Paprikas Krumpli

Paprikas Krumpli (Paprika Potato) is definitely my favourite Hungarian recipe. How I got the recipe is innately tied to how I got to Hungary.

Coming to Hungary was at the same time both very easy and very difficult. As anyone who's ever tried to get a legal working visa in a European Union (EU) country knows, it's ridiculously hard. For American's its usually easier to try and request citizenship if your grandparents immigrated to the US. For those of us whose ancestors came over earlier, we're kinda screwed. The difficulties comes from a pact that the EU countries follow, in order to hire someone from outside the EU, the employer must prove that no one in the EU is qualified for the job.

While I was still searching for a job I became more and more aware of programs who could place you in Europe, however they usually came with pretty steep program fees. After a month of applying I found an opportunity to come to Europe through the Central European Teaching Program (CETP). The program fee was difficult, however I knew without a doubt that I wanted to go back to Europe and Hungary seemed like a fine choice.

Part of coming through CETP meant mandatory orientation. We stayed at a wonderful hostel near the Danube in Pest.

It came with wonderful wall art.

In the kitchen of the hostel, the recipe was written on the wall near the ceiling, circling the room. (Forgive me I seemed to have forgotten to take a picture of it). The recipe seemed easy enough and I decided it would be the first Hungarian food I'd cook.

When I moved into my apartment I was without internet or cable for about 3 weeks :-(  However it did give me time to perfect my Paprikas Krumpli. Here are pictures of nearly all the steps.

First chop up some onion, the recipe didn't actually give any quantities so I just guessed. Since I really like cooked onions I chopped up three small ones.

A fellow American expat told me that when cooking in Hungary you generally use one pot/sauce pan and just add everything to it. I can live with that, less dishes. While my onions where browning I chopped up the other ingredients.

The jar at the top left of the table is some paprika that my wonderful coworker gave me cause Lidl didn't have any. Next to it is a pepper mill, two chopped up sausage links, two chopped peppers & two chopped tomatoes, three medium potatoes sliced, and my phone with the recipe open. Also pictured are my tools! The cheapest peeler ever (yay IKEA!) and my only chopping knife.

 

After the onions were cooked, but not quite browned I added the chopped sausage. The recipe said to brown the sausage for five minutes.

Pretend this is a picture where 

the tomato and pepper has

been added and the sausage

is slightly brown. Then 

pretend there is another

picture with pepper and

paprika added.

After the peppers and tomatoes are added to the mixture it needs to cook for 15 minutes. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to mix it or not but I did cause it started to stick on the bottom of the pot. I added five-ish grinds of pepper and about two tablespoons (no idea what that is in metric) of paprika. The recipe did call for salt but I don't like salt, so I didn't add any.

After fifteen minutes I added the sliced potato and covered it with water. The temperature was then turned up so that the water would boil off, both cooking the potatoes and creating a sauce. This part takes forever.

Ta-da! Paprikas Krumpli! I did it! At least I think I did it, I don't have anything to compare it to. Maybe one day I'll get really ambitious and cook it for a Hungarian friend. Until then I'm going with: I'm awesome cause I can cook Hungarian food!

Mangalica Festival! Cause all curly haired pigs need to be celebrated!

I've been fortunate in so many ways recently. Particularly that I have lots of awesome new people in my life who've helped me get accumulated to this wonderful country. I also have a small but strong group of fellow foreigners who I've been able to work out cultural confusion with. For these reasons it wasn't until my fourth weekend here that I found myself wandering around the city on my own.

So I tired to live like the locals do, I went to a festival. It seems that Budapest and Hungary in general have a constant stream of festivals. My first was the Mangalica Festival, it celebrates the curly haired pig. Many of you, like myself might find yourself wondering, what is a curly haired pig?

These are curly haired pigs:

When I arrived at the festival I expected to see many stalls with pigs roaming about, however I found only one with the pigs sectioned off in different groups. The signs might have explained the difference but believe it or not, I'm not able to read Hungarian yet. 

Fortunately there were some random English signs.

As I continued to wander around the festival I had a serious of "damn, I just moved to Hungary" moments. I don't know how else to describe them. I think its common when you move to a foreign country, or at least it's common for me. They mostly occur when I see something that is very different from what I grew up with or when I see something that uniquely belongs to the culture I'm currently living in. 

 The festival took place at szabadság tér (Freedom Square in English) in Pest. As I was wondering I suddenly turned and saw the top of Parliament (the building I most strongly associate with Budapest) in the distance. I've also been learning a lot about Hungary's history, seeing the monument on the right helped me understand the history in a more personal way. Yeah books are great but sometimes I need to see something to bring home it's importance.

The more I wandered through the festival the more I realized the festival was like about the actual pig and more about the pigs' meat. Everywhere I turned there were stands selling bacon, sausage, fried pig fat (unfortunately I'm positive that's what it was), and a variety of hot pork dishes.

 In my research before I went to the festival I learned that the pork of the curly haired pig is supposed to be much better than regular pork. I worked up the courage to purchase some curly haired pig meat at one of the vendors. Unfortunately my Hungarian sucks and few of the meat vendors spoke English. I ended up with some delicious sausage and some not so delicious fried pork fat.

                              

I do have to admit fault in me ending up with a bag of fried pork fat. I was becoming embarrassed by my lack of Hungarian and decided that I'd just buy what everyone else was buying. After having luck in purchasing two links of sausage without saying more than köszönöm (thank you) I figured I'd just buy what everyone else was buying. I went to the stand and selected a small bag of what I thought was cubed bacon. I purchased it and eagerly tasted what I expected to be bacon, it was fried fat. What does one do with a bag of fried fat? Everyone around me was eating it, I was gagging. So I did what any expat would do, I controlled my gag, smiled at the woman I bought it from and quickly put the bag in my pocket.

Needless to say I was concerned about my ability to purchase food after the pig fat incident but I heard many different languages spoken near the hot food stalls and assumed someone there could probably understand me.

The choices were endless however it seemed most appropriate to eat some curly haired pig sausage since that's what I had read about before. And of course it would have been a travesty to pass up some dark Hungarian beer.

Lunch Time!

The sausage is one large link, sorry the bread obscures it. I still don't know why the guy looked at me weird when I asked for half. As for my beverage I found the best dark Hungarian beer. Really wish I would have written down the name.

All in all the festival was quite eclectic, with an emphasis on the random things that had nothing to do with pigs.

Cause nothing makes you think of curly haired pigs more than strangely colored brooms and children's toys. Still I look forward to many more Hungarian festivals. These people do know how to do it, I think for every toy stall there were two selling alcohol.

That Time I Moved To Hungary

I've been here for nearly a month and still I haven't posted anything about actually being here. This comes from a variety of reasons, but mainly that I didn't have internet at my apartment for 3 1/2 weeks. I can't complain too much I did have ample access between my school and Starbucks but I need to write in a place where I'm totally comfortable. If not it just doesn't sound like me.

Of course there were also all the other things that go along with a trans-Atlantic move. Suddenly I need to learn a new language that I know nothing about, adjust to a new school system, learn how to shop for necessities. Don't get me wrong, these are the things I live for. I dream of waking up in new places, I plan on learning new languages, traveling is something I've come to expect from my life. Yet still they are things that take time and effort, there were many a days in the first few weeks when I was exhausted by 8pm just because everything I did that day was entirely new to me.

However I can happily report that these things are past me now. I can easily navigate "my grocery store" and my school no longer feels like a labyrinth. I've even memorized some bus and metro routes so I'm not constantly double checking my map.

A large part of me wishes I would have made myself post something during those first few weeks, I think it would make me feel less awkward about this one. I'm now ready to write about specific things but I've never written about basic things. Something occurred to me the other day when I was speaking to my Aunt; everyday in China I was actively trying to survive, everyday in Hungary I'm simply living. Of course things are still new and sometimes difficult but I haven't once worried about surviving a situation. I think that's why I haven't experience much culture shock here, why I'm ready to write about specific things so soon.

So what do I write about? How do I focus? I don't know. I suppose I'll just start with orientation. For those of you who don't know I elected to come to Hungary through the Central European Teaching Program (CETP) which I highly recommend, but I'll write more about that later. Part of teaching in the program is going to a mandatory orientation in Budapest.

My room in the hostel was filled with beautiful murals of locations in Budapest. CETP rented out the entire hostel so we could use the common rooms for classes.

During orientation we were taught a lot about Hungarian culture and history from two Hungarians who have been working with American's for a very long time. At first I didn't think that was relevant but I realized during the classes that because they are so familiar with American culture they were tailoring their lectures to things they know we need to know. We also learned a bit of the Hungarian language including some grammar parts.

On our first and last night we were welcomed to Budapest with a Hungarian dinner at this famous restaurant. In between we made use of our personal hostel and made pizzas!

Since I started in January our orientation group was small only six people! Two of use were destined to teach in Budapest, two in Debrecen, one in Makó, and one in Salgótarján. I'm glad we had such a small group, I think if there were more of us we would have naturally broken up based on our geographic regions, instead we were a group. I can happily say I have some interesting places to visit.

Our last night we went sight seeing along the Danube and took in some of Budapest's wonder. Night walks like this remind me why I came to Europe.

The end of orientation was bittersweet, on one hand I was excited to finally get to the school I had heard so much about. On the other I was weary of leaving the people I had come to know. But all good things come to an end, and I couldn't be happier with where I am now.

Moving on to.......................... Hungary!

These past few months have been filled with ups and downs. Due to family emergencies back home I decided to leave my beloved Deutschland to come back to the good ole' USA. 

My homecoming was bittersweet but being there for my family made up for it. I was also very fortunate to be able to step back into the job I worked at during high school and college. Without the kindness of my boss who chose to offer me employment despite my uncertain future I was able to earn enough money to purchase my ticket back to Europe. I was even able to spend two weekends at Vision's Center on Blindness where I was able to reconnect with many of the people who made summer 2013 a great one.

Throughout this situation I kept my eye on my goal of living abroad in a new country and began searching for jobs as soon as my family was back on track. I can now happily announce that things are looking up. The job search was difficult but I was able to secure a position teaching at a bilingual school in Budapest, Hungary. 48 hrs from now I'll be flying to Europe!

This position is a dream come true for me, I can't wait to share my wonderful experience as I explore a new part of the world.

P.S. Germany was wonderful although short. Sometime in the future I'll post more about it but the decision to go home was too difficult, I'm not ready to post all the pictures. Somehow doing that would make it feel more real and I'm just not ready for that.

So is it true???????????

I can't tell you the first time I heard rumor of the McDonald's in Germany selling beer. I think it was sometime during my time learning German in middle & high school. I assumed it wasn't true. I've traveled to many countries and I've never found a McDonald's that sold beer. Not that I seek out McDonald's food, it's just that they always have clean bathrooms!

As I made my way to the Bier und Oktoberfest Museum I passed a McDonald's. It crossed my mind that it might sell beer but I was on my way to the museum. I arrived at the museum about 40 minutes before it was scheduled to open. Looking for something to kill time I decided to wander back to the McDonald's.

To my surprise I found beer on the menu for 2 euro 10 cent. I decided to make it lunch and got myself a burger as well.

My lunch: beer & a big mac

Proof! My receipt.

You can't quite tell it's beer, but I assure you it is.

Zum Deutschland! (To Germany)

September 24th, a regular day, a Tuesday, the day I went to Germany. Excitement doesn't begin to cover it. For years I had been trying to get to Germany and once it was here, I didn't know how to process it. I'm the type of person who likes to think up Facebook statuses for various life events in advance. However instead of a long insightful anecdote, I just posted about how excited I was to post it.

Here I am! Leaving for Germany! Packed much lighter than I ever had and already I'm wishing I had packed even lighter.

My time in Norway was brief and spent mostly trying to acquire some coins for my brother. By the time I attempted to use the internet it was a few minutes before boarding. BOARDING A PLANE TO DEUTSCHLAND! (Excitement level hasn't gone down much).

I've flown through Germany once before as a layover traveling from France to the United States however I couldn't leave the airport. The professor of the course I was traveling with told me numerous times that if I left the airport, thus missing my flight, I would fail the course. Being the good student I was, I didn't leave the airport. But this time was different....

 

I LEFT MUNICH AIRPORT!!!!!!!

After successfully speaking in German to the man at the train ticket desk I sought out the S bahn.

Following the directions I was told in German, I easily located the platform and waited for my train.

I made it to the hostel within 3 hours of my plane landing. I think that's pretty good considering I had to wait for my checked bag & had a 45 minute train ride.

Chinese Food At Home!

During my time at my summer job I was constantly yearning for Chinese food. Not the Chinese food cooked up in local "Chinese" restaurants, but the real deal. Particularly I was yearning for Chinese street food, and my favorite was baozi. Since I figured I'd be unable to get real Chinese food for a while (being in Germany) and since my parents had never tried any; I decided to make a Chinese feast.

In order to make this Chinese feast, I had to go out in search of ingredients, since things like Shanxi vinegar and dark soy sauce aren't available at my local grocery store. My Mom and I ventured to the closest Asian market, about an hour north of my parents' home.

We came back with quite the load. I had the ingredients for Egg & Chive Baozi, Pork & Scallion Baozi, Kung Pao Chicken, Mapo Doufu, Sweet & Sour Pork, and Spicy Fried Green Beans. The guy working at the store who helped me find the ingredients I had trouble locating got a kick out of me and my Mom. I was asking for ingredients in Chinese and my Mom was perplexed by something called bananas in syrup that comes in a can.

It took me forever to chop up all the ingredients. I had given myself two hours of prep. In retrospect I should have given myself four hours of prep. Chinese food has a lot of prep time but very little cooking time, very different from the food I'm used to cooking. Thankfully my family was very eager to try the Chinese food and gave me a hand. Unfortunately I don't have any other pictures of the cooking process, I started to get overwhelmed and then my family started helping, and then we were done. Oops.

 

The above picture that I drew is a testament to my love of Baozi.

We were also too hungry to take pictures of all the food. By the time I was ready to take pictures most the plates were empty. So sad as I am that I don't have pictures, I'm glad that my family enjoyed the food. This is the only picture I have it has some of the food and some of my family. My parents are sitting with Sweet & Sour Pork, Spicy Fried Green Beans, and China Inspired Asparagus (my own creation).

The food came out very good! The only thing I have to work on really is my Baozi the dough was a little tough, but I suppose there are worse things I could have to work on.