Don't eat the f**ing corn!
I must stress this loud and clear, don't eat it! In Istanbul, for 50Turkish Lira (50p), you can buy a hot and delicious looking piece of corn from one of the many street vendors. I say 'looking' as when you bite into it, like I did, I almost vomited as it stank and was rotten!

After my Turkish friend pulled out my first piece, I did ask him to dump it back into his bubbling pot and find me another piece that didn't have a black tail. He pulled out a few that were all the same and reassured me that they were fine. I thought that maybe it was a Turkish thing to have a brown tip?!

I soon realised that the water was probably boiling street rats at the bottom of it too and that the corn had fallen off a truck about 6mths ago and these street vendors then sell it off to stupid tourists, like me! After my horrific bite I spat it out in disgust and then Kat decided she didn't believe me and took a bite too. Bad move, she hurled her bite into the nearest tree - people were staring. It was so awful an experience that we immediately laughed as I probably would cry if I knew how old that corn and water was.

I love corn on the cob and did have an amazing one off a street vendor in Budapest, Hungary a few years ago (you can read about it here) so didn't think I would need my stomach pumped after purchasing this one. Well, lesson learned!

Hungarian snacks -yellow, boiled and delicious

The people of Hungary are a healthy bunch; could this be due to the lack of crisps and snack foods during the communist era? Not sure. Well you know how we have local shops chock full of crisps and every type of fatty food on every corner in the UK. After spending a few days in Budapest I realised that there aren't too many shops like this to be found. They have street vendors selling freshly boiled corn on the cob everywhere. Wonderfully healthy and tasty and such a great snack this was something I think London or any city, for that matter, needs.
So after enjoying the hot thermal baths in Budapest, I worked up a little hunger, and when I emerged corn on the corn on the cob seller filled that feeling, then walking around during the national holiday weekend sightseeing and enjoying the celebrations of their first king, St. Stephen I then had another lovely cob -freshly boiled by a very friendly looking man who had a queue for quite a while and for only 200Forint (50p) it was a healthy bargain.

Although I wasn't really observing closely I think that Hungarians are quite fit people, so maybe instead of indulging on a packet of crisps people opt for a corn on the cob? Maybe this is what Jamie Oliver should start up -fast food corn on the cob trucks/concessions.

But it is not all healthy as I discovered a little too late, at the national holiday celebrations on the riverbank I went to purchase a chicken kebab and what I thought were onions in between each piece of chicken was actually pig fat. Ildi -my Hungarian friend told me this after I couldn't figure out what vegetable or onion type this was?? I must say it was tasty but a tad tooooo fattening and debated trying to pick it out, but as they say, 'when in Rome'....so I ate it.

Am walking to work tomorrow -at a brisk pace!