Lately nothing has fascinated me more than the art of starting the day in beautiful and productive style. Everybody seems to have his or her own way of claiming the day’s first sunbeams. Seeing as the morning hours hold such a precious place in my heart, I thought it might be time to find out how other talented bloggers and bloggerettes start their day and thus created this interview series. So instead of asking „How was your night?“, from now on I’ll rather be asking „How was your morning?“.
After a beautiful prelude to this series with earlybird Steffi, I should probably warn you ahead of today’s interview: If you too are a child of the sun, you might find yourself packing your bags for Australia right after finishing this read! Why? Because today’s guest, the fructose friendly chef Melissa, wakes up where koalas and kangaroos kiss each other good night, while being surounded by cafés sure to make your food sensitive heart leap for joy. Morning walks on the beach in dreamy light and an enviably healthy tan on Melissa’s face: If being a morning grouch looks like this, I’ll take an extra large serving! But see and read for yourselves…
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Most of my recipes are a byproduct of me going nuts at the weekly farmers markets, buying more produce than I can handle. That’s why recipes such as this 
Last year, during my initial phase of going gluten free I reflected not only on my wheat consumption but also on my diet in general. I figured that I was consuming a lot more dairy here in Istanbul than I used to do back in Berlin. Since moving here I had yoghurt for breakfast every single morning, drank many, many café lattes and ate lots of salads topped with loads of feta cheese. Everybody knows, too much of anything is never good, so I felt the urge to put a halt on this. In the back of my head I developed this thought that just maybe I could hit two birds with one stone: Going gluten and dairy free at the same time. I mean, why not? I was about to change my diet completely anyway, right?
From time to time I know it can be a bit tiring to be friends with, related to or in a relationship with me, the adamant no-fructose-advocate that I am. Even four years after being diagnosed with fructose malabsorption, I’m not showing any signs of fatigue in bringing up the fructose topic. Be it by making critical observations on why certain foods are unhealthy (which I usually make just as a friend is about to dive into their said plate of food). or in response to somebody once again asking me, why (after turning down the piece of cake) I won’t have any of the fruit either. Enter the sugar-police! I always try not to lecture, rather to explain. I understand that my little sister for example is not keen on hearing my opinions on sugar, as she is just about to have a bite of her delicious looking cupcake. (I am still the older sister, though, so bear with me) In the end, all I am really trying to say is that I am concerned about the health of my loved ones.
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.
Whew, last week was a hectic one, which explains the eight days without a new blog post. This being my third blog week I’m feeling pretty guilty. Blogger’s guilt, I guess.
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! 
