a note about the food

So this may or may not be called “postmodern” of me, but I think I’m going to abandon any and all pretense and this being an accurate (in the temporal or complete sense, although I promise everything I write will be, to the best of my knowledge, true) description of what’s happened to me. Think of it, maybe, as the SportCenter Top 10, as opposed to actually watching a whole day’s worth of broadcast coverage. OK, so that’s an awful metaphor, but at least it’s interesting, and hopefully not yet a cliché. Anyway, the point is, I will continue to try to brighten everyone’s day with humor, but there’s no way I’ll ever get everything that happened in Sweden or Balaton or last Tuesday written about to my satisfaction, so if you want to hear more about something, feel free to ask me at a later date, preferably over drinks.

Alright, so a thought for today:

Although I definitely have enjoyed living in an apartment with a couple roommates from my program, and I’m sure that I would have felt incredibly awkward having a host family that would speak no English but do my laundry without any fuss (like Patrick and Don do), or that would dote on me and feed me constantly (like Rachel does in St. Petersburg, or like my grandparents do in real life), I have to say that there are certain advantages to a homestay when studying abroad. Most important (or at least, the one I’d like to presently consider), you never have to try to shop for your own food.

First, I suppose some background is necessary. My college is “residential,” which means that everyone is willing to forego the off-campus apartment with a kitchen for the dorm and dining hall setup—this is relevant because, essentially, up until this past summer, I’d always either had my mom or my college buying (and usually cooking) my food every day. This changed abruptly this past summer, when I lived with friends in Washington, and was thus forced to become food-self-sufficient. Things were expensive, and the 18-block walk from Whole Foods during muggy evenings in July was a bitch, but it’s not like it was essentially any different from tagging along when my mom went grocery shopping back home. Things were expensive, but I lived largely on eggs, tofu, and sautéed onion; I’m not a vegetarian, though I date one, but consider this: tofu (at least in the US, but definitely not here) is maybe, maybe, a third of the cost of bad cuts of meat per pound, and has just as much nutrition. Also, it cooks easily in the same pan as the onion and the eggs and some oil and just a dash of soy sauce, making a dish that has no name but which I ate with great regularity. Anyway, that was the summer.

Imagine, now, if you will, having that wealth of experience under your belt, and then trying to eat on a budget in Central Europe, specifically Budapest. Don’t know where to start? Well, you can start where Peter and I did on our very second day here, walking into what looked like a grocery store (it was, but it was a lucky guess), and not being able to read any of the labels, which are written in several of (in order of frequency) Hungarian, German, Czech, Romanian, Slovak, Polish, Bosnian, Serbian, Slovene, and something Cyrillic; fortunately, neither of us spoke any of these languages, leading to exchanges like

Me: “Is this butter? It looks like a tub of butter.”
Peter: “I have no idea. Is that butter? I thought it was cottage cheese.”
Me: “Um… I think that next to it might be cottage cheese. But see the little picture of food on the lid? I think that the yellow thing there might be butter, so this is butter.”
Peter: “Are you sure it isn’t cheese? I think it’s that thing.” [points to picture on lid]
Me: “That would surprise me. [squeezes tub] I think it’s butter, and anyway it’s only like $2.50 for a pound (half kilo). Let’s get it.”

That one turned out to be butter, thank god, but notable failures occurred when we tried to find juice—most juices here are more like Kool-Aid, and then Peter found what looked like normal apple juice but turned out to be fizzy, which I liked and then finished and then tried to buy again but what I got wasn’t fizzy at all, but undrinkably sweet—as well as so-called “hot paprika” which is completely mild 90% of the time and a little too hot the other ten, but which we (as in everyone we usually eat dinner with) still can’t tell the difference between.

I think we've found our stride since then, mostly in easy-to-prep one- or two-pot meals for large groups, which we host on a rotating basis, but it's possible everyone gets sick of pasta with tomato sauce and sauteed chopped paprika, onion, and tomato, the sort of universal staple, or omelettes, which Peter and I cook when we host. That said, I'm gonna run, since Kelly and Rachel are hosting an experiment tonight with vegetarian green chili.

Helo!