Picnics...Turkish style!

Yesterday morning we went on a picnic with some friends. I've mentioned before that a Turkish picnic isn't anything like a picnic in America. In America IF we make our own picnic food we do it all at home and bring it prepared...well, all but whatever we might be grilling. Any potato salad, baked beans, or whatever else we might be having with our meal is ready to eat when we are ready to eat. And oftentimes we run through a drive-thru on our way to our picnic spot so we don't have to fix anything at all. In Turkey things are done a little differently. They bring quite a bit of the food to the picnic site and fix it there. Our hosts, who provided all the food, hadn't ever done a picnic before. The wife is Turkish, and the husband is Australian. They have lived most of their married life in Australia so this was a new experience for them. They said that this was the "test picnic" to see if it worked well. They brought bags of stuff with them to the park! They had fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots for a salad. There was steak, hamburgers, and chicken to grill. Tea to brew, mixed nuts to snack on, and prepackaged Turkish delight rounded out the meal. Most other Turkish picnics have several other food items on the menu, but since this was a first time picnic for our friends they went for quantity of the few items they had! The also brought styrofoam plates and throw away cups and flatware which is not Turkish at all!

The kids enjoyed their meal.

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This is a small wood/coal burning tea maker. The bottom acts like a wood-burning stove...you can see the little door open in the bottom picture. The top part is filled with water, and the tea pot is put on the little burner on the side of the top. I think that small pieces of charcoal may have been used on the top burner as well.

Watching the food preparation

Brian and Nicole

I was happy to help cut the vegetables for the salad, but I must admit that I was thinking that a cutting board on my kitchen counter would have been much easier!

This is a picture of the Turkish Delight we were served. It was fig flavored with different toppings. It actually tasted ok...like the middle of a fig newton...but not as sweet.