My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [113]
Which, ha! I knew this book was fucking torture.
In short?
It’s not me. It’s you(dora).223
And then . . . I opened a dictionary.
I wasn’t aware at first that tortuous means “full of twists and bends— circuitous” and not “causing one to feel tortured.” Yet I stand by my opinion.
After throwing my paperback across the room for the umpteenth time, I decided to rest my brain with a little television. That the television just so happened to be tuned into the premier episode of The Real World: Cancún was kismet.224
Which is really just an extremely TORTUOUS way of saying that back in my real world, I agree with Stacey about the belly dancers. “Yeah, I don’t want to eat a big plate of lamb with half-naked ladies showing off the kind of six-pack abs I’ll never achieve by eating big plates of lamb. And yes, will you please recruit the troops?”
Stacey’s in charge of rounding up our friends, so it’s my job to make the reservation. When I call, the hostess asks me if I want a regular table or if I want to sit on cushions on the floor. Naturally, I choose the floor.
We arrive around seven thirty to find that other than Gina, Stacey, Tracey, and me, the place is completely empty. At seven thirty. On a Thursday. We find this vaguely troubling.
I tell the hostess we have a reservation, and she looks all pensive for a moment, like she’s not sure if she can squeeze us in. Perhaps they’re expecting a tour bus of diners at any moment? Eventually she brings us to a spot in the front window. Our table stands about a foot off the ground and is made of some kind of hammered metal. There are a few layers of Persian rugs underneath, and it’s surrounded by a dozen pillows in various shades of crimson.225 We all stand there for a minute, quietly negotiating exactly who has the best knees and strongest back and is most able to climb up, over, around, and under to get into her place in the far corner. Tracey’s back surgery was more recent than Gina’s knee replacement, but somehow Tracey loses and gets stuck in the corner. Personally, I feel like I’m having hot flashes226 and insist on the end, since there’s better ventilation here.
Wanting to stay as authentic as possible, I order a glass of Turkish white wine, which tastes similar to a Sutter Home 2007 sauvignon blanc. Like, remarkably similar. Suspiciously similar. I’m not sure if this is a ruse or if shitty wine is an international phenomenon.
As Stacey’s the only member of our party who’s been to Turkey, we ask her to order for the table. Which isn’t to say that I find this menu intimidating. I can totally navigate it myself. There’s lamb, lamb, more lamb, and some chicken. Certainly I understand why there’s no pork, and secretly I’m disappointed there’s no turkey. I realize turkeys probably aren’t indigenous to Turkey, and yet a part of me wishes I could say I had Turkish turkey.
Come on. It’s funny.227
Regardless, I’m now a huge number-one-fan-with-a-big-foam-finger of Mediterranean food, and I’m learning that places like Turkey and Palestine and Israel have a ton of overlap in their cuisines, if not in ideology. They all pretty much feature the same kinds of dishes with slightly different labels, which makes me wonder if the whole Middle East schism isn’t some ancient, elaborate “tastes great” versus “less filling” scenario gone terribly awry.
We get a big sampler platter of hummus, stuffed grape leaves, olives and feta, and tabouleh, which is a finely chopped salad of mint, parsley, onion, tomato, and cracked wheat. I’m normally fussy about tabouleh because sometimes the wheat has the consistency of tiny rocks, and I feel like I’m eating sand.
We also get a plate of manti, a Turkish ravioli, filled with meat, tossed in tomato sauce, and drizzled with yogurt. Stacey said in Istanbul the manti were