[KEEPING UP WITH THE VILLAGE] Living off the land

Dairy: Our village has a lot of cattle, so there is plenty of milk. However, the milk is only available from spring through the summer or early fall, when it’s time for the cows to become pregnant again. When the cows are taken to the yayla (high plateau), the villagers get busy. While the boys and men take care of the herd, it falls to the women to milk the cows and make the butter, cheese and yogurt. Much of the yogurt is filtered to make a delicious winter treat called sűzme (strained) yogurt. It is almost like labne (cream cheese), but softer. Many varieties of cheese are produced, the most exotic of which is that stuffed into an entire goat skin which has been carefully cleaned but left whole, missing only its head and hooves. You can sometimes see these stuffed skins at the Mısır Çarsısı in Istanbul. The stringy dry cheese from the skins eventually turns a greenish-blue and is much prized for its pungent flavor. An amazing yogurt product that is no longer made in our village, although the villagers and my husband remember it fondly, called kurut, was made of yogurt cultured from half non-fat and half whole milk that was strained until it was almost dry. It was formed into fist-sized balls and put in the sun to finish drying until it became hard as a rock. If you used only whole milk, it wouldn’t get hard enough to keep. In the winter, it was diluted in water and either made into ayran or that village favorite, yogurt soup. Also in winter, chicken, duck and goose eggs, while sparse in those months, provided additional nourishment.

Meat: Many villagers still do not eat much meat at all during the year, except during Kurban Bayram (Feast of the Sacrifice). However, they used to dry beef for the winter, if they could get it, and also used lamb tail fat. If you have ever noticed the lamb tails at the butcher, you know how loaded with fat they are, which is a wonderful source of calories in the cold northeastern winters. Although it isn’t as popular now as it was in the past, they would chop and fry up the fat and stuff it in bread, which was then baked. However, something that still is made is kavurma (braised meat), which you can buy in old-fashioned stores, even in Istanbul. Fat and beef are chopped and fried together, usually in huge quantities, 20 to 40 kilograms at a time, in huge metal vats. The result is crammed tightly into metal drums or even plastic containers and sealed. This particular treat is not my favorite, but it was and is a good source of winter protein and calories.

Grain: Wheat is no longer grown in our village, at least not enough to produce the vast quantity of flour used for bread and the famous un çorbası, but that is another topic. In the day, barley flour was more available, but not as satisfactory for bread, so our anne (mother) would use two-thirds barley flour and one-third wheat. Another winter basic is bulgur, which is wheat cracked to varying degrees of fineness and used for pilav and soup. Erişte is the wonderful half-cooked strip pasta that is sun-dried and stored for winter, and cooked and eaten with molasses and butter. This is also available in some markets and is certainly one of my favorites. Wheat and corn kernels, when available, are roasted for winter snacks.

Vegetables: Potatoes, dried kuru fasulye (dried beans) and onions are the main vegetables in the village winters, supplemented with fresh and pickled cabbage, carrots and red sugar beetroot. A little more exciting, and very different to Western palates, are the wild greens picked in the hills and pickled with salt, called çaşır otu. “Ot” means weed, somewhat justifying me calling the dish “pickled weeds,” not to be confused with “weed soup.” It turns out that it is very beneficial for diabetics.

Fruit: Sliced and dried, apples, apricots, pears and whole white mulberries make for healthy and incredibly satisfying winter fruit compotes, often served with hot butter. Pestil -- we would call them fruit leathers -- are also made in our village. These are often rolled around walnuts for a crunchy fruit burrito. The pestil made from sour plums is cut up and stewed into a sour soupy drink that is served with bulgur pilav. The dut (mulberry) and sometimes the grapes, which shouldn’t be growing in our mile-high village, are made into pekmez (molasses). This is where I usually come in, helping to sort and clean the dut shaken from the tree onto clean sheets, then crushed beneath large rocks and the juice filtered and boiled for hours. I usually get too tired after the sorting and cleaning, but anne keeps going. The molasses is used for many things during the winter and sometimes eaten by itself.

Other: Mostly men, but some ladies in the village keep bees to produce honey. Our neighbor treats her bees with more love than most people show their pets. She keeps them warm in the winter and plants special flowers for them in the spring. They never sting her and seem to welcome her approach with gentle little bee noises.

A fitting accompaniment to her honey are the walnuts grown in the village and stored for the winter. I cannot describe how good they taste and they must be even better when it is minus 10 degrees outside. Finally, rose hips are not used for tea like they are in California, but their juice is made into syrup with sugar and eaten or drunk for vitamin C. It is also good for diabetics!

In the village today, it is easy to see who still works hard in the traditional ways, to grow, gather and preserve the bulk of their food for the winter. To put it kindly, the families who have gone more to buying their food in stores have begun eating more bread to replace the old foods, and bread is cheap. They are noticeably heavier than their more traditional counterparts who look much younger as well as more slender. Which goes to prove the old axiom, we are what we eat, and it is no more so than for those who live off the land.