Detour to Turkish Home Cooking

The first time I went to Turkey, I flew there, by myself, to meet Mel, who was at her mom’s house in a small town by the beach near Bodrum. What hit me immediately was the heat, the humidity, and how disoriented I felt after nearly twenty hours of travel. (From New York, where I was living at the time, it was a flight to Istanbul, then Istanbul to Bodrum, then a two-hour drive from there.) Whatever ideas about Turkey I had in my head, it was nothing like what I’d imagined. I realized that I had a lot to learn.