Karen Phillips

Turkish Creole Christmas Cake

For twenty years (gulp!) I have been making Delia Smith’s Creole Christmas Cake. It’s so moist and so full of fruit it is more a pudding than a traditional cake and for people who don’t really “do cake” it makes a more acceptable finish to…

Turkish Creole Christmas Cake

An Expat Christmas in Turkey – Part One

Every year at this time I reread A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas – read it now if you never have, you can find it online, it is brilliant – and this year, for fun, I’m writing an expat version. It’s in four…

An Expat Christmas in Turkey – Part One

Guest Blogger Kerry Jukes from Earth Laughs in Flowers on Christmas in Turkey

I have a new guest blogger this week, the lovely Kerry Jukes who only this summer moved from her home in Scotland to Adapazari in the Sakarya Province in North Western Turkey with her husband. She writes a blog called Earth Laughs in Flowers about…

Guest Blogger Kerry Jukes from Earth Laughs in Flowers on Christmas in Turkey

Weird Advice for Living in Turkey – you are probably too old to be adopted

Turkey is an amazingly friendly country, and any new resident, within short order will find they acquire an “Indispensible Turkish Friend”. Be it taxi driver or emlak, neighbour, site manager or bar owner, somewhere along the line, in those first few weeks someone will “take…

Weird Advice for Living in Turkey – you are probably too old to be adopted

Playing with my poisoned pen…writing for Perking the Pansies

I write nice things, normally, and I tend to play with words and I find this village so beautiful and life here so fascinating that I tend to write prose so purple it should be edged with ermine. But I owed a guest blog post…

Playing with my poisoned pen…writing for Perking the Pansies

Sleeping in my earthquake pants, dreaming in the olive groves

My Earthquake Pants are what I wear to bed, they are old, saggy and rather worn pj’s but they are capacious and comfy for someone who throws herself around a lot in her sleep and wriggles and worms across the whole of a kingsize bed.…

Sleeping in my earthquake pants, dreaming in the olive groves

Guest Blogger Jack Scott writes on Gay Life in Turkey – Good as you in Turkey

Quentin Crisp once famously said “men deprived of the company of women turn to boys. And men deprived of the company of boys turn to animals”. He surely had in mind English public schools, Welsh sheep farmers and American convicts but not Turkey where sexual…

Guest Blogger Jack Scott writes on Gay Life in Turkey – Good as you in Turkey

Introducing my first guest blogger – Jack Scott writer of Perking the Pansies

In a corner of cyberspace is the blogosphere. Blogging is a relatively new way of inflicting yourself on the world, its harder work than it looks but the people who beaver away producing readable pieces on a huge variety of topics are contributing a unique…

Introducing my first guest blogger – Jack Scott writer of Perking the Pansies

For the first Sunday of Advent – Lubkuchen

I was stressed this morning from reading insane things on internet forums and so I took out my foul temper on some harmless cloves and cinnamon sticks and battered them to their component molecules for inclusion in the recipe. Cooking is very therapeutic. After battering…

For the first Sunday of Advent – Lubkuchen

An International Advent

Obviously Christmas doesn’t officially happen here, this being a Muslim country and all that. But Christmas is nothing if not a combination of the myths, cultures, legends and traditions of many creeds and countries even if the name that the holiday currently enjoys comes from…

An International Advent

Shedding my Summer Skin at the Turkish Bath

Winter is upon us. Sort of. Kind of. Well the sunny days are shorter so I guess that counts as winter. It may not be winter as we Brits know it but it is time for the bi-annual deep cleanse and scrub of the Turkish…

Shedding my Summer Skin at the Turkish Bath

Fruity Goat Tagine and Pomegranate Couscous

I thought I must have been looking particularly scruffy and needy lately when one of the neighbours brought me a gift of goat meat at Kurban Bayram. Then I remembered her son had recently got married and the gift of money and coffee cups I…

Fruity Goat Tagine and Pomegranate Couscous

November Seasonal Foods – Selcuk Market

Selcuk market was quiet today; the majority of people are clearly shopped out after the excesses of Bayram. Even the butcher was quiet, the freezer was nearly empty and there was no need to employ sharp elbows and village Turkish to get your order taken.…

November Seasonal Foods – Selcuk Market

If you are in the mood for a sacred city – Priene

The new road between Kirazli and Yaylakoy knocks half an hour off the trip to Soke plains and makes Priene, Miletos and Doganbey more accessible and ideal for a spur of the moment trip from the village. I love Priene, it’s my favourite ancient site.…

If you are in the mood for a sacred city – Priene

Tie up your Raki, there may be aftershocks

Earthquakes are like contractions, the first time you feel one you wonder did you imagine it. It’s not like in the movies where, in the case of childbirth, women are writhing and screaming and spilling secrets under anaesthetic and in the case of earthquakes, buildings…

Tie up your Raki, there may be aftershocks

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