For some reason, my font is stuck on bold, so I feel as though I am shouting adamantly everytime I type something.

A grey and heavy day, with cold mist hitting my face when walking and cold wind hitting my exposed skin.  I am stupidly tired from a multi-layered early morning wakeup call from Tex (formerly known as Lola). Full of strong tea and a ton of unexpected sugar from the unexpected bowl of aure brought up by one of the baby faced waiters from downstairs. All the teachers lingering around the fourth floor were presented with a foil bowl of the pudding, sprinkled with fresh ruby red pomegranate seeds, served with a clear plastic spoon for digging up the unexpected.

Asure (Wheat Pudding)

Ingredients                                     Measure               Amount
Dövme (dehusked wheat for asure)  1 cup                  180 grams
Chickpeas                                      1/3 cup                 60 grams
Dry white beans                             1/3 cup                 60 grams
Rice                                           2 tablespoons           15 grams
Water                                           12 ‡ cups              2.5 kg
Dried apricots                                   10                     60 grams
Dried figs                                          5                       125 grams
Raisins (seedless)                           ‡ cup                   50 grams
Orange                                       1 small size              120 grams
Sugar                                           1 2/3 cups              300 grams
Rose water                                 2 tablespoons           20 grams
Walnuts (not crushed)                     2/3 cup                 65 grams
Pomegranate                               ‡ small size              50 grams
Servings: 10

Preparation :
Wash the wheat, chickpeas and dried beans. Soak them separately overnight with beans and chickpeas in 1 cup and the dövme and rice mixture in 2 cups of water. Add 3 cups of water to dövme and 2 cups of water each to chickpeas and beans and place them individually on the burner. Cook the dövme until the grains are dissolved and the starc comes out. If necessary boil the chickpeas in pressure cooker. Wash the dry fruit and soak them for 2 hours in 1 ‡ cups of water. Mix the cooked ingredients and the dry fruit in a pan and cook for 15 minutes. Peel the orange and cut the rid, including the white inner part into 3-4 cm long and 1 cm wide strips. Divide the orange slices into 4-5 pieces. Add them alltogether to the mixture and cook for another 5 minutes. Add the sugar and cook for 1-2 minutes and turn off the heath. Add the rosewater and stir. Pour into dessert cups. Garnish with walnuts and pomegranate pits.

Nutritional Value (in approximately one serving):
Energy 634 cal, Protein 15.0 g, Fat 8.9 g, Carbohydrates 133.2 g, Calcium 150 mg, Iron 5.53 mg, Phosphorus 318 mg, Zinc 3 mg, Sodium 21 mg, Vitamin A 1164 iu, Thiamine 0.45 mg, Riboflavin 0.10 mg, Niacin 3.35 mg, Vitamin C 5 mg, Cholesterol 0

Notes:
It is one of the oldest and most traditional desserts of the Turkish cuisine. The month following the Feast of Sacrifice (Kurban Bayrami) is known as the Asure month. Plenty of asure is cooked in every household during it which is both served to the guests and distributed to the neighbors and relatives. The legend regarding the origins of asure goes as follows : “When the Flood finally subsided and the Noah’s Arc settled on Mount Ararat in Agri, those on the vessel wanted to hold a celebration as an expression of the gratitute they felt towards the God. But alas, the food storages of the ship were practically empty and so they made a soup with all the remaining ingredients they could find and thus ended up with the asure”. Following the legend, asure is today prepared by cooking together 15 or more ingredients. In some regions a piece of the sacrificial meat is saved and added to the pot while asure is being cooked. Rice can also be substituted for wheat or it can be used in combination with it. The pudding can be enriched with almonds, hazelnuts and currants. In addition to dried white beans and chickpeas, dried broad beans and dried black-eyed beans can also be added. In some regions molasses replaces sugar. To the later version, which is known in the Corum region as “Pekmezli Hedik”, anise is added in Gaziantep. In other regions raisin gum is added. If a pressure cooker is to be used, the chick peas, beans and the wheat can be cooked together. In normal, non-pressure pots the cooking time can vary between 1 – 2 hours depending on the type and quality of the ingredients used. Due to the difference in cooking times and ways of the ingredients, cooking them separately would be more appropriate

It was very sweet and I am still picking mulberry bits out of my teeth.  Pomegranate always makes me happy though, so all is well.
The weekend is almost here and I need it. My lethargy is like a blanket.

My Mac’s power cord is having some  commitment issues, fickly refusing for long stretches of time to actually recharge or to act as, well, a power cord ought to. So I may or may not have access to it at home this week. D. is going off in search of an Apple store tomorrow, mythically located somewhere in Mecidiyeköy, on the road to Cevahir. The Apple guys in Kanyon told me it’d cost 210ytl to replace (1usd=1.16ytl) but they didn’t have any in stock anyway so it didn’t matter how grossly overpriced it was.

I really hope the current wavering charge holds out until we can replace it. This really sucks.

The physical world hates me this week.

 Luckily the past few days have been mild and springlike. When Shoddy Turkish Wiring finally revealed its true self and set our next door building ablaze last night at 2am and filled our flat and general neighbourhood with acrid, toxic smoke, we were able to open the balcony door and hall and living room windows to clear the thick fog that seeped in under the front door and through the open hall vent. The stairwell was opaque and our shouty upstairs neighbours stomped up and down the stairs in a muddle of confusion. Our building was fine, untouched, unsinged, but we threw Lola into her carrier anyway and headed out, just in case.  We were shooed back up after barely a moment at our front door by one neighbour who came bounding up, insisting that all was grand, nothing to see here, thank you. Just an electrical fire in the workshop over there, the one that leaves huge bags full of cloth scraps out on the sidewalk every evening to be picked at and kindly recycled by the local Roma ragpickers. 

The lone fire engine eventually, delicately pulled away, guided down the narrow street (technically we are an alley) by the man who runs the restaurant across the street, barely scraping past the parked cars. Lola shook in her metaphorical cat-boots for quite a while after walking out of her catbox into the still murky hallway. We were too wired to sleep so we stayed up, comforting her and trying to detoxify our heads and stinging eyes. The balcony door stood open to the mild night. Clean air eased its way in. At some point I slept.

It’s a beautiful day today.

For those who have lost theirs.