Archive for 2008

Long distance romance

Maria (Catalunya) and Fuat (Turkey)

I met Fuat in Germany, in a course of the Goethe Institute, I was coming from Catalunya and he was coming from Turkey. The first week we were in the same class, sitting side by side, but his level of German was higher so the teacher told him she would send him to a higher level. However, he insisted that his level was not that good and that he’d rather stay in the current class in order to be in the same class than me. Well, I didn’t learn this until later, so we were in the same class for a month, afternoons and week-ends we might also coincide as all the students were doing more or less the same kind of activities. The course finished and we bid goodbye.

Internet use was starting to be common in those years so we kept contact through email and ICQ (similar to Messenger). The following year Easter he invited me and another friend I had gone with to Germany to Turkey so we went there for a week, and September the same year he came to Catalunya. And that was the beginning of it, we kept seeing each other at whatever opportunity we had, for business reasons he was travelling couple or more times every year to Europe and I would join him in the weekend whatever city he was going to or he would make a stop over in Barcelona. After 8 years, however, he decided we could not go on like this and we had to make a decision. So after weighting all the possibilities we decided I was moving to Turkey, and after a year of living together and seeing I could live in Turkey we got married.

Thanks very much to Maria for sending this story. If you would like to post your story on My Partner is a Foreigner, please send to info@pocketcultures.com

American recipes for Thanksgiving

Happy thanksgiving to all our American readers! It’s been a week of food posts for Topics of the World, and to finish off here is an American food blog, just in time for Thanksgiving.

Pinch my Salt author Nicole has been preparing for thanksgiving with a series of holiday recipes. Creamy mashed potatoes, curried chicken salad and pumpkin spice cake are just some of the mouth-watering dishes.

Of course there are many more recipes and they all look very good. Nicole got her inspiration to cook from time she spent living in Sicily and the odd Sicilian recipe sneaks in there too.

For the rest us who are not celebrating Thanksgiving but would like to know more about it, History.com explains all about Thanksgiving history and traditions.

Arabic coffee for every occasion

Arabic coffee is strong, dark and sipped from tiny cups. It is drunk in most Arabic countries (although in North Africa tea is also very popular). Whereas in some countries it may be drunk plain and sweet, in Kuwait it is flavoured with cardamom and should never be drunk with sugar.

Each Arabic country has its own rituals concerning coffee and this descriptive article from The Kuwait Times writes about the Kuwaiti traditions of drinking Arabic coffee.

Maybe the most important tradition to know about as a visitor to Kuwait is that finishing your cup and handing it back to your host means that it will always be refilled. To show that you don’t want more you should shake the cup before giving it back. Useful to know if you want to be able to sleep!

Big celebrations in Mexico City

Born in California to Mexican parents, Daniel Hernandez grew up bi-lingual and bi-cultural. He spent several years writing for newspapers such as the LA Times and LA Weekly before moving to Mexico City to work as an independent writer.

His blog Intersections has a focus on current events in Mexico and Mexico City in particular, for example the ‘chaotic’ celebrations for San Judas Tadeo, the preferred saint of ‘lost causes’ among young people.

Hernandez’s last post, on 1st November (day of the dead in Mexico) announced a break from posting until 2009. We look forward to seeing it back in the New Year.

Japan rediscovers healthy food

Traditionally the Japanese diet is rich in foods like rice, fish, vegetables and seaweed and is considered to be one of the more healthy diets of the world. However in recent years this has changed. Nowadays Japanese people eat more meat and fat, like in many other developed nations.

This worries the government and so the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has commissioned a groovy animated video to educate people about the problem.

The worry is not only that the diet of modern day Japanese people is more unhealthy, but also that it has made Japan very dependent on imported food. Currently 60% of the food supply is imported from outside Japan.

As this food comes from only a small number of different countries the government is concerned that in case of problems elsewhere in the world Japan might not be able to get enough to eat.

Going back to a fish-heavy diet may not solve this particular problem, however. Today Japan is the highest net fish importer in the world so increased consumption presumably means more imports.

Yogurt in Turkish cooking: possibly the most versatile ingredient ever

When I wrote to Burcu of Almost Turkish Recipes about this post, she replied saying that a post about yogurt in Turkish culture would have to be very long! Well, here is the short version, but there is further reading for anyone who makes it to the end still wanting more.

Yogurt is thought to originate from Central Asia, the heart of the ancient silk road. It was probably discovered as a way to preserve milk, especially in the furnace-like summers of the Uzbekistan desert. The bacteria in yogurt mean that it can last much longer than fresh milk.

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