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®photo courtesy Franny Finstrom

Hot off the press from freelance photographer Franny Finstrom: she has located THE source for tracksuits and fanny packs. Where on Earth can both of these wonderful fashion statements be found? Where else but Hungary, of course!

Pay attention Tommy: apparently the UK term for a "chad", you know what I'm talking about, is a chav. Enjoy!

Christmas Break: Hungary and the Prisoner of Worker Strikes

Starting from Szeged meant dealing with a few problems. Such as a train strike. The fastest, cost effective, and comfortable option to Budapest is the train, but with the trains on strike for a week my confidence of getting to there quickly, cheaply, and comfortably was waning. Franny and I checked the station hoping there would be an answer either way. The station was emptier than America's pocket book. Anyway, the ticket window was open and after consulting our adviser, an old woman chatting with the woman behind the ticket window, we bought the tickets and were told to walk out of the station and to the left to catch our bus. Yes, we had just bought train tickets for a bus, but don't get impatient, I'm getting there...we wished everyone a Merry Christmas and reflected upon the conundrum of purchasing train tickets for a bus.

Well, up pulled a city bus, but it didn't have route numbers glowing in the front like they should. We asked if it was the bus to Budapest and they laughed. They laughed, but at the same time beckoned us onto the bus, nay, they pulled us on, laughing as they did so. Despite the thoughts of being driven to Ukraine and into white slavery I have become used to odd experiences like this one and as odd as it sounds, white slavery is hardly on the list.

Ok, so we're on the bus which is populated by not a single Hungarian traveler. We have all of the groups represented though: there's the awkward Asian who sticks out all the more because this is a homogenized populated country in the off-season, some light travelers who are probably speaking English in the background, and us, the living-in-Hungary-but-trying-to-get-out group.

A short drive the the second train station in Szeged, one reserved for industrial uses, has us crossing the tracks to a lonely passenger train while until semi trucks are being driven onto a long train, tractor and all. Other than all of the odd prelude it's a train ride as usual where many of the platforms after Szeged were being used as normal. Upon arrival Franny and I jaunted over the Christmas market one last time in Vörösmárty tér, Budapest. Then we went to Jake's and Ellen's apartment one last time before to stay the night and have burritos. My first Mexican food in months. We were entertained by Carla's cat Boo who watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation with us.

Waking at a ridiculous hour Franny and I made our way to Ferihegy, the airport, Terminal 1. Of course upon arrival there is naught but a single soul in the entire terminal. The place is deserted, which is odd for any airport terminal. Because of the airport worker's strike Terminal 1 was closed but we didn't see the sign until we walked around a bit, it was one of those signs that one sticks on the top of a stantion. But we gladly took the opportunity to have breakfast in peace at the Illy café. Afterwards we caught the next bus to Terminal 2 which is surprisonly far away from Terminal 1. Then it was a game of lines... Oh, holiday traffic! Luckily the EU imported greeks to work the terminal which meant that one terminal worked better than two under the operation of Hungarians. (Sorry Hungarian airport workers!) But that was the joke at least, and I have to admit that everything did go smoothly everything considered. So that means we caught our plane on time. I'll meet you all in Germany in my next post!

Happy New Year! -- B.U.E.K!

Boldog Uj Evét Kívánok!

Christmas Cookie Baking + Caramel!

This post begins where the last one left off. I received some reinforcements from home in the form of a wonderful care package. This delivery also included a bag of Nestle's Toll House Semi-Sweet morsels, and a bag of Hershey's Chocolate Kisses in addition to my probe thermometer and baking sheet which were both crucial to the weekend's success. I took these supplies to Kalocsa for some good 'ol fashioned Christmas baking as is my family tradition. Though I should note that "baking" doesn't quite capture the reality of this family tradition. Pictures of chain-gangs, industrial speed, and true artistry all come to mind; in the best way possible. : )

Chapter 1: Ovens

Since the ovens here, all of them I've seen, I'm sure there's one or two professional model ovens in Hungary, all have a knob with arbitrary numbers to control the heat of the oven. This means nothing to me, and up to this last weekend I had not used an oven to bake anything, I've only used the broiler, because that's just about all these ovens are useful for until you can get a handle on the heat. So I put a paper clip on one of the racks and suspended my probe thermometer through that to take readings of the oven at different numbers. This gave me a ballpark idea of where the oven runs, but it was still wildly uncontrollable...

Chapter 2: Cookies

With the oven as tame and as reliable as a drugged circus bear it was time to bake, so we offered traditional chocolate chip cookies as a sacrifice to the oven gods. The dough was amazing! The baking was another story. It probably took 5 batches before we were happy with the results. We were constantly moving the orientation of the cookies on the sheet, adjusting the temperature, and doing rain dances in the living room, but to no avail some cookies were getting singed. Luckily we persevered as the flavor of the final product was not drastically affected, just the visual aesthetic. A side note: Saying "cookie" makes just about any Hungarian laugh because when they hear it they think "kuki" which is slang for penis.

