Baklava, the magical fruit

Okay, so it's very much not fruit. Not at all. But it is delicious!
I've never really cared for baklava. The few times I tried it back in the States, I just wasn't really impressed with it and thought it wasn't a dessert for me. But little did I know the many variations of it. And further did I not know just how delicious Turkey can make it!

My first encounter with baklava here was at a bakery nearby. Some friends wanted to stop by and get some things so I tagged along. At this point I had no idea how delicious Turkish baklava was so I didn't get any.... Sad.

I had my first bite of this awesome dessert on a trip back from Tarsus. Our guide knew a good place for ice cream so we stopped there and got ice cream and free samples of baklava, fresh! Wikipedia tells me this is usually eaten cold or at room-temperature, but eating it while it was still warm from the oven got me hooked and I'd gladly eat it this way if no other way was available.

My second go around with the dessert was at a carpet where a whole tray was set out. I'm pretty sure I ate the most baklava out of every one there (not combined, jeeze!). This only confirmed my first impression. This baklava is delicious. It wasn't simply a good recipe from that particular store good, but Turkey has the whole recipe figured out and it's great.

So finally! After many trips to the mall and telling myself that I should get some baklava because I know I want, I got some!

Yarım kilo cevizi baklava. (Half a kilo of walnut baklava.)

It's taken a bit of restraint, but I've only eaten 4 pieces so far today. I think that's good.

It looks like a little sandwich.

A glimpse of video workings

I've been trying to stay on top of updating things regularly, my Youtube channel especially. While it's relatively easy for me to blog about things because they can be mundane, I feel like my Youtube videos are better off not containing the mundane things I would put here (oops). I'm sure they're still kind of boring in their own way, but I know the only way to get better is to keep trying, haha!
But I was lucky enough to be presented with good material to video. One of my husband's gifts for me for our anniversary was one of those Japanese Kracie Donut Making kits. We've gotten other kits, like hamburger, and candy sushi, but done them in private really. So for this and since he got specifically for me to enjoy, I decided to make a video of it.
I haven't finished the editing for it yet, but here's a picture of the finished products (and some mess).

Mmm donuts~

Our first plant!

One task that's been particularly difficult to achieve is growing a house plant here. Mostly because we're new and don't know where to look for such things. I've got my Amazon wishlist full of seeds and planters and kits, but then not knowing where to obtain soil, there they have remained. I saw a few plants during our first visit to the Sunday market, but a lack of cash and general wariness about them prevented me from getting them. But I think it turned out well because we finally went to the mall! I'll talk more about the mall in a later post (I want to get more pictures), but there's a store there that has some nice plants. We chose the one below!

It's growing up so fast!

I also have no idea what kind of plant it is, but it was healthy looking and a nice size to put on the shelf. I think for our next trip though, we need to get bigger pot and some soil as it seems to be growing well and I'm sure would appreciate the extra grow room.

Since Autumn is soon I'm not so gung ho about getting things to grow, but I wonder what kind of plants they'll have around here if so!

Hair stylin~

I've never really been particularly interested in hairstyles other than what my hair will look like after a cut and without styling, but because my hair is getting pretty long now I've become more interested.
I tried out this style because it seemed easy enough. Just put a headband on and start tucking hair. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, but it looked great once I got the hang of it!

The front looked a lot better than the back.

I'm looking forward to trying out more styles and also to checking out wigs to give myself more of a "full head of hair" look. So much so that my Amazon wishlist has about 10 or so wigs in it (all but 1 under $10 too).
I'm also hoping that I get the hang of it and it opens me up to cosplaying as well!

A turkey among the flowers

The conversation was favorite flowers. My husband had forgotten mine and he tried to trick me into thinking he had a favorite, but I knew he didn't. Then we just started talking about flowers and which ones he liked. I forgot the name of the ones he was talking about. Now I only remember the turkey.

Which one of these is not like the others!