The Sugar Feast

It’s Ramadan in 4 months, my favourite time of the year, especially The Sugar Feast on the end of the month.

First, let me give you some information about what Ramadan exactly is. You can compare it to the fasting period before Easter, but way more strict. At Ramadan, muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, for one whole month. This is the 9th month of the islamic calender. After sunset, at “iftar” we eat lots of delicious food at home, or at events to eat all together.

Now the part where we celebrate the end of Ramadan, The Sugar Feast, or in Arabic “Eid-Al-Fitr”

This feast is about 1-3 days, it depends on how your family celebrates it. To prepare us for this day, we go shopping and buy new clothes or put our prettiest clothes on, have our hands decorated with henna, but when you have guests coming over, you have to think about all the food that you have to prepare. Here are some typical dishes we eat at The Sugar Feast:

The most popular one is baklava, some families make it themselves, but most people just order it from a Turkish bakery.

Another famous sweet is Turkish Delight or ‘lokum’ in Turkish.

This ‘dish’ is not sweet, but it is on of my favourites. Sarma is rice and minced meat with a lot of other herbs, wrapped up in a vineleaf. It’s really worth the try.

Şekerpare is one of the very popular sweets eaten at The Sugar Feast. These are soft balls of almond based dough, dipped in syrup with a little almond on top.

Do you want to know more about Turkish sweets and different feasts of my culture? Then keep following our blog for more!

• Leyla