It’s been silent around here for the past three weeks. We went on a one week holiday only to return and find the city we live in has been turned upside down. Behaviors, moods, beliefs have changed. Istanbul is still as beautiful as it was, but the people living here and in the rest of the country have changed. The sheer violence that was used against peacefully demonstrating protestors shocked all of us in Turkey and many of you abroad, leaving us behind with terms bereft of meaning such as trust, freedom and democracy. Here we are, sitting in our home, approximately 800m from Taksim Square where the protests begun, reading, watching, talking, trying to understand facing many new questions. Right now it feels weird to go back to normal, working on and posting fructose friendly recipes with the pictures of people being chased down by police and fed with massive amounts of teargas still vivid in my head. So as for today, I will only share two videos with you.
The one is an ABC report on fructose in general including an interview with Robert Lustig, who also held an impressive lecture on fructose called “Sugar. The bitter truth”, a must-see for every fructose malabsorptioner.
The other one is a nice find by my boyfriend, illustrating the danger of processed food and what food industries made us believe to be “real” food. Watching both videos makes me actually happy once again that I had to cancel out fructose and processed foods from my diet. Enjoy!
As I’m sitting here writing this post there is a plate of freshly baked oatmeal coconut cookies resting next to my laptop, begging to be devoured. Today it felt hard motivating myself to write. Before I sat down I quickly threw together those seven ingredients listed below, turning them into yet another batch of oatmeal coconut cookies, just to eat one of the freshly baked cookies straight out of the oven. I can‘t think of a better way to get into cookie mode. Also, when I tested this recipe a week ago I myself was a little surprised how delicious these cookies actually turned out to be. Therefore I needed some kind of reassurance that these cookies weren‘t too good to be true or rather just a stroke of luck. ;)
To be honest, I am not the only one reconsidering our initial, resistance-free plunge into the Turkish eating culture, after having arrived in the land of milk and honey (see also “
The past weeks here in Istanbul saw a lot of visitors from home. Which of course is great because we got to share the beauty and stories of this wonderful city with our loved ones and made most of them fall in love with Istanbul just the way we have. On the other hand, a lot of visitors meant a lot time spent in restaurants, cafés and and pastry shops and snacking on street food. We were eating ourselves through a lot of amazing specialities the Turkish cuisine treasures, to show our visitors the amazing tastes we were already familiar with and to explore unknown ones together. What sounds like a dream come true, actually turned out to be a nightmare for my maltreated stomach. Getting lost in all the new, delicious and tongue tingling tastes I wasn’t paying enough attention to my stomach anymore. Naturally, it didn’t hesitate to strike back. I’m not feeling well, the tiniest amount of fructose turns into a rumbling concert in my stomach and I’m getting sick again more easily. After six weeks filled with a lot of “Oh, this looks amazing, I have to try this. I know it’s not good for me, but a tiny spoon full, maybe two, can’t hurt, can it?” -Spoons full of veggies, fruits and, yes, sweets it’s time to give my stomach a break, reflect on my personal eating habits and unlearn snacking, once again. Unlearning snacking? You may be asking yourselves, what is wrong with snacking, I probably just chose the wrong snacks, right? Nope, you heard me right. I mean unlearning snacking and not just learning to pick the right snacks. …
To save me some time, I decided to go for yufka (phyllo) dough instead of regular quiche dough. Yufka is used widely in Turkish cuisine and is easy to find as everybody here seems to love it. To make sure I got the quality stuff, I decided not to buy just any yufka dough from the supermarket. Instead, I turned to my local Yufkaci, a professional yufka maker, who sells nothing other than fresh yufka and the occasional tray of baklava. The sheets I got there were so thin and fresh, they had to be handled with ultimate care. They were so big, that each sheet yielded for two layers of my quiche.
Today is our 12th day here in Istanbul. Because our language course did not start yet, it still feels like being on vacation. We get up late, stroll from cafe to cafe, sit in the sun, do some sightseeing here and there while try to immerse ourselves in this fascinating culture. Since arriving in Istanbul, the only thing I actually “cooked” for myself was a salad. The rest of the time we have been going out for breakfasts, lunches and dinners (usually skipping one or the other). The food you get at restaurants (called “restoran” or “lokanta”) here is just too good and we love to discover and taste all the new dishes and flavors. And, so far I’m doing pretty well with the Turkish food. It looks like the Turkish cuisine is much easier to handle when suffering from fructose malabsorption compared to the German cuisine. I haven’t experienced extreme stomach pain or other symptoms here yet. Knock on wood.
Our first week in Istanbul was amazing. It actually feels like we didn’t do much, like in a productive manner. But when I look at the pictures from last week it feels like we walked the whole city (even though this is not remotely true). That’s why I decided to share a few of my instagram shots with you and introduce you to some popular Turkish food staples that might be good to know when traveling with fructose malabsorption. Check out 
Last week was my last day at work here in Berlin. I gave up the comfort of being permanently employed to dive into a new adventure. In no less than 18 days we will move to Istanbul! “Yeah, woohoo or yippieh” doesn’t nearly describe how excited I am about this move. But that’s not what this post is about. In any case, I am sure this new adventure will find more than one mention in future posts as I will be sure to let you know about our plans and non-plans for our new life in Istanbul. …
It’s one week post launch of Fructopia and the tingling hasn’t stopped yet. After turning the whole blog thing over and over in my mind and testing 
Willkomen in Fructopia! In dieser kleinen Welt dreht sich alles um ein gesünderes Leben ohne Fructose, ohne Zucker, ohne Weizen. Schön, dass ihr da seid! 
