Istanbul

School dinners

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So evocative, school dinners. Everybody has a (usually not so favourable) memory of school dinners.

I remember loving toffee cream pie and having an extra serving whenever that was on offer – oh, those days were the days when we didn’t worry about sugar!  But mostly school dinners for me was a lonely affair, as most of my friends spent their ‘dinner’ money at the ice cream van. I longed to be able to have a Mars Bar and a packet of crisps for my lunch, but as we qualified for ‘free’ dinners, there was no question of that.

Billy and Daisy have endured the full gamut of school dinner experiences. They are non-existent in Cape Town, so it was packed lunches every day, which I for one, was very happy to be rid of when we moved to the UK. Back in the UK, they had their first experience of school lunches – Billy of course loved the food at his school, whereas Daisy said the daily fare at hers was horrible. Pretty par for the course.

But the international school in Istanbul is a different kettle of fish all together. For a start, as the International school shares its premises with the National school, the canteen is huge, serving more than 2000 meals a day, the majority of which are served to Turkish children. The International school makes up less than a quarter of the children, but of course within that quarter there are more than 50 different nationalities from literally all over the world.

Daisy stubbornly refuses to eat from the canteen, and last year, as they were not allowed to squirrel away any extra snacks or sandwiches in their bags, used to come home ravenous, as nothing had passed her lips from 7am until 4pm. I wrote to the Principal but was mostly told that the food was pretty good in comparison to American schools, (God help the children of the USA) and that it was a taste adjustment, and soon she would get used to it. Guess what, she didn’t.

So, this year, with Billy at the school, and knowing he wouldn’t get through the day without his scram, I took up the opportunity to be on the Nutrition committee and see what can be done to improve the food. It is no easy task, mainly due to the simple fact of whose palette do you aim to please? The many Asian students? Eastern European, Western European? American? Arab?

I suggested that I start by eating lunch in the canteen every day for a couple of weeks so that I could try it out for myself and see if it really is as bad as my children have reported. The results are below – have a look at some of the photos of my lunches from last week.

Day 1 - Meat and potato stew, rice, courgette in olive oil. Tomato and cucumber salad. Melon

Day 1 – Meat and potato stew, rice, courgette in olive oil. Tomato and cucumber salad. Melon

Day 2 – Peppers and courgettes stuffed with meat, rice, tomatoes and spices. Vermicelli soup. Pasta salad. Tomato and cucumber salad. Doughnuts in syrup.

Red lentil soup. Doner kebab and tabouleh. Cold green bean and rice salad. Cucumber and tomato salad. Grapes.

Day 3 – Red lentil soup. Doner kebab and tabouleh. Cold green bean and rice salad. Cucumber and tomato salad. Grapes.

There were some unexpected cool touches like the free-flowing olive oil. Also, the grapes and yogurt come from the owner of the school’s farm somewhere in Turkey.

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Will report more next week….

Beginning of another school year

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But this one is so different! For the first time since we left Cape Town, at the end of 2010, the four of us, Peter, Billy, Daisy and me, are living together again in our own home, albeit a rented one. It’s been an interesting journey getting us to this point, where we are all living in Istanbul. When we made the decision to leave Cape Town four years, I don’t think any of us would have imagined that our path would have been quite so circuitous – not uphill exactly, although when is it ever not a challenge?

After our first year back in the UK, when we were indeed altogether, but living in my long-suffering sisters house, Peter took up a new job in Saudi Arabia. Then moving to Istanbul last year allowed us to regain one member of the family whilst losing another.

So after making some tough decisions earlier this year, Billy has come to join us for a year or two in Istanbul, before we (hopefully but who knows?) move back to the UK.

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As I wrote in my posts last year, it was a very difficult time leaving Billy behind in the UK to weekly board and then spend the weekends with many loving and generous family members and friends. In hindsight was it the wrong decision for Billy to stay while we lived in another country? Maybe. But hindsight is a wonderful thing and many people have helped me not to see it as a mistake as we all learnt many things from it.

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Possibly the biggest lesson for all of us, is the value of family. Perhaps we all took it for granted a bit before, but now we all relish it, and when everybody gets on top of each other, then I for one, just pinch myself and remember how lucky we all are to all be together, enjoying life, learning lots, eating well, fishing and rollerblading along the Bosphorus, and continuing this journey together.

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