My husband has been complaining about his eyes for a few days. He has to look at computer screen for long hours for work and most probably radiation is the cause of his eye pain. I read an article on reducing the effects of radiation spreading from computers yesterday. It advises those using computer for long hours to eat banana. It says that the potassium in banana is a great remedy for eye disorders. I told him about this magic of banana and we decided to eat banana more often. We love juicy fruits more and we find banana a bit dry, that’s why we either put it in cakes or mix it with milk and honey, which is not often enough. However, we changed our mind after this article and thought on different ways of using banana. As it’s summer here, can you think of a better way of eating banana than a yummy cold banana split?

We didn’t want to use whipped cream not to make it heavy. And you see there is little nigella sativa on it. It was a bright idea of my husband. He wanted to make it healthier by adding this miraculous spice. We’ve learnt that it has numerous benefits to our body as it is antioxidant and anticancer and as we love its bitter flavor, we use it in small amounts in several dishes. You can find more information about nigella sativa here.

As we were talking about these, I learnt that Foodbuzz is sponsoring a posting challenge and Top 9 takeover (The theme is Banana Split) to help raise money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. So I thought we shouldn’t wait any longer to make this awesome summer dessert. We will be so happy to be involved in such a great cause. If you also want to feel part of it, visit http://www.kelly-confidential.com/foodbuzz and create your own banana split to help Electrolux and Kelly Ripa raise money for this cause.

Dondurmalı Muz
Ingredients
-    1 banana
-    3 scoops vanilla ice cream
-    1 tbsp honey
-    1 tbsp caramel sauce
-    1 tsp pistachio
-    1 tsp crumbled hazelnut
-    ½ tsp nigella sativa
-    3 sour cherries (We took cherries from the cherry jam we made a while ago)
Place ice cream scoops next to each other in an oval dish.
Peel the banana and cut it lengthwise. Put each half on each side of ice cream line.
Drizzle honey and caramel sauce over ice cream and banana slices.
Top each scoop first with pistachio then with cherries.
Finally sprinkle crumbled nuts and nigella sativa randomly.
You can wait it in freezer for 3 minutes before serving if you want your bananas as cold as ice cream.
Mom II wanted to contribute to this post with a drawing. Look at this cool artist with his pipe! And who can show a more beautiful banana than the model here.

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We had some black mulberry jam left from last summer. You can find its recipe here. As mulberries are in season now, and as it’s time to make new jams, I wanted to finish the leftover jam. But how could I use it? Although it’s not originally Turkish, cheesecake was the first thing that came to my mind as it has become a very common type of dessert in Turkey, too. So I made this basic cheesecake and served it just with a little black mulberry jam topping. You can use any kind of jam for topping. It is absolutely easier and quicker than separately preparing a topping.

Ingredients
-    200g oatmeal biscuits (or graham crackers) (I used this one)
-    50g butter
-    400g cream cheese (mascarpone cheese or labne)
-    4 eggs
-    ½ cup strained (Greek) yogurt
-    1 cup sugar
-    3 tbsp flour
-    ½ tbsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 170C.
Crumble the biscuits and put them in a food processor and crush until it becomes like flour.
Melt butter and when it’s cold, combine it with biscuit flour. Place it in a springform pan and wait it in freezer for 15 minutes.
Separate egg whites from yolks. Beat the yolks, add cream cheese and yogurt and continue to beat until creamy.
Beat the whites in a separate bowl until stiff. Add vanilla and flour and mix well. Add this mixture to the cheese and yogurt mixture and mix with a wooden spoon.
Spread the mixture on the crust and bake it 40 minutes.
Drizzle the jam (I used black mulberry jam) when serving and enjoy it with a cup of coffee.

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Classes at school finished last week and these cute balls were made by my cute students. They brought these sweets to school on the last day of classes and shared them with their teachers and friends. As they knew about my blog, they generously made a small package of these balls for me so that I could take a better photo of these and put it in a post. Meanwhile, another friend of them took a photo of us (the one wearing a blue T-shirt is me) to make that moment unforgettable. Two of these beautiful girls sitting in the front made carrot balls and the other pretty girl standing near me made cocoa balls. Both balls were so yummy that nothing left at the end of the class except my small package. They said that it’s very easy to make these balls, and wrote the recipes on small note papers. So when you want to make something sweet without a lot of effort, you can try these.

