural country, rich in produce. Street vendors sell chunks of cucumber and old pick-up trucks rattling past you on the country roads are heaped with deeply-ridged summer squashes or tiny, sour, green plums. The markets are overflowing with vegetables of all kinds; a variety of peppers, green beans, olives, shiny purple eggplants (there are so many delicious eggplant dishes, the Turks must be addicted to this vegetable), small yellow melons, intensely flavorful pistachios, dried apricots, ground spices in colors of green, gold, red and brown heaped into burlap bags and much, much more.

This vegetable abundance is most fully encountered on the mezze table - my very favorite part of Turkish cuisine. Here's a delightful idea about mezze that I read in "Timeless Tastes", a gorgeous book I purchased in Istanbul: mezze was invented as a nutritious counterpoint to drinking large quantities of raki, the anise-flavored national alcoholic drink. Although I limited my raki intake, I loved this part of the meal. Typical mezze include eggplant purees, stuffed vegetables of all types (eggplant, squash, tomatoes, and peppers stuffed with rice mixtures or meat mixtures), stuffed vine leaves, marinated vegetables, white beans, cucumber and tomato salads, garlicky yogurts, green and black olives, bulghur seasoned with red chile and tomato, meltingly tender green beans, cold blanched spinach dressed with olive oil - the list goes on and on.

Some other impressions, sights, and tastes: honeycombs stacked up in the market for sale, in many slightly varying shades of honey-colored brown and gold….wild roses, rosewater, and rosepetal jam…. young boys with trays of simit (ring shaped sesame studded breads) balanced on their heads….many-layered "cheese pies" with flaky outer leaves of pastry and soft pasta-like interiors….impeccably tidy candy stores selling lokum (or Turkish delight - a confection made with cornstarch, syrup and pistachios) and huge slabs of halvah (a ground sesame confection)…..

I had a terrific trip and I hope to return soon. I want to spend more time in the exciting, clamorous city of Istanbul and I need to check out all the intriguing fish restaurants that we only had time to pass by. The Turkish people are warm and hospitable (and many speak English) and the countryside is beautiful. One of my favorite memories is of walking around Greco-Roman ruins on the Southern Mediterranean coast ... blue sky, hot sun, marble columns, wild oregano, and goats scrambling over chunks of stone and marble.