The Kindness of People in Turkey

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We had a post planned for today but it’s going to have to wait for another time as we just have to share this story with you. A lovely (for us) random act of kindness, generosity, thoughtfulness, whatever you want to call it. It’s made our Monday anyway and has confirmed why we love blogging and Turkey so much.

You may remember a while back that we did a post on Kars Gravyer Peyniri as part of our attempt at sampling the different famous cheeses of Turkey. Kars is in the Northeast of Turkey, many miles from Fethiye, so we had to rely on the local supermarket as our Kars Gravyer cheese source.

After writing the post, we got a few comments about the cheese. One of these comments was from Hülya who is the author of the blog, Turkish Cuisine and, to cut a long story short, she said she was going to send us some Kars Gravyer cheese so we could try the real thing!

We don’t know Hülya and we’ve never met her. All we know about her is the information she has on her personal profile on her blog and that she likes to share Turkish recipes. She comments on our blog and we comment on hers. That’s it. But, she wanted to send us some Kars Gravyer Peyniri so we could sample it.

These things happen in Turkey. Two days ago, she commented on our Fethiye in Winter article to say the cheese was on its way. This morning, as we were about to set off for a jog, there was a knock on the door and I had to sign for a parcel. How exciting!

We both ripped the plastic kargo bag open and pulled out a blue canvas bag. Then we untied the knot at the top of the canvas bag. This was one big, heavy wedge of cheese! I reached inside the bag and revealed the bounty.

A huge, horseshoe-shaped wedge of Kars Gravyer Peyniri, all wrapped in cling film. The cling film wasn’t there for long as we ripped it open to reveal the cheese in its full glory. Definitely more holes and harder than the supermarket version. A skin protecting the cheese and darker round the edges – as it is apparently supposed to be.

And for that first taste, we didn’t even bother taking a knife from the drawer. We pulled a little chunk off each to sample the tangy flavours…and then we went for a run and dreamed of lunch as we ran up and down the track.

A bowl of Turkish pickled vegetables, Barry’s tomato salad, some süzme yoghurt, chilli-topped baked eggs and a plateful of sliced Kars Gravyer Peynir. The starring role in our lunch had literally been delivered to our door a couple of hours before and it tasted fabulous.

We are fully aware of the Turkish tradition of sharing food and food gifts so we’re going to be very generous and give a little bit to some of our Turkish friends. We have no choice!

We told them there might be some Kars Gravyer Peyniri on its way to us and they jumped straight in there to book their wedge! I hope we see them soon…or they might miss out.

A big thank you again to Hülya Unsal Sakıroğlu.

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