Monday 3 August 2009

Random Turkish Fact #5

Turks believe it's a sin to throw away bread.

Not a light-hearted Petshop Boys sin, but a serious sin worthy of celestial punishment. For this reason, you'll often see plastic bags of stale bread hanging next to rubbish bins.

Perhaps they're hoping someone will make use of it (though I'm not sure what your guests will say when you tell them you made the bread pudding out of stale bread found in a carrier next to the skip). Or perhaps they're deferring the punishment to someone else (after all, someone's eventually going to have to bin it). Thus it's probable that all Turkish dustmen are going to hell.

5 comments:

Ardent said...

That is quite interesting.

My mum used to make us eat our crusts when we were little, saying that it was a waste to have them thrown out when there are so many people starving in the world. But she did not mention celestial punishment.:)

When my son was little and I would take him to play sport, a Lebanese lady told me that if you throw out bread and food in the next life you will be looking for that food in rubbish bins.

Well to put my mind at ease, I never ever throw out food. I have chickens in the back yard and they eat all our left overs. In fact they are a wonderful recycle machines, in return I get beautiful and tasty eggs.
:)

Nomad said...

Chickens in the yard were my grandparents way of keeping the ticks at bay, as well. Between Dogs, cats, chickens and hogs, there was very little waste on your average farm when my parents were growing up.
Ardent reminds me of something else. My parents were obsessive about canning and having a vegetable garden, even when we were in the suburbs. No pool for us! My mother canned tomatoes and all manner of produce, despite the fact that it probably was cheaper to buy them in the market. I guess it was a result of growing up in the Depression. How long will it take for this trend to return, I wonder.

Ardent said...

Nomad, I also have a Veggie garden because I love to eat and feed my family organic food. I have not started bottling tomatoes yet, but that can be my next step.

This old Macedonian man down the street taught me how to grow and prune tomatoe plants. He comes around to give my veggie garden an inspection because he is retired and it gives him something to do. Last summer he got a shock of his life because he said that my tomatoes were growing much better and with more vitality than his plants. I was very proud of that!

PS. No pool for my place either. It is a waste of space.:))

This Cat's Abroad said...

They do it in Morocco as well - it's an Islamic thing. If you don't mind my quoting from one of my old blogs: "Thanks to the prophet Mohammed, bread is imbued with a sacredness that prohibits its leftovers from being discarded haphazardly; with a brief prayer it must be set out of the path of oncoming and disrespectful feet. It is therefore not uncommon to see bags of bread (in various states of consumption) hugging the edges of Rabat's walls and gardens."

Wojtek said...

I'm from Poland and in Poland we do the same :-)