The Turkish Cuisine

Part of the Ottoman heritage is the Turkish cuisine where dishes, flavours and spices differ from region to another. The east of Turkey is known for its kebab such in Urfa, Adana and Gaziantep, north of Turkey the Black Sea is known for its corn, cornbread, tea  and anchovies, the Marmara, Aegean and Mediterranean will display basic characteristics of Mediterranean cuisine such vegetables, herbs and fish. The Central Anatolia is well known for its pastry delicacy. It can be observed that various regions of the Ottoman Empire contain bits and pieces of the vast Ottoman dishes, indeed created a vast array of technical specialities.
Turkish Breakfast:  Freshly baked white bread, White cheese, kasar cheese, olives, slices of cucumber, slices of tomatoes, boiled eggs, jams, honey, salami(beef sausage), soup (in some region) and lots of black tea.
Lunch & Dinner: Soup, salad, selection of meze (hot and cold starters) choice of fish, kebab, shish kebab or cooked meal casserole. Some dishes are named after a city or region such as Adana kebab, Urfa kebab and Tokat kebab.
Turks love vegetables eating them fresh in summer and pickling them for winter.
Desserts: Baklava, fresh fruit, tavuk göğsü (a sweet, milk pudding dessert with very thinly peeled chicken breast is added to give a chewy texture), Künefe (shredded pastry with layer of melted cheese in between and it is served hot with pistachio or walnut).

The Carpet and its beauty
The double-knotted style carpet goes back between the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC, originated in central Asia including Anatolia. The Seljuk introduced the hand woven techniques to Anatolia in the 12th century.
Carpet is mostly made by women expressing their artistic designs and patterns according to their events and emotions in their daily life. However, it is important to note that   freedom of expression is the basis of innovation in art.
A woven carpet is produced on a loom similar to woven cloth and is a cut pile. Normally many coloured yarns are used and this process is capable of producing intricate patterns from pre-determined designs. These carpets are normally the most expensive.
A good carpet will increase in value with age and proper care, often its purchase for a life time and when correctly maintained will resist for generations.
• TURKISH KNOT:  Tied around two adjacent warp threads.
• WARP: Comprising the structure, parallel wrap yarns run the length of the rug and are interlaced with wefts. The weft yarns are more closely than the warps.
• WEFT & WEFT-FACED: The yarns woven horizontally through the warps
• SOUMAK: A flat weave carpet made from a technique that produces a herringbone effect.
• WHIP STITCH: A stitch used to over case and to lock the final weft in rug ends.
• PLAIN WEAVE: The simplest interlacing of warp and weft.
• MEDALLION: The large enclosed portion of design, usually in the centre. Typical shapes are diamonds, octagons and hexagon.
• TAPESTRY WEAVE: Any Variety of weaves where the pattern is created by ground wefts that do not run from end to end.
• CHAIN STITCH: A crochet stitch used in carpet making, that consist of successive loops to lock the final weft in place and knots from unravelling.

The Blue Mosque is one of the most prominent landmarks of Istanbul, especially when viewed from the First Hill or from the Asian shore of the Sea of Marmara. It is very impressive with its beautiful domes and semidomes, nice courtyards and six slender minarets.

The Blue Mosque was founded by Sultan Ahmet I. He ordered Architect Mehmed Aga to begin constuction in 1609 and the whole complex was completed in 1616. The location of the mosque is just opposite of the splendid Church of Hagia Sophia as it is trying to compete with it. That is actually true because Architect Mehmed wanted to construct a bigger dome then Hagia Sophia's but he could not succeed. Instead, he made the mosque splendid by the perfect proportion of domes and semidomes as well as the splendid minarets. There is an interesting story of the mosque; according to it, Sultan Ahmet I wanted to have a minaret made of gold which is "altin" in Turkish. The architect misunderstood him as "alti" which means "six" in English. However, when the architect was shivering as "am I going to be beheaded?", the Sultan Ahmed I liked the minarets so much. Prior to that time, no sultan had a mosque with 6 minarets.

Hagia Sophia,  - the Holy Wisdom Temple, now known as the Ayasofya Museum, was an early Christian Church [1] and later an Eastern Orthodox church which was transformed into a mosque in 1453 by the Turks, [2] and converted into a museum in 1935. It is located in Istanbul, Turkey. It is regularly considered one of the greatest and most beautiful buildings in history. Its conquest by the Ottomans at the fall of Constantinople is considered one of the great tragedies of Christianity by the Greek Orthodox faithful.

The name means "Church of the Holy Wisdom of God". It is also known as Sancta Sophia in Latin and Ayasofya in Turkish. Although it is sometimes called "Saint Sophia" in English, it is not named after a saint named Sophia — the Greek word sofia means "wisdom." It was constructed in five years, from 532 to 537, at the orders of Emperor Justinian I and designed by Isidore of Miletus.

The mosque is featured in the 1963 James Bond film From Russia With Love where Bond's lover Tatiana Romanova slips Bond small blueprints of Istanbul's Russian consulate where Bond needs to steal the Lektor communication device. The Hagia Sophia is also seen in background shots in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough.