How to eat cheap and healthy in Turkiye? Cumartarsi Bazaari!

Every Saturday down the street from the Superdorm is an outdoor farmers market where I try and do all of my grocery shopping for a week. Here I can by fresh fruits, vegetables, eggs, and sometimes meat and cheese. Glory to me because this place is as cheap as can be, and all the produce is fresh. Nowadays I try to cook and eat cheaply as much as possible. My current problem however is that none of my roommates have stuff to cook with, and they don't cook in general. So basically, if I wanted to cook in my own room I would have to buy the expensive hot plates, pans, and plates myself. I have bypassed this though by using other peoples stuff. I have relied primarily on Lessa, Caroline, and Emily for there stuff for the past couple of weeks. I typically just make myself a warm sandwich, cook up a chicken breast, make a fried egg, pasta, or, my personal favorite, a fried egg sandwich with cooked ham and cheese on it. Unfortunately, I have been concerned about recent health hazards, so I have done my best to avoid swine. So as a substitute I use Turkey (the bird) instead, which is Hindi in Turkish.

My favorite things to get at the market though are bananas, apples, oranges, strawberries, eggs, peaches, peynir (white cheese that is salty), onions, red pepper and an occasional fish. I feel like I'm for some reason at a higher level then most people at Bogaziçi when it comes to cooking. FYI: the only cooking I have done before coming here is frozen pizza. For one, very few of the Turks in the Superdorm cook at all. In fact it is all the foreign students that cook. Most of them don't even know how to, which baffles me because all it requires is for one to follow directions, and a little common sense. However, I have not resorted to trying to cook anything easy like microwavables (we don't have microwaves) or frozen pizza (it doesn't beat HomeRunInn pizza anyway). However, the Turks who reside in the Superdorm are more likely to be higher up in terms of social level/status then the average student and are perhaps not accustomed to cooking for themselves.

The one thing I miss though is the orange juice back in the states. The orange juice here tastes as if it is watered down. The fresh made orange juice you can get from any juicer is always a nice drink, but it is rarely chilled. Therefore, orange juice is rapidly becoming more dismal as the temperature increases. Among other things I miss, foodwise, is good Pizza, Chinese food, and Chipotle Burritos. One thing about Turkish food is that it is great. I love it, but it gets very boring after a while. Turkiye needs to diversify its cooking, and it needs to incorporate different recipes from different cultures. It needs deep dish Chicago Style Pizza!