Thursday October 24
Who would have thought we'd spend the better part of today helping George House make pekmez ? In Kat's words, there is always something going on here, there is always something to be done, today was no exception. Would we ever leave?
After breakfast we did a little blogging, then went outside to stretch, and watch the proceedings. At this point, three rickety ladders were out, furiously pulling down giant bunches of grapes. Growing in the middle of the yard: a giant pile of grapes. Hassan showed us which grapes must be removed before juicing can begin. Easy. The mushy ones coated in black or white mold! Also easily detected by smell, or the gooey feeling on the fingers. Not good. The dry shriveled ones, while looking a little off, are actually raisin -- tasty and fine for the pekmez. After picking a couple of bad grapes, Hassan pointed out that this was women's work, and disappeared. Casually, we started removing the bad grapes. Fast forward 4 hours and were toiling over the pile, removing moldy grapes. Meanwhile, everyone else in the family was on to exciting things like feeding and stoking the fire to boil the pekmez, mashing grapes in a wooden trough to collect the grape juice for pekmez, stirring clay into the pekmaz, smashing olives (which had nothing to do with pekmez, but yet another jobs that needs doing), and tiling (also, nothing to do with pekmez). At one point, Kat looked up, and realized that we were the only ones around, and working, We took it as a sign that it was time for a proper turkish coffee. After, we went back to our diminishing pile of grapes.. As sun was setting, we managed to reach the bottom of our pile, and called it a day. Trout for dinner, accompanied by rice pudding!
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| Grape picking begins! The whole family is involved. |
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| Perfectly ripe grapes. |
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| Call in the ladies. Grape sorting is women's work. How did we end up here again? |
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| Madalene and Kat sorting grapes next to the fire under to hot sun. I'm not sure what we were thinking. |
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| The grandmother of the house is a machine. There is nothing this woman wasn't doing - constant movement and activity. Also, fire tender extraordinaire. |
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| Grape squishing. A labour intensive job. Rubber boots help. |
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| Tasting the pekmez as its being made. These need to boil for another day yet to be reduced. |
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| Kat made us an excellent Turkish coffee. We deem her worthy of marriage. |
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| Madalene enjoys her first proper Turkish coffee. |
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| Evidence at the scene of the crime: pomegranate seeds and olive pits. |
