By Victoria Khroundina | December 2, 2013
We at Cornucopia were delighted to receive an email from Beyhan Uzunçarşılı last week giving news that Gümüşdere is no longer under threat from ISKI, the city’s water supply and sanitation administrator, building a water-treatment plant that would destroy hectares and hectares of land, and put the area’s agricultural livelihood...
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Culinary Arts, History, News
16th-century remedies for ailing plants: a workshop with Aleksandar Shopov
By Victoria Khroundina | September 8, 2013
A small but attentive group gathered in the beautiful
bostan (garden) behind the Belgrade Church in Yedikule (above) last Sunday (September 1) to hear a talk on 16th-century remedies for ailing plants by Aleksandar Shopov – the PhD candidate at Harvard University who has spent the last month or so...
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Culinary Arts, History, News
Northern Forests Defence Camp
By CORNUCOPIA BLOG | September 6, 2013
The bid to save the ‘lungs of Istanbul’ – the city’s northern forests – continues. An initiative calling itself the Northern Forest Defence is organising a two-day camp this weekend (September 7 and 8) at a campsite in the coastal village of Riva in Beykoz (above) on the Black Sea. Don’t be...
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Culinary Arts, History, News
Archaeobotany workshop with Dr Chantel White
By Victoria Khroundina | August 17, 2013
Cornucopia’s editor John Scott gave his keen observations of last Wednesday’s archaeobotany workshop at Yedikule
bostans (gardens) with Dr Chantel White in yesterday’s blog. Today I will take you through Chantel’s own observations.
The area of the Yedikule gardens marked on a map of Istanbul A bit of background: the...
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Culinary Arts, History, News, Talks and Lectures
By Victoria Khroundina | August 8, 2013
Last Sunday I was invited to do
iftar (the Ramazan evening breakfast) with a very special community – part of a solidarity event being held for the farmers of Gümüşdere in their village on the Black Sea (beyond Sarıyer, on the European side of the Bosphorus, at the northernmost point...
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Culinary Arts, News
By Victoria Khroundina | July 31, 2013
The Yedikule saga continues. Although there has hardly been a peep out of Turkish media this week, some international proponents are expressing their concerns – good, they need to be heard. I went to check out what has been happening to the Yedikule
bostans since the construction trucks rolled in,...
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Culinary Arts, News, Gezi Protests
The threat to Istanbul’s oldest gardens
By John Scott | July 21, 2013
There has been little international reporting on Istanbul this week. No news not good news. The assault on Turkey’s heritage is unrelenting. One report that did come out concerned the city’s famous Theodosian land walls, which we reported on last week. The article, by the
New Yorker writer Elif Batuman, is...
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Culinary Arts, News, Gezi Protests
High tables and low: the first iftar in Taksim
By Cornucopia Blog | July 10, 2013
Monday night saw dozens of members of Taksim Solidarity – that wicked band of senior militants (men and women, grey-haired academics and the like) – being wrestled into a police bus (rather more than wrestled in the case of one of them – it took four well-built men, one per...
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Culinary Arts, News, Gezi Protests
The ongoing destruction of Istanbul's cultural heritage
By John Scott | July 8, 2013
YEDİKULE YEDİKULE YEDİKULE! Before reading this, fling open your window, fill your lungs with air and bellow '
Yedikule!' three times very fast. For anyone in earshot who ever called Istanbul home, it will bring a tear to the eye. Now sit down and brace yourself. This is yet another sad...
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Architecture, Culinary Arts, History, News, Gezi Protests, Travel
By Claire Bangser | December 12, 2012
In a guest post on the Cornucopia blog, Claire Bangser from the Balyolu team explores the sweeter side of Kars, a border town in far-eastern Turkey, famously portrayed as cold and bleak in Orhan Pamuk's novel 'Snow'. In a village in northeastern Turkey, a bee-keeper died this spring at...
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Culinary Arts, Travel
By Christopher Ryan | June 18, 2012
Founded in 2003 by Alp Toruner, Büyülübağ Winery, on the island of Avşa in the Sea of Marmara, is one of a new breed of quality Turkish wine producers, making modern wines by traditional methods and using local grapes as well as more familiar varieties. Walking from Avşa ferryport, the way across...
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Culinary Arts, Travel
By Michael Hornsby | March 4, 2012
Pro Wein March 4 – 6, 2012, Düsseldorf, Germany Going to Pro Wein in Dusseldorf? Make sure you visit the Wines of Turkey pavilion where 11 top Turkish vineyards will be exhibiting. There will be guided tastings on Sunday and Monday with Master Sommelier Hendrik Thoma and ‘Kitchen Geurilla’ Koral...
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Culinary Arts
By Cornucopia | March 25, 2011
Ah,
işkembe (not sure what it is? See Cornucopia 20). A true divider of people, between those who revel in its warming silkiness and efficacy as a hangover cure, and those who are horrified at the slippery texture and faint whiff of wet dog. Istanbul Arts Diary has its fair...
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Culinary Arts
By Cornucopia | March 17, 2011
Victor Ananias, the founder of Turkish organic association Buğday, died at the age of 40 on 2 March. Of mixed Chilean-Turkish parentage, he was born in Switzerland and grew up in Germany, before moving to Turkey with his family during his teens. Beginning in 1990 with a stall selling organic...
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Culinary Arts
By Michael Hornsby | February 27, 2011
We'd like to say a big thank you to the organizers of the inaugural Wines of Turkey tasting and conference event at Vinopolis in London on Thursday, and to all the Cornucopia subscribers who came along too. With a program that included eight producers offering samples of their winey wares,...
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Culinary Arts, Talks and Lectures
By Michael Hornsby | February 7, 2011
Here at Cornucopia our fondness for a glass of good wine is no great secret. For years we've extolled the virtues of Turkish viniculture and towards the bottom of this page you can find a list of reviews for which volunteers have ever so reluctantly raised a hand, and then a...
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Culinary Arts, Talks and Lectures
