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The farmer's market on Wednesday is proving to be a good source of Instagram photos. Last week, organic vegetable shopping was enhanced by a couple dancing the tango between the stalls, this week two ladies were making karabaş macun, French Lavender paste. They picked all the flowers off the stalks (which are saved to make tea), then steeped the flowers in boiling water for a couple of minutes.
The strained flowers were added to pekmez, molasses and boiled until jam consistency was reached and then ground and toasted sesame and walnuts were stirred in. Allowed to cool and bottled, this blend is marketed as a cure for just about everything but especially migraines. Recent research suggests that fiercely boiled molasses is not as good for us as we thought so I'd be inclined to mix the strained flowers into raw honey rather than this traditional recipe.
Another bonus was a stall selling large bunches of wild tulips. It's been many years since I've seen this many in one place so the odd winter weather which wasn't very conducive to human happiness must have been just right for these gorgeous wild flowers.
