Ante Meridian Food Consumption, aka Breakfast

A couple of weeks ago one of Americans was remarking how Turks will eat anything for breakfast, even if it’s a dessert- cakes, brownies, etc. Occasionally the morning breakfast for the students at school will be chocolate cake or something rich and sugary and nobody bats an eye. They also serve the kids, even those in 1st grade, this strange tea drink in the morning. What, these kids don’t bounce off the walls with hyperactivity already? We have to go and serve them Gummi Bear-like elixir to get their motor running, too?

In regards to the food, after thinking about if for a few minutes, Americans eat some pretty sugary, high-fat content food in the morning, too. You know what I’m talking about---doughnuts. To me doughnuts and muffins aren’t real breakfast foods, but millions of us pop them in our mouths (some dunk them in coffee before ingestion) every morning. We don’t bat an eye at all those crullers (or in Dunkin Doughnuts’ case, machine-made chocolate sticks) and jelly-filled concoctions and don’t bat an eye, so I don’t think I can crack down on the Turks for slipping a little cake onto their breakfast menu now and again.

While on a school sponsored trip this weekend to Bodrum, a party/resort town about a 4 hour bus ride from Izmir, my roommate, Cem, the school computer guru, told me that there are probably 5 Dunkin Doughnuts in Istanbul. Dunkin Doughnuts in freakin’ Istanbul???! I couldn’t believe it, though I think Cem was equally taken aback when I told him Dunkin Doughnuts was started in the town right next to mine back in America, and that the South Shore sported at least 5-6 Dunkin Doughnuts per town. But I really wasn’t expecting someone from Izmir to say they had been to a Dunkin Doughnuts in Turkey before. They really are gonna rule the world one of these days.

The breakfast/snack I enjoy here is called simit, though it can also be called gevrek. Same thing. The best way to describe it is a cross between a sesame seed bagel and a think’ unsalted pretzel. It has a circular shape, though it’s a lot thinner than a bagel. You don’t spread anything on it, but you usually eat it with a slice or two of salty cheese. The people here, they just love ‘em. In the marketplaces and the bazaars, there are guys trying to sell you fresh simit seemingly on every corner.