More than 13 million call Istanbul their home. The noisy streets are swarming with people, worn with character, dusty from its sheer antiquity and loaded with culture. For an old city, it moves pretty quickly. In fact, things happen so fast that if you blink, you may miss the monkey sitting comfortably on his master’s shoulder as he walks down a laneway or the man delivering Turkish coffees on an antique brass tray through the crowded streets. In between the sounds of traffic and the rumblings of hand deliveries are the ancient sounds of wailing. Periodically and throughout the […]

There was a time when the people thought the tomato was poisonous. Thank goodness we now know the tomato isn’t a threat. That is of course, unless you live in the Spanish town of Bunyol.  Every August the residents celebrate a marathon of flinging, slinging and lobbing tomatoes at each other! I’ve never known the tomato to be so threatening, but I do remember wanting to throw them when as a child, I helped in the annual ritual of making tomato sauce. The mountains of overripe tomatoes that needed to be processed into sauce seemed never ending. Tomato canning […]