Shorty Fire Burning on the Stove-Top

Today I ventured into Istanbul's old city, Sultanahmet, where I got free postcards, accidentally got a kid arrested maybe, faked being a German tourist, was exposed as a faux-Touristin, made my first out-of-control tourist purchase, then returned to my flat and successfully cooked! The cooking was the best and most exciting part, so I'll focus on that.

Background: My flatmate peer-pressured/tricked me into exchanging meals with him while I was still jetlagging and not on par with my excuses and pardons. I sent multiple frantic emails to every spatula owner I knew and came away with two gems of advice:

• "...learn how to cook how the locals cook. It doesn't have to be authentic Turkish food, but if you can make meals with the ingredients they use over there you'll save a ton of money." -submitted by Margit "my diet makes people cry" Christenson via email

• "Make pancakes. Everyone likes pancakes." -submitted by Anne Kathleen Scholten Dutton via Skype
  

Advice in mind, I made Turkish Zucchini Pancakes and they turned out awesomely and I'm consequently feeling real good about myself right now. Then the Germans who live in the flat beneath ours invited us over for ice cream and smuggled Milka caramel chocolate. It is understandable that I faked deutsch-hood, ja?

(Point of clarification: this was not the incident where I was pretending to be German.)