Some beans are more beautiful than others...

It's market day today in Ayvalik, which has the largest outdoor market in the north Aegean. Ayvalik is famous in Turkey for its produce - the quality of the fruit, vegetables, olives, cheese and honey produced on the fertile coastal plain, and in the mountains behind, is exceptional.

Today I bought tomatoes, courgettes, red and green peppers, barbunya (mottled pink & white borlotti beans), tiny new potatoes, dill, mint, parsley, rocket, artichoke hearts, apricots and a big bag of sweet, glossy, dark red Napoleon cherries.

Ayvalik is also famous for its Aegean olive oil cookery - Zeytinyagli - and later I'm going to use the artichokes and borlotti beans to cook my version of a favourite Aegean dish, Artichokes Stuffed with Fresh Broad Beans (Zeytinyagli iç Baklali Enginar).

The beautiful pink and white borlotti beans are one of the great pleasures of the summer here, both to look at and to eat, and I've just spent half an hour out in the courtyard, enjoying sitting in the shade of the olive tree, shelling the borlotti beans, and thinking about ithis, that and the other.