Carrot Balls (Havuçlu Toplar)
Ingredients
-    5 carrots
-    ½ cup milk
-    1 cup sugar
-    1 ½ package plain tea biscuits (they used petit beurre)
-    ½ cup walnut, crumbled
-    Grated coconut

Grate the carrots. Put it in a pot, add sugar and milk and cook until carrots absorb all juice. Set it aside.

Crumble the biscuits in a pot. Add carrots and walnut. Combine them well with your hands and give them ball shapes. Coat them with grated coconut.

Cocoa Balls (Kakaolu Toplar)
Ingredients
-    4 packages( 150g each) plain tea biscuits (she also used petit beurre)
-    35g cocoa
-    1 tbsp vanilla
-    125g butter
-    1 cup ( about 200g) sugar
-    1 ½ cup milk
-    Grated coconut

Crumble the biscuits. Heat the butter in a pot until it melts, add milk, sugar, cocoa and vanilla and stir. When it boils, take it from fire and add crumbled biscuits. When it is cold enough to touch, mix it with your hands, make small balls in your palms and coat them with coconut.

Also, I took a photo of all my students in that class with her camera. My lovely and responsible student didn’t forget to send me these photos, so I can share them with you thanks to her. Look how young and witty they are! Wish them good luck in life!

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Mom tells us that there weren’t big patisserie shops in Turkey in the past, there were just small pudding shops (muhallebici), which weren’t very big in number. Because these pudding shops were not very common, they were considered as special places for special events. When people had an important meeting with friends, these pudding shops were their only choice. However, these pudding shops had a more important role in Turkish culture those times. When a young man wanted to declare his love to a young woman, he would invite her to a pudding shop and the woman would understand that there would be some very exciting conversation when they met there. So these pudding shops were meeting point of lovers.

Pudding shops were known as small, cute and friendly places. People would enjoy their pudding in peace. Pudding (muhallebi), Turkish rice pudding (sütlaç) and keşkül were some of the dairy desserts they would serve.  They wouldn’t serve other types of desserts, just the desserts made of milk.  Although we have numerous patisserie shops today, I’m not sure if they have the same friendly atmosphere. Today’s luxury patisserie shops serve various desserts, but they are not as important as the small pudding shops were for lovers.

The English pronounciation of keşkül may be something like this: kashkul

Keşkül
Ingredients:
-    1kg milk
-    1 ½ tbsp rice flour
-    1 ½ tbsp corn starch
-    3 egg yolks
-    100g cream
-    ½ tbsp vanilla
-    1 cup sugar
-    ½ cup almond, peeled and crumbled
-    Pistachio, almond and raisin to decorate

Put sugar and egg yolks in a pot and beat with an egg beater. Take about ¼ cup milk into a bowl and mix it with rice flour and corn starch. Put it aside. Add the rest of the milk into the pot and go on beating. Put the pot on fire and boil it over medium heat and stir occasionally. When it starts to boil, add the rice flour and starch mixture and beat it. Add peeled and crumbled almonds after 3 minutes. Add vanilla and cream after a few minutes. Never stop stirring until it’s done. When it gets thick enough, it’s time to take it from fire. But how do we understand it’s thick ‘enough’? You can understand it with the help of the egg beater or a spoon. When you dip the spoon in it and take it out, if the pudding  is not runny, if it drops little by little, it’s done.

Take it from fire and pour it in a jug so that it’s easier to pour them into small bowls or cups. Then pour the pudding into small cups one by one. If you see bubbles on their top, you are on the right path.
Do not move these cups until keşkül gets cold.

When it’s cold enough, decorate the tops of keşkül with pistachio, whole almonds and raisin.

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Chestnuts remind me of joyful times rather than the dishes with it as it is generally roasted during family or friend meetings. Chestnuts are like the messengers of Winter here. In Winter it’s hard to find an outdoor  activity, but there is a very amusing indoor activity that can be done with the whole family. We start to look forward the cold evenings as we know that we will roast chestnuts and have great time together. Unlike other nuts, chestnuts take the role of entertaining people in Winter. Almost everyone has happy memories of chestnut in their childhood.

Mom used to roast chestnuts on a wood stove in Winter when we visited grandma and the crunching sound and the tempting smell of roasting chestnuts spread in the room. Those times are definitely unforgettable! There was no specialty in its serving, they were served even with their skin. Everyone would gather around the wood stove, mom would take the chestnuts in a large bowl when they were done. We would peel and eat them one by one while the other half of the chestnuts were roasting on the stove. I’m not sure if it’s these chestnuts or my grandma’s exciting stories that make me feel this nostalgia in every Winter. She didn’t have a TV and we wouldn’t need it indeed as she would always have interesting stories to tell us. When I think of those stories, I realize that they were as amusing as Tim Burton’s movies.

