Saturday, July 02, 2011

Mulberry adventures, trips to Turkey

I've never seen so many mulberry trees in my life and so many mulberries. At home, in the Santa Monica's farmers market, fresh mulberries sell at a premium and even so there's so little of it. But in Turkey, thanks to the Silk road, mulberry trees came to Europe and Anatolia from China. One would expect to see silk worms munching on the leaves but not so, they are silk worm free. They fill the trees and the ground is just filled with them. Everywhere we hiked we would munch on fresh mulberries that we have just plucked from the nearby trees. We see farmers covering the ground with plastic tarp to collect the berries that fall and everywhere these berries are being dried. Walked into any store, fresh mulberries are sold by the bushel and dried mulberries fill store shelves. I've seen life silk worms being sold in markets in China and there would be fresh mulberry leaves accompanying these worms.

 These are black mulberries and they are actually quite rare in Turkey.


 The white mulberry tree is the most common. We were visiting an old Georgian church up in the mountains and around it were mulberry trees. As I stepped out of the taxi, I noticed them and I yelled at the boys, 'look fresh mulberries'. I started to feast on them. For the next few days, in Yusufeli, there would be too many mulberry trees to count.

 Here is Ari tasting his first mulberry.

There are trays of mulberries drying out in the sun everywhere in Yusufeli. I bought some to take home. It was last year in Cappadocia that I first tasted dried mulberries. I've loved it ever since.

No comments: