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| Hungarian style bacon -- with meat and pickle This was freaking delicious -- the tips are crunchy and the rest is just fat that melts in your mouth |
So much to cover -- but as Meliss and I want to remember what this experience was like on a day to day basis we thought it fitting to devote at least one entry entirely to what we eat here. As we prepared to come to Hungary, we tried to research the foods we would be eating. Everything we read led us to believe that the Hungarian diet consisted of heavy spices and lots of river fish. It is safe to assume that Meliss was both horrified about her eating prospects and excited about dropping a few lbs.
Turns out that the food IS heavily spiced, but mainly with paprika -- which isn't necessarily spicy. In fact, much to the dismay of my palette (and Melissa's ass), most of the food is really quite bland.
Everything is quite orange after paprika spice is added...but it doesn't seem to add much more than color. Now, I can find spicy paprika (eros) and it does have a good kick to it. I think it would be really good with some butter and chicken wings -- and as soon as I figure out how to say chicken wings, I will buy some from the butcher.
As for the fish, well Hungarians eat much more pork (like snout to tail style) than anything else and that is alright by us!
Anyway, one of the (many) first things we needed to figure out when we arrived in Sarkad was what we were going to eat. There is a pizza joint at the base of the apartment complex as well as one full-blown restaurant down the street. There are also several hamburger stands -- but they are not very good.
Besides, we can't afford to eat out every night so home cooking is a must. We took inventory and had several pots but only one pan.
We have become quite the rice/potato/pasta connoisseurs. Basically, every night we have onions and garlic with either pasta, potatoes, or rice. Throw in some kind of meat (chicken or pork) with lots of paprika, sour cream, salt and pepper (white pepper til it runs out because I didn't realize that's what I was buying), and we are good to go!
But first, we had to figure out how to buy all this stuff -- not so easy.
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| All kinds of meat we had to learn |
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| CBA produce section -- less gnats and fruit flies |
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| Assorted fruits and veggies |
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| And the rest of the market (CBA) |
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| Milk -- just sitting in the middle of the store |
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| Meat counter at REAL |
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| Sausages at CBA |
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| Tesco aisles |
I suppose I can't go forward without mentioning the first real thing we purchased in Hungary -- a cutting board. We moved in and found a wood cutting board that pretty much disintegrated in my hand when I picked it up. For a few weeks we just used chunks of it to cut parts of meat and veggies, but it wasn't really a tenable option for the long term.
It just so happpened that on the way home from one of our trips to Békescsaba we had to wait for our bus back to Sarkad. We had to go to Békescsaba several times with Sylvia to take care of all of our paperwork -- residency permits and work visas, etc. Each trip was about as pleasant as going to the DMV with the added bonus of it being in a different language.
Across the street from the bus station was an OBI (we didn't know what the hell it was) and so we went in and walked around (it's a lot like Lowe's).
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| Great! Now I am not handy in two languages |
But, they did have cutting boards -- they had pans too, but we were surviving with the one we had so decided on just the cutting board.
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| Dreaming of cutting food stuffs without them flying all over the place! Who am I kidding? I'm still in short sleeves, I was dreaming of not being hot anymore. It's cold now -- I wish I could have this weather again! |
Back to the food -- and my favorite meal we made at home thus far -- problem is I can't remember exactly how I made it!
That looks like just about every meal we have at home in some way shape or form. Unless, we include eggs.  | ||
| Big orange eggs. |
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Big orange egg, pork chop (karaj) and potato, onion and garlic |
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| Breakfast for dinner Eggs, potato, onions, garlic and BACON!!! Buying bacon is a whole other headache |
We have bought bacon a few times but bacon comes in a several different forms. The bacon above was kind of in a Canadian bacon type form. It looked good in the window so we bought it. Came home typed the name of it in the computer translator and realized we bought bacon!
The last time I bought bacon we got it home and realized there was no meat to it at all. I asked for the same thing...I know I said the same word...and the butcher just turned around and hacked a slice off some slab hanging up behind him. Got it home, unwrapped it, and we just had bacon fat.
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| Bacon fat -- we just cut it up and use it instead of oil |
After a few weeks, we were eating well enough but something was missing. No green! We had eaten kaposta salata (cabbage salad -- somewhat similar to coleslaw {the oil and vinegar kind}) at restaurants and at my school so we decided we could probably make that. We stopped at one of a few little veggie stands along the road in Sarkad and picked up some cabbage (not one of my favorite veggies) and some cucumber along with some vinegar from Tesco.
We cut up the cucumber (it was actually zucchini the first time but these are mistakes we just get used to -- long green vegetable? Must be cucumber...nope) and an onion, threw it in a container with some vinegar and water, and we had a nice vegetable mix to pour over some cabbage -- and the zucchini tasted fine.
Plus, I got to see this!
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| Look Grandma, Melissa's cooking!!! |
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| Raise your hand if you ever thought you'd see this!!! |
That opened the door to a whole new set of dinner options -- like pretty much all the same stuff we had been eating but with a salad on the side.
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| Now we're talking! But, we don't just eat at home...or at least I don't...because I get a free school lunch! Melissa's school does not serve food. Instead all the kids and teachers just bring food and eat all day. Many times the teachers will go out to lunch at 2:00 (14:00) and have what they call menü. Menü is just a lunch special for the day. Most, if not all, restaurants offer it. They just put a sign out for whatever the meal is that day and that's the only option. I assume my school serves lunch because there aren't that many places to eat here in Sarkad. But, a free lunch is a free lunch! |
Sometimes it's good -- like when they have chicken or fish. Sometimes, it's not so good -- like when they have gyulmolcs leves (fruit soup). It tastes like apple pie...kind of, but not in a good way. It has the taste of assorted fruits but the texture of soup and it's warm. My teachers and students say it's better when chilled. Actually, my students say it is "phooey."
Melissa and I switched schools for a week and she got to experience a similar dish called forest soup. This was a soup made from the different berries one can find in the forest...and there was a piece of chicken in it.
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| Chicken and forest soup...and Meliss ate it!! That's a quarter at least!!! |
Other examples of school food...
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| Liver and veggie soup -- not one of our favorites |
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| Noodles and onions with bread |
Ok, so Sylvia made a point to mention to us that the school serves a lot of traditional Hungarian dishes, but if we didn't like them to make sure to try them at a restaurant because, you know, school food and all.
I've had some really good meals at school and some I could do without. Most importantly, I never leave hungry because every lunch includes two big bowls of food -- sometimes those two big bowls are both soup, sometimes it's soup and some meat dish. Either way, I at least like one of the two and the lunch ladies enjoy getting my take on all of them (which consists of frowns or smiles while pointing at each dish).
On occasion, we do treat ourselves to a night out at the one full-fledged restaurant in Sarkad, Avar Vendeglo. If we both get a meal and two glasses of wine it costs about 20 dollars...and we can eat on the leftovers for a few days.
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| A-var VEN-day-glu |
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| We knew it was a nice place to eat because of the quality of bikes parked outside...we're not joking about that. |
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| Always the place settings first -- and that is one single ply napkin they give you |
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| Meliss in full-on Lynn Kasten pose (Meliss: did not work, forgot how to do it) |
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| Fried pork cutlet and fries We had the same thing in Vienna, it's just called wiener schnitzel (viener) |
And fried pork stuffed with cheese and ham  |
| Mmmmmmm |
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| Yeah, it was good -- and good for about two days after this! But, how did we know what to order, you ask? |
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| Ok, they had an English menu too -- very surprising and very welcome! |
And dessert? There was a couple behind us that ordered something so we just pointed at it and told our waiter "kettö," which is two (except it's not an umlaut over the "o" it's quotation marks and I don't know how to do that on the computer).
We got two of these.
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| It was half parts rice pudding and flan. It was all parts un-good. |
Back to food though, and speaking of things Melissa doesn't like, she went to menü with her faculty a few times and ended up with some odd meals.
One day, she got this...
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| She ate a bite of hot dog looking (heavy on the looking because Meliss says it did not taste remotely like a hot dog) thing, but none of the flour/lard/fat soup |
Another time, we both went and shared a bowl of chicken soup.  |
| Chicken soup...the bowl fed four and then we got to the bottom... |
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| Wish we would have seen this sooner When we tell our Hungarian friends about this they say, "Oh, well I always take the nails off before serving." Yeah, like that's the problem! |
Outside of that, we just walk around and find places to eat when we're hungry...or thirsty.
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| Truth in advertising...finally |
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| The more the pictures, the more we understand. Early on, we were walking around Gyula and stopped at a restaurant for dinner. I had fish soup and Melissa had onion soup. |
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| Fish soup -- carp in paprika broth, loved it. |
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| Onion soup -- not French onion, just onion -- and couldn't really find the onions? |
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| That peach picture is just a front -- it doesn't taste like peaches. It tastes like burning. |
Ok, so basically that's what we eat on a daily basis. Most days we are at home eating rice, onions, garlic and whatever meat we know how to translate.
Oh, and after eating all of that -- well, you might need this!
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| Haha! |
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