As we don’t have wood stoves in cities, we roast chestnuts in oven or boil them. I love to use chestnuts in various dishes and here is a four layered chestnut cup. Although it was my first try, the result was satisfying enough for our sweet tooth.

Kestaneli Kup

Ingredients
-    500g chestnuts
-    2 cups sugar
-    2 cups water
-    ½ tbsp cinnamon
-    ½ cup whipped cream
-    1 tbsp grated coconut
-    Pistachio
-    Pomegranate and yellow cherry to decorate

Cut X on chestnuts and boil them in water until tender. Drain the chestnuts and peel them.

Mix sugar and water in a pot and put it on fire. After it boils for some time until it gets consistent, throw the chestnuts into this syrup and boil it for some more time. Then take it from fire and let it cool.

Take the chestnuts into a bowl and mash them. Add some of the syrup while mashing. You decide how much to add, it depends on how much you want it to be sweet.  And get a smooth and sweet chestnut puree.

Divide this puree into three.

Mix the first one with coconut and whipped cream. And put it evenly into cups. Separate some (not much, just to cover the top of the third layer) for the top layer.

Mix the second with cinnamon and divide it into the cups.

Mix the third with pistachio and put it as the third layer.

Finally put the rest of the first mixture on their tops.

Decorate it with a drop of whipped cream in the middle and pomegranate seeds around it. I placed a yellow cherry from my ‘yellow cherry jam‘ on the peak.

Note: If you want it to be even fresher, you can do the mixing with some fresh fruits.

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Mom has been here for a few days, which means we’ve been having feast- like dinners. As she knows how we are busy, she prepares wonderful dishes before I’m back from work. She went to Ankara (capital of Turkey) yesterday morning to visit her sister and turned back before evening. When I came back from school, I entered the kitchen first and opened the refrigerator to see what we had for dinner and guess what? There was a surprise waiting for me: These walnut rolls for my sweet tooth! And she also took these photos for my blog.

Cevizli Dolama

Ingredients

The dough:

-          6 cups flour

-          150g butter, melted

-          2 eggs

-          1 cup yoghurt

-          ½  cup warm water

-          1 tsp salt

The filling:

-          2 cups crumbled walnut

The syrup:

-          3 cups sugar

-          3 cups water

-          1tbsp lemon juice

Combine all the ingredients for the dough well. And make a soft dough. Cover it with a wet piece of cloth and rest itfor about 40 minutes. Divide it into four balls. Roll each of them out. They shouldn’t be so thick. Try to make them as thin as you can. Sprinkle the crumbled walnut on them evenly.

Roll them up and cut them like coins.

Preheat  the oven at 180C and cook it until they get golden.

Meanwhile you can prepare the syrup. Put sugar and water in a pot and stir until the sugar melts. When it boils, add lemon juice and boil for a few minutes more until it gets thicker. Then wait it until cold.

Take the walnut rolls out of the oven and pour the warm syrup on them when they are still hot. Wait them in this syrup and serve cold.

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This recipe is from Ozlem, one of my friends from school. It was last year when I had the chance of eating this yummy sweet thing. She invited us (hubby and me) to her home for watching a movie together. This would be our first visit, so we didn’t want to go there with empty hands ( This is a Turkish expression that means ‘without a gift’). We thought that it would be great if we had something sweet while watching the film, so we bought sobiyet (one of the Turkish traditional desserts) on the way to her home.

A few hours before we left home, she called and told us not to go there with full stomachs. This means that she would cook something for us. In our culture, it’s a sign of politeness to say that you will prepare some foods for someone indirectly and you just say “Do come hungry!” or “Don’t eat anything before coming”, something like that. As a response, you are generally supposed to say “Please do not tire yourself, we can cook something quick together as we want to spend time with you, the food is not so important”, something with this meaning. It is again a sign of politeness. However, I’m sure people get curious about the foods they will meet as soon as they hear the first kind of expression. I love this implicit dialogue between host and guests. Then it’s like a surprise for you to see the foods prepared by the host.

