In a nearby town there was a local outdoor market on Fridays. Everyone seemed to show up – buying, selling, exchanging and conversing. You could find everything from clothes to power tools and quail eggs to live chickens. Lauren and I were most excited about the fresh produce, and made a beeline for those stalls.

Need a chain for your boat? We got that.

Mountains of fresh parsley and dill

Tomatoes, eggplant, fruit – everything you could ever want.

The fruit was the most notable. The best strawberries I’ve ever had – fresh, small and packed with flavor. We got 2kg for 14 Lira, about $4. That’s less than a dollar per pound. Incredible. Every exchange was happening in Turkish, but we managed to make it work with the basics we knew, and plenty of pointing!

Proud owner of a mountain of strawberries

If you know me, you know why I was excited by this stand.

What do you do when you have kilos and kilos of fruit you couldn’t possibly eat? Make jam, of course! After a laborious pitting and pruning operation we had the stove full, cooking down three different pots. Sour cherry, strawberry-basil-balsamic (my favorite), and strawberry-peach.

Slightly less fruit after all the sampling that was happening

Jam cooking down

The final product. Well worth the effort!