Keziban Hanm's Household.
{gl: 'extraneous to other notes - our first Turkish household where we were guests' in Ankara on first arrival}
Very simple diet. Meat only occurs once or twice in the week unless we ourselves buy it. Fish never. No store cupboard. She has a few bags containing rice,
flour, chick peas, vermicelli, pearl barley, etc. but nothing else in the way of stock. Once a week she goes to the market at Maltepe} where she buys a lot of
cheap vegetables, mainly lettuces, spring onions, 'bezeliye', egg-plant, and a little fruit, which she makes last for most of the week. When she prepares them,
she cooks a lot at once, allows them to get cold, then she and {her school boy son}have these for successive meals over about 3 or 4 days. All vegetables are
of course cooked in oil, and more oil poured over them when cold.
She occasionally buys 'brek' pastry and makes 'brek', with egg, cheese or spinach filling. Again she makes quantities, far more than can be eaten at once, and
they live on them until finished up even though this sort of pastry gets very heavy and stale after the first day. She never, while we were staying there, made
any cakes or biscuits nor any of the Turkish 'tatl' which abound in shops or restaurants. The only puddings she made were 'stl' (rice) and 'mahallebi' (ground
rice) which appeared daily (one or other of them) with monotonous regularity. They were always made very sweet and served cold. Again, a lot was made, so that
it lasted for several meals. The lack of variety in the diet may have been due in part to the absence of any oven for cooking. She had only a unit of 3 gas
rings, so that everything was boiled or fried. Once she bought a small boiling chicken at the market, and boiled it for several hours in the kitchen on an open
brazier burning coke. The smell from it was terrible, and after some t
Keziban always seemed to me an example of the older Turkish lady who has never properly adjusted herself to living a city life in the era of greater
emancipation. Her days were very empty. Her husband dead, her elder son and daughter in England, she often seemed a very lonely figure. Housework in the flat
took her very little time. She never tackled washing or ironing, and spent very little time in the kitchen owing to not doing any baking. When washing day came
along, for which an old servant was brought in, she would be busy first unpicking the dirty 'araf', then stitching the clean one onto the 'yorgan' - a
laborious process which she insisted on carrying out religiously, even though we said we would prefer to sleep with the sheet loose. Apart from this I seldom
saw her doing any handwork. Sometimes she took up some knitting - a pullover for her son - and once she got out her sewing machine. A lot of her day was spent
in talking with her neighbours, visiting her female friends, and being visited. She woul
k<our first hostess, middle class lady's life, Ankara home, education, diet, immigrant to Ankara>
NA
-----