We were fascinated by the tempting smells coming from the kitchen by the time she opened the door. She is a sincere friend with a very nice smile, so she made us feel comfortable as if we were at our own home. She welcomed us to her kitchen and it was a great surprise for us to see several amazing foods on the table all of which served very well to our eyes. And luckily there was a lot of room for these foods in our stomachs. Again for the sake of politeness, we said “ It’s very kind of you, but you needn’t have prepared all these. We could have a simple breakfast together and that would be enough for us”. Of course three of us knew that nothing would stop us eating those well prepared dishes. Do you wonder what she prepared for us?

A kind of fried dough pieces.

Dark and cute cookies.

A tasty potato salad.

And a different, yummy apple pie, which is unforgettable for me. It was much more yummy than  it looked. I couldn’t miss that opportunity of learning a new recipe of a dessert of course. She generously shared the recipe with me. And I’ve made it several times since then.

We had great time together eating these delicious beauties and watching the movie Valkyrie. At the end of the night, just when we were leaving, she sighed “Wait! I forgot to serve the fruit cake I made! It was in the oven and completely got out of my mind!”

Different from her original recipe, I changed the type of the biscuits in its ingredients and also I added walnuts. She used plain tea biscuits, but I used a kind of digestive biscuits this time. I think mixing these two types of biscuits would be great, too. You can use any kind of sweet biscuits that are like crackers.

Elmalı Kolay Pay

Ingredients
-    2 packages digestive biscuits
-    4 apples
-    5 tbsp sugar
-    2 tsp cinnamon
-    ¼ cup crumbled walnuts
-    1 package (150g) of whipped topping
-    1 cup of milk
-    Pistachio and mint leaves for garnish

Crumble the biscuits in a bowl.

Peel and grate the apples. Saute them in a pan, add sugar and cinnamon and stir occasionaly. Cook them until they are not juicy anymore, about 15-20 min. Toss the crumbled walnuts and mix them all.

Wet the bottom of a glass pie tray so that you can take the slices from the tray easily. Put some crumbled biscuits at the bottom as the first layer, then spread the apple mixture on this layer. Mix it gently. Then pour the rest of the biscuits as the third layer and the rest of the apple mixture on it. You can make small touches to dampen the biscuits with the warm apple mixture. Wait until it gets cold.

Meanwhile mix the whipped topping with a cup of milk until it gets stiff enough. Spread this whipping cream on the pie. And wait it in refrigerator at least 5 hours.

Decorate it with pistachio and mint leaves before serving. And a cup of black tea or coffee will be perfect to serve with this easy and yummy pie.

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It was six years ago when this yummy dessert jumped to the top of my favorites list. I started to work and live in Eskisehir then. It was a new city to discover for me and the first thing taking my attention was, after its freezing weather, its pastry shops located all around the city. There were so many pastry shops selling various savory and sweet pastries and it was impossible for me to ignore their tasty products displayed in shop windows. As I always have a sweet tooth, I was more interested in desserts. Luckily, I wasn’t the only person who was trapped by these screaming pastry shops. I met a colleague who was new like me and we discovered the city together. We became homemates soon after we realized that we had so many common points. For one thing, both of us were blinded with the desserts posing in the pastry shops on our way home. Isn’t that enough? We tried almost all kinds by tasting one each day and this one in the picture became our favorite. Especially after dinner, one of us would go buy it while the other would brew black tea. It was the best time of the day for us if we had a movie accompanying our sekerpare and tea pleasure.

It is called sekerpare (sugar bit) in Turkish. As its name implies, it will be the best solution for you if you have difficulty to satisfy your sweet tooth. I decided to try to make it at home after marrying a man who loves sweet foods as mush as I do. Guess what? It is as tasty as the ones we used to buy.

Ingredients
All ingredients must be at room temperature. These ingredients make 50 pieces of sekerpare.

For its dough:
-    2 cups flour
-    ½ cup semolina
-    ½ cups sugar
-    1 egg
-    125g butter
-    1 dessert spoon baking powder
-    Hazelnut
For its syrup
-    2 cups sugar
-    2 ½  cups water
-    1 tbsp lemon juice

As we must let the syrup get cold before pouring it on sekerpare cookies, start with making the syrup first.
Pour water and sugar in a pot. Heat them until it boils. Let it boil about 15 minutes until it reaches the right consistency. Add lemon juice and take it from the heat. Put it aside and start preparing the cookies.

Combine butter, flour, semolina, sugar, an egg and baking powder and knead them well.
Preheat the oven at 180C.

