Memnun Oldum (Nice to meet you)

I have met so many wonderful people here in Turkey! From only being here for 15 days I can already tell that hospitality is a major part of the Turkish culture. I have some Turkish friends that offer to pay for me whenever we go out to eat. This shocked me at the beginning and I protested. However, they told me that they view me as a guest in their country and paying for me is part of being a good host. I knew that I was not going to win that argument and so I let them pay for my dinner. I really enjoy spending time with my Turkish friends and I wanted to repay them for the meals and showing me around the city of Ankara. Because they would not let me pay for them if we went out to eat I decided that I would make them dinner.

There is a small grocery store on campus called Şok that has some food and other personal amenities which is where I got my brilliant idea. I would make them spaghetti! That should be easy enough. I just needed noodles, pasta sauce, and stuff to make garlic bread. Wrong. The spaghetti noodles were easy enough to find. However, there was no pasta sauce only tomato paste. So I got some olive oil and oregano to spice the paste up a bit. It still tasted pretty bitter so I added sugar and some salt and pepper. It was not the same as Prego but it turned out fine. Also, when I decided to make garlic bread I thought I could use butter and garlic power. We finally found the butter but we couldn’t tell right away which container the butter and which was the cheese. We figured it out when we found the word for fat (yağlı) on the side of all the butter containers. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to buy it after that but I still did. Also, there was no garlic powder only real garlic. I guess I never realized how strong real garlic is but even though the toasted butter, garlic, and oregano bread tasted amazing my breath stunk for a few days after the party.

I made the food at my friend’s apartment. She has a small yellow lab type dog named rűzgar which means wind. That name suits him well because he is crazy like the wind. It was very funny because two of my other friends who had dinner with us are mildly afraid of dogs. One of my Turkish friends told me that he thinks dogs are not clean and only touched one once before in his life. I was shocked. I could not believe that a person could go their whole life and never pet a friendly dog. He tried to avoid rűzgar at all costs but it was very funny when rűzgar tried to get his attention and jumped up on him. The party was a huge success and I was so happy I got the chance to cook for them.