Istanbul in the snooooww--Turkey, day three

As lots of things are closed on Mondays and the snowy weather prevented us from doing anything else, today we visited one of Turkey's great sites--we went to the mall. There were errands that needed running, so we put on our snow boots (rule one of traveling in the winter: always bring your snow boots even if it doesn't seem worth it) and headed out. However, since shopping malls are not particularly interesting (fact: every store we entered was playing Maroon 5), this will likely just be a food appreciation post where I forget the names of everything.

We popped into many stores in a quest for a jacket for my grandma, but had to break empty-handed for lunch. Luckily for me, I've learned over the past few days that good vegetarian fare is not too difficult to find in Istanbul, not because there's a lot of vegetarianism necessarily but just because they don't eat as much meat here as in many other places I've been. Lunch (at a restaurant where the kitchen was nowhere in sight, a mystery I continue to puzzle over) consisted of spinach-filled pasta and yogurt and happiness.

I have this problem where sometimes I don't want to eat food when it's too pretty.

 After more errand-running (in search of a toaster, now!), we had tea and dessert.

Grandma made the mistake of trying to sample this before I took a picture. Also, if you were worried, most of this delicious chocolate-pastry-pistachio-cream monstrosity is leftover and currently in the refrigerator downstairs.

My grandmother enjoyed her favorite pistachio and coconut pudding. 

Well-employed pistachios have to be the most elegant nut. So green!

And our host had Turkish coffee and a sweet that I neglected to take a picture of. I really wish I liked coffee, because Turkish coffee seems super glamorous.

After all this, we took the metro (along with everyone else in this city who didn't want to deal with weather) back to the house and did some work and organizing and hiding from the snow. I always find that malls require a bit of a recovery period, but one more item remains on the food tour of the day: a late dinner. Our lovely hosts made this, the name of which I am blanking on but which was a phyllo-ish dough filled with spinach and magic. I've never tried to cook anything with this kind of pastry, but I shall have to try sometime.

It was also beautiful before it was sliced.

So really, all I accomplished today was sampling delicious food, which is something I hadn't done very much of yet due to sickness and about which I cannot complain.

Also, this happened at the mall:

The perfect souvenir: American flag drawer pulls.

Tomorrow hopefully the weather will cooperate and we can see some things that are slightly more historic than a shopping mall, and you can read about something slightly more interesting than my lunch. Happy Monday!