Pick walnut sized pieces and roll them. Put them in an oiled tray leaving enough space between each as they will rise when cooked.

Place hazelnuts on their top pressing gently. Cook them in oven for 25 minutes until golden.

Pour the syrup when the cookies are still hot. You can pour it with a ladle on each piece. Wait until the cookies absorb the water. You can serve it with black tea.

Note: I make 50 piece from these ingredients, but pour the syrup on 25 of them as I put the other half in refrigerator to make it another time. When I have any unexpected guests, I just prepare the syrup and pour it hot on the cold cookies to serve them tasty sekerpare. Don’t forget the rule for pouring syrup on cookies for skerpare. If the cookies are hot, the syrup must be cold and vice versa.

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In Turkish culture, there are some certain dishes which are made on special days or occasions. Sesame Rings, which I wrote on before,  are one of them. And today I want to share another special dish made just in Ramadan month. This is a simple, but tasty dessert called gullac (güllaç in Turkish letters). I don’t want to translate it into English as it might be nonsense. And I didn’t  rename it in English as I couldn’t find what I could call it. If you have any suggestions seeing the photos or reading this post, I’d be so glad to hear. In Turkish gül means rose and aş means food; gullac  is the abbreviation of güllü aş, which means food with rose. Noone calls it güllü aş today, gullac is easier to pronounce, so it is the modern name of this yummy dessert. So what is the relation of rose with this dessert? Actually, it’s not the rose, but rose water which has that relationship. Rose water used to be the main flavor in this dessert in Ottoman culture because of its refreshing effect. However, today, it depends on your taste to add rose water or not. Some people use it, some don’t. Personally, I don’t love its flavor in gullac much, so I prefer not using it. But it doesn’t mean it tastes bad, it gives a quite refreshing flavor to the dessert.

Another Ottoman tradition about gullac is that it’s always decorated with pomegranate and I love to see these cute red beads on the white surface of this dessert. I think they complete each other and address to our eyes first. And I love to add a third wonderful ingredient for garnish. Pistachios! When you have these three at the same time, the pleasure you feel doubles.

You can see gullac at patisseries and at markets just in Ramadan. Just like dates,in Turkey it is special for Ramadan. This simple and easy dessert is made from gullac sheets. You may think that they are similar to phyllo sheets, but these are totally different. Gullac sheets are so white, thin and crispy. Today, people don’t make these sheets themselves as it requires special talents. These are sold in packages at the markets. And there are about 15 sheets in a package. As far as I know, there are two big companies producing and selling gullac to markets, Saffetabdullah Gullaclari and Istanbul Gullac.

Gullac sheets are simply made of corn starch, wheat flour and water. In the early times of Ottoman Empire, people used to make sheets from corn starch, flour and water and they could keep these for months. As these sheets  are dried and got crispy, people used to soften them with milk and sugar. I guess it wasn’t a kind of dessert those times, but people used to have it as a main dish.  The best part of it for those peple was its simple ingredients. And keeping the dried sheets for long might be the second reason for people to love it. Then as the empire got richer, it turned out to be a dessert special for the palace and it became sultans’ favorite. And today, when you tend to buy the dessert (not the sheets) from a patisseire, you will see that it’s not that cheap. It has that fame as the palace dessert thanks to sultans, it deserves to be expensive, doesn’t it? Business people always know their job!

You can find how gullac sheets are prepared here. As you’ll read here, these sheets are completely natural, they don’t have any additives. Moreover, it is a very light dessert. These are just two of the reasons why people prefer gullac to end their iftar meal with something sweet. You know, in Ramadan, muslims don’t eat or drink anything from sunrise till sunset, so their body needs more sugar than usual because of hunger. Besides meeting people’s sugar need, gullac also strengthen their bodies with vitamins B and E it contains.

Gullac

Ingredients
-    10 gullac sheets
-    1 ½ kg milk
-    350g sugar
-    A cup of crumbled walnut
-    Pistachio and pomegranate for garnish

Put milk and sugar (and 1 tbsp rosewater if you like) in a pot and heat it until the sugar melts. Stir it occasionally. It shouldn’t be too hot to touch, so let it cool a little. When it gets warm enough, we can start to make our dessert. If you use it hot, your dessert gets mushy.

Lay a gullac sheet on an average size tray. Wet it with the warm milk. Repeat this with five sheets. After the fifth one, spread the crumbled walnut on it. Then lay the rest five sheets one by one and wet each of them with milk. When you finish with the tenth one, pour the rest of the milk on it. They don’t need to be very good in shape while arranging them in the tray. They will combine when they get wet with milk. After pouring the milk, you will see the sheets are rising, do not touch them. Cover it with stretch film and put it in refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

I always leave the garnishing part to the serving time, otherwise pomegranates and pistachio may change the color of gullac. After taking it from refrigerator, cut it in squares or rectangles, garnish and serve.

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Walnut is one of the ingredients I love and use most. I put it in several dishes as I adore its flavor. I sometimes add it in cake with carrot, I sometimes mix it with yogurt to make a savory food like celery root salad, I use it in most of the desserts like semolina halvah, or fig dessert. And this time I used it in this so easy dairy dessert. As you understand walnut is one of the main ingredients in my pantry. This may be beacuse I was taught in my childhood that walnut was a very valuable food.

We used to live in a village when I was a child because of my dad’s job. I was one of those lucky children as I had the chance of eating everything natural. As children of the village, we enjoyed a lot. When we visited some elderlies together, they would give us some walnuts either fresh or dried, but both with shells. There weren’t any markets or shops in villages those times (there still aren’t any of these in several villages of Turkey), so people didn’t have candies or chocolate bars to please children. They would use walnuts instead. As soon as we were given some walnuts, we would kiss their hands, put them in our pockets and went out. Fresh walnuts were our favorite because it was so enjoyable to carve its inside out with a knife and eat that white young and tender part. This wasn’t something easy, but we would love to work on it although this turned our hands into a dark brown color. When they gave dried walnuts, we would break them with the help of a stone in the yard and eat together.

Walnut is so precious for people in villages as it is a source of their incomes. They pick walnuts with a special method. There must be at least three people to pick them. The strrongest of them climb the tree. The rest hold a large piece of cloth just under the tree. The one on the tree shake boughs of it one by one to drop the walnuts on the cloth which the others are holding under tree. Then they dry these walnuts under sun and then sell them to bazaar owners or markets in cities. That’s why it has a great importance and we would be so happy whenever we had them in our pockets.

Therefore, I have had a love for walnut since my childhood and that’s why I use it in my dishes in several ways.

I made this pudding to welcome my parents who visited us two days ago. Originally, the bottom layer is crumbled biscuits, but as I know that my parents have the same love for walnut, I used crumbled walnuts instead.

Ingredients (servings: 6)
-    4 tbsp rice flour
-    1lt milk (5 ½ cups)
-    1 tbsp vanilla
-    1 ½ cup sugar
-    ½ tsp butter
-    ½ cup crumbled walnuts
-    3 tbsp cocoa
-    Grated coconut
-    6 hazelnuts

Mix milk, rice flour, vanilla and sugar together until all combined. Put it on medium heat and stir occasionally. Bring it to boil and keep mixing when it boil until it reaches the right consistency. It lasts about 8 or 10 minutes after it boils. Add butter to make it brighter. Take it from heat.

Put crumbled  walnuts as the bottom layer in 6 pudding cups. Then pour this pudding as the second layer in the cups evenly, but do not fill the cups yet. Leave a little pudding in the pot. Mix cocoa with this pudding and put it back on heat. Mix it continually and bring it to boil. Then pour this cocoa pudding as the third layer. Let them cool and then wait them in refrigerator at least 6 hours. Garnish them with grated coconut and a hazelnut on top.

We took the photo of this pudding with dad, he decided on the background color and gave me some directions. However, he couldn’t wait more and grabbed the pudding and asked for a dessert spoon to taste it. He had one full spoon and another and another and when he reached the bottom layer, he realized the walnut surprise which doubled his pleasure.

Kissing Hands

Kissing hands in Turkish culture is totally different from other cultures. We kiss hands of elderlies to show our respect. When children visit their grandparents especially on specail days, they kiss their hands and the grandparents hug them and kiss their cheeks. If they are generous enough, they give some pocket money to their grandchildren. There is a special style of kissing hands in our culture. You first kiss and then put hand on your forehead. If you just kiss and leave the hand, it means you don’t know how to kiss hands. This is a part of our culture just as a sign of respect, but there are some people abusing this tradition. They kiss hands of people to flatter them and to have make benefit from them in someways. Originally, we just kiss our grandparents hands. That’s it, nothing more.(image source)

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