Health to your hands -- eating sensibly Turkish-style

“Oo, let’s see what’s in the fridge today” was her excited response. The answer was -- not a lot, except a few potatoes and some spinach. But since I was not at work that day and as it happened just on my way to the post office, she politely suggested that if I bought some yufka (thin pastry) and maydanoz (flat leafed parsley), she would cook our evening meal again. This is a relatively new venture of hers -- and one I’m quite keen to encourage. I have long been aware of the importance of food in Turkish culture, especially in the workplace.

School dinners

Three times a day I march my class of 3 year olds up and down several staircases through the school building to the dining room. When I first started teaching here, six years ago, I was stunned by the amount of times the kids needed feeding. Having taught in the UK for many years, where generally the only access to food was at lunch time, I couldn’t quite believe how there could possibly be enough hours in the teaching day in which to incorporate this amount of time on eating -- bearing in mind that each meal requires that every child must wash their sticky or paint-ridden hands first, an operation, even when conducted with military precision, that can take up to 15 minutes in itself.

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