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My family and I were raised in
a city and never had an opportunity to even have a small garden. When the
time was right for our family budget, in year 2000, we have decided to
introduce our lives a new excitement. We have bought this little property
which was only 5 minutes away from Ephesus and 15 minutes away from the
harbor of Kusadasi where our home is. There were only 5 little bushes and
2 unfinished houses when we started. There were no water, no electricity,
no fences, and no trees. The whole family and even the neighbors helped
plant close to 1000 trees to get our big garden started. But we were so
excited that we called our 3- acre land, Our FARM. The trees are now 4
years old and they are now joy for our eyes and with their sweet fruits,
pleasure to our tummies.
I, as a mother, was hoping that my daughter Asli and my son Ahmet will
love living at the farm. I was dreaming that they will both get married
and have children. I was also imagining that my grand children will love
to have slumber parties here with their friends who might not have
experienced living on a farm before. Then I thought, “Oh My god, when the
friends of my grand children come to stay, some of the parents might like
to come with their children.". "Oh! We need a big kitchen". At the time
when I was day dreaming, neither one of my children was married. But, I
immediately started working on my big kitchen project.
I did not
want to fill up the farm with lots of buildings; we already had two, so I
dug the ground like a big basement and started building the 1150 sq ft
kitchen.
My children obviously had a different plan. Ahmet and Asli had invited me
to dinner (generally bad news) and kindly told me that they had no
intension of living on a farm, they had no idea if they were going to get
married and planning for children was not up to them either. They were
going to see what their future spouse will think about it. Which meant:
“Mom, find another use for your kitchen."
It did not take me long to come up with plan B.
I thought it will be great fun to use the kitchen to serve food to
our clients who visit Turkey on cruise ships which call at our Kusadasi
port and visit Ephesus. Generally the huge cruise ships bring thousands of
people and small Kusadasi does not have sufficient restaurants to meet the
demand of thousands of people at once, so the visitors either have to
squeeze in to a restaurant with hundreds of others or run back to the ship
for lunch and
miss on
Turkish food. When we invited our clients to our
farm,
they
not only got the taste of home made
Turkish food
but also had
a chance to
meet a Turkish family and made their few hour stop in Turkey a
memorable
and personable experience.The
plan started working well. My mother and I have started cooking end
enjoying every minute of it.
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My Mom who taught me every thing about life and
cookin
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