we made it through!

Oh my we barely made it through the week!  An 8 day conference turned into 9 days of lunches and dinners and coffee breaks!  The group we had were wonderful, dear people and were so grateful for all we did, but the staff and volunteers, well we are all exhausted!

Today, Monday we had an extra level of entertaining to do.  The Dutch Ambassador to Turkey and his 2 associates came to tour the facility and have lunch.  Preparations have been underway since yesterday.  We decided to serve him a typical Turkish meal.  Here are two Turkish ladies from the Turkish church helping make the dolmas:  stuffed grape leaves.

Here is the Ambassador arriving and being greeted by Renata and Carl who are in charge of St. Paul's and Diny who is Dutch and just moved here to Antalya. 

And here is a picture of who was working today to help pull all this together:  this is left to right Belgin, Renata, Brigitte, Ayai and Diny.  Missing from the picture are me and Ayshe.

And here is a picture of the plate we put together of traditional Turkish food:  front is the salad and then to the left are stuffed eggplant, the dolma's made with grape leaves, a stuffed pepper and borek.  On the table we served family style the yogurt dish that went with this and fresh pide bread (in the states we say pita bread, but this one is made fresh and is extraordinary not like the dry flat stuff we know!)

Belgin who did the Lion's share of this meal let me help her make the borek which was hard for her I know because I am an amateur with the yufka, which is the very thinnest of pastries we use to wrap her delicious filling.  I tear it every time, but bless her heart she always says no problem Rosalie!  

My favorite food here are the dairy products.  They have the most unbelievably tasty yogurt, cream, milk, cheeses, cream cheese and a sour cream product called labne (lob nay) which I am crazy about!  The yogurt combined with these stuffed peppers, eggplant and dolmas make a satisfying and delicious meal, truly!  The yogurt gets mixed with various things depending on what it is served with.  How about yogurt mixed with fresh mint, yummy!  Or yogurt with fresh dill and grated zucchini, also yummy!  In spite of all these dairy products I'm consuming I'm losing weight because we eat very little meat and very few sugary things. 

Okay I lost track of my story!  Here is a picture of the Ambassador sitting at the special table we made in the garden for him with his guests:  Diny and Jim to his right and Carl (with his back to the camera) joined him and later we made Renata also sit down and enjoy this very special visit.  Meanwhile we were serving about 50 other people who were at the Center also, so it was really crazy today.  But "we made it through!"  So until next time...