Fennel

Today I m not in the mood to save the world, the world doesn t save me eather! :-))
Actually this polluted world makes me sick. Everytime I eat something outside the home, I get sick. I think, the hygenic standards are not very high here and I am prone to get easily sick for a long time...
But this was also not what I wanted to write. Actually I wanted to write about a plant, I have rediscovered here again.
Fennel. First I didn t like this plant, as I didn t know it really. The cheap and bad teabag I had drunk was not a culinary high point. Then I have eaten it once in a Viennese Restaurant and this was really good. Then my friend has cooked it once for us. And I fell in love with this plant. But afterwards I didn t see this plant. I have not eaten it for a long time.
I came across the fennel seeds and I have bought them immediately but I didn t use them much. As I like the bulbs more, cooked with olive oil, cheese and tomato. And this time I was surprised to see the leaves of this plant grown soo exuberant.
I am not sure if i have used the right adjective, I mean soo big. Now I have understood why they call it

'Arapsaçı' in turkish. It looks like wild hair, like a mane.?

Nettle

Yes, i couldn t write about nettle also because of technical problems. You can actually eat the younger leaaves of nettle with olive oil, lemon and salt. And if you want to, you can add some sugar and garlic to it... I have tried the first version, i mean without garlic and sugar. It was o.k. I have steamed them.
Well, you wouldn t eat this kind of things, if you wouldn t think of them, that they are somehow? healthy, as there are indeed more tasty things in the world to eat. But it was o.k., i mean it was better than the tea!!!!
I want to stress it, that young leaves are not very good for making tea. Tea of dried leaves are better, in my view.

Chun Mee Tea

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chun_Mee

I don t like the new design of Blogger tools and i have found the new writing tools of Wordpress better.
I had to make a new blog in Wordpress in 2011 March because of the ban of Blogger sites in Turkey by that time.
But I will never forget that in the year 2011 one turkish capitalist could ban all of the bloggers in Turkey, because of his allegedly financial lost through Blogger. This was possible through the turkish 'justice' system, which is most of the time at the side of  'the political strong and the rich' against poor and no-name individuals...
(By the way, i have thought of a very well known joke about turkish justice system; once the ministers of all countries came together and the turkish minister has seen a swiss marine minister and he has asked his
colleague, how and why Switzerland has a marine minister and the answer was; 'But you have also a justice minister.':-)))
So i am confused where i should make my little notices...anyway today I have remembered again of a  'çay', i didn t drink for a long time. 'Chun Mee'. Chun Mee is a kind of green tea, but has a little bit different taste.

Plant of the day:Sideritis

Today I have explored some new plants, that I have never seen in my life before, but drunk before as a tea. Actually I bought this tea out of curiosity and also because it has looked so nice. But the smell was terrible for me. I don t like this smell...It is too much nature:-)) It really smells like a goat or sth. like this, very animal like.

But the taste is better. I could remember it tasted like the tea we used to drink in 'Do-an' as  'Griechischer Bergtee' and it was it really! I have found the word (small written) 'Sideritis' on the package and looked for it in Wikipedia. But the turkish word was completely misleading: It is not  'Adaçayı'!

Meyan_Kökü_Süssholz

Das Wort Lakritze habe ich auf deutsch nie gehört, deswegen nehme ich das Wort  'süssholz', ob dieses Wörter dasselbe meinen; ich zweifle einbisschen daran trotzdem, sie haben Aehnlichkeiten wahrscheinlich.


From German Wikipedia:


'Die medizinische Wirkung der Süßholzwurzeln war schon in der Antike bekannt. Die Ägypter des Altertums schätzten Lakritze sehr und kannten ein Lakritzegetränk namens Mai sus. Theophrastos von Eresos, der um 350 v. Chr. lebte, schätzte Lakritze als Heilmittel gegen Husten und als Durstlöscher. Es soll daher zur Standardausrüstung der römischen Soldaten gezählt haben. Tim Richardson weist in seiner Geschichte der Süßigkeiten daraufhin, dass auch französische und türkische Soldaten im Ersten Weltkrieg Lakritze im Marschgepäck hatten.'