Mantı

 One of the Turkish foods that our whole family eats well is mantı.  It's like ravioli.  Inside is like a dried meat and you cook it like you would noodles and then eat it with yogurt (or garlic yogurt) and this butter and paprika sauce drizzled on top.  I really love it!  I'd like to try some different variations of it that I know are out there at restaurants but for now it's mostly been the stuff we buy at the store.

Oh, and one fun way I measure the degree to which we've adapted to life in Turkey is our yogurt intake.  Yogurt is a staple here.  It isn't eaten at breakfast with fruit and granola nor is it often eaten plain like we would eat flavored yogurt in America.  It is a plain yogurt (not flavored) and is eaten with food here.  I think the yogurt flavor would be best compared to the flavor of sour cream and if I am using any recipes that call for sour cream, I use yogurt.

So, when we first moved here three years ago we bought the smallest container of yogurt you could buy and it would often spoil before we finished it.  Now, three years later we eat one of these a week (it's like 2 kilos/4.4 lbs.)!  Big difference but still not the biggest you can buy! We eat it with mantı, on top of pasta, rice, with any eggplant dish, stuffed peppers (called dolma) and also in some baking recipes.  And that is with only three out of four from our family eating it.  Malachi hates yogurt!  But we do live in Turkey so he is coping and I suppose that one day he'll change his mind.