Gina Jackson Personal Fitness

Ever had cucumbers, tomatoes and olives for breakfast - MINUS the eggs (as if scrambled in an omelet) and a side of potatoes dripping in oil?

I just returned from an eye-opening week in Istanbul, Turkey and fell completely in love with the country, food and people. Even more so I was delighted with the breakfast served at our hotel each morning.

Buffet-style but always consisting of the following basic elements - mind you - eaten in small portions.

The typical Turkish breakfast includes fresh grain bread, butter, jam and/or honey, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese, yogurt, preserved meat, fruit juice, perhaps eggs, and tea or coffee. It’s often set out as a buffet.

Not only were the combinations delightful but the portions were small - actually the right size - compared to the huge breakfast servings typical of the American diet.

Bread (ekmek, ehk-MEHK): standard Turkish sourdough white bread (ekmek), baked fresh twice a day (early morning and late afternoon).

Jam (reçel, reh-CHEL) and/or Honey (bal, BAHL): the best is jars of home-made fruit preserves, but you may also encounter the little standardized sealed packets. Same with the honey: the stuff in the packets is good. A tip: mix your butter and honey on the plate, then spread it on your bread—the Turkish way.Olives (zeytin, zey-TEEN): black zeytin range from small, luscious oil-cured to rather dry, too-salty ones. Green olives are flavorful but tart, sometimes bitter, and rarely stuffed with pimiento.

Tomatoes (domates, doh-MAH-tess) & Cucumbers (salatalik, sah-LAH-tah-leek): in season, very good.

Cheese (peynir, pey-NEER): standard is beyaz peynir (white sheep’s milk cheese), the best being tam yagli (full fat), creamy, slightly salty and delicious.

Yogurt (yogurt, YOH-oort): Usually excellent! It’s most often the plain kind, freshly clabbered, not flavored or sugared (add your own sugar, if you like). The little plastic factory-filled containers of embalmed, sugary-fruit-goop-sweetened yogurt are beginning to appear on Turkish hotel breakfast buffets, though, so I guess nothing is sacred.

Meat (et, EHT): Hotels serving an international clientele may serve bacon and pork sausage, but in general you won’t find these meats on the breakfast tables of this Muslim country. What you’ll find is beef sausage or bologna, mostly cold, mysterious and boring.

Eggs (yumurta, yoo-moor-TAH): boiled yumurta with yolks ranging from liquid to petrified may be set out on breakfast buffets.

Tea (çay, CHAH-yee): usually good traditional Turkish tea brewed super-strong and meant to be cut with hot water to your desired color and strength (1:4 or even 1:5). Traditionally served only with sugar, but lemon often available for foreigners. There’s always milk for the coffee on the buffet so you can astound the waiters by putting some in your tea if you like.

Coffee (kahve, KAH-veh): breakfast coffee is not usually Turkish coffee but Fransiz (French) or Amerikan, meaning somewhat weaker, without the grounds lurking at the bottom of the cup. Or it may even be (shudder) instant (hazir kahve, neskafe). Surprisingly, non-Turkish kahve is often a disappointment, even in expensive places: often strong but rarely fragrant, with a dark, burnt (rather than roasted) flavor. It’s a mystery why. Good medium- and dark-roast coffee is sold in the markets, but brewing in the hotels often fails.

So much for the standard breakfast. Can you imagine your family putting on much weight with a breakfast like that each morning?