Chapter 3: Breakthrough!

Between batches of cookie dough I conceived an idea: put the broiler pan in the oven to block the direct heat of the broiler. This was a promising idea as it would shield the cookies from some of the direct heat and instead bake more by the indirect heat of the oven walls and the broiler pan. This was a major help! This enabled Franny to successfully bake her walnut crescent cookies which were not only absolutely beautiful, but delicious and perfectly baked. I learned earlier this week that Hungarians refer to this as dios kifli.

Chapter 4: Kissey Time

Although the oven had been mastered for the walnut crescents that was not to last. Although we didn't experience the same problems as with the chocolate chip cookies the kiss cookies would be a little underdone at the proper time, or begin to scorch before the time was up. This was really frustrating after having believed that the oven had been tamed. Here's an important Hungarian lesson: just because something works for you once doesn't mean it'll work again... or something like that. :P

Chapter 5: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

Between batches of cookies I put my thermometer to further use. I've attempted caramel twice since I've been in Hungary; and without a thermometer. It was hard times without a proper gauge or recent enough experience to estimate the temperature of the caramel. The first batch prematurely recrystallized and became a chunky horrible mess after I added the cream and butter, not good. The second batch was nice and smooth, but when I tried to make caramel apples with it I succeeded only in making toffee apples: I had gone too far. So this time was just right. I had my trusty helper to tell me exactly when the caramel was ready to pull and cool. I sliced the solid sheet of caramel into ~2 inch squares and wrapped them in baking paper.

Chapter 6: End Game

These attractively festive tins were purchased at Tesco *shakes fist* for a decent price. Franny made them look even better by expertly installing the baked goods and candy to their new homes! Everyone I've given these to has loved them. I gave Trixi, my host teacher, the biggest tin because she has been the biggest help and because she's wonderful. She gave cookies to fellow teachers and I had the experience of walking into the teacher's room between classes and have teachers kind of point at me while nodding at Trixi and then Trixi would tell me that they loved the cookies. I had many requests for recipes and baking advice, what a day! Too bad two of the cookies are nearly impossible without the imported chocolates.

Birthday/Christmas Delivery!

Now to preface this those of you who know me probably know that food is kind of important to me, and to those of you who don't really know me, you probably know the same thing. So I got a text today while I was at the bus stop in Sándorfalva leaving for Szeged. It was Trixi, and she was telling me that two packages had arrived for me at the high school. Then not two minutes later Sándor called me telling me that there was yet a third package. This all happened at once: I was so excited that I got off the bus early, but closer to the high school than my usual stop, to walk the rest of the distance instead of taking another bus to Csillag ter. When I got into the office what teachers that were still remaining from the day's lessons seemed to be waiting in anticipation for me to open the boxes. But I was hesitant because I was trying to figure out how to get two giant boxes in my arms and on the bus to my apartment on the other side of the city.

Luckily I now habitually carry plastic grocery bags with me where ever I go. So I opened the boxes and started to pretend like I had just gone to some magical store where Jiff peanut butter, the Nestle's Toll House chocolate chips, Tao of Tea loose leaf teas, udon noodles, Vietnamese cassia, Japanese Curry, Ghirardelli chocolates, and Oberto beef jerky, and real soy sauce were available. Or how about my silpat, probe thermometer, kosher salt (yes, you heard me, kosher salt), and "real" baking sheet. (Sorry Hungary, you just don't win when it comes to readily available baking supplies.)

So I loaded up all of my treasures when I realized that one giant bag would be really nice but I didn't have that, so I used the next best thing, the biggest of the boxes that was sent to me had been reinforced by the Hungarian Postal Service, there is "Posta" tape all around it where the box was beginning to fail, and filled it up with my grocery bags. So now I'm this awkward American in the middle of Szeged carrying a huge box of something, people really can't tell, but, is that a ....baking sheet sticking out of the top? Anyway, I made it home fine and was so excited I took this picture. I'm really excited to do some Christmas baking this weekend. Seriously, these packages couldn't have come at a better time! I'll be sure to post about my candy making. Stay tuned!

Kömény Update!

I found kömény, that is real cumin, at a "middle eastern" market just two blocks towards the city center, on Kálvária Sgt., from my flat! I also bought some tahini, chickpeas, yellow lentils, and 100% Halal certified corned beef.

Kömény Madness!

This is a picture of caraway fruit, yes they're fruit...

So I've had this problem trying to figure out the difference, in Hungary, between cumin and caraway. This is not a problem when specimens of either one of the two fruits are in front of me: the appearance, smell, and of course, taste are all unique to either fruit. Now this has eluded me ever since I was told some pálinka I was drinking in Transylvania was cumin flavored, it definitely was not! Why would a VERY intelligent Hungarian native speaker with a near native fluency of English make such a mistake and tell me I was drinking pálinka made from cumin? And how could this EVER be a confusion in the first place?

So what we have here is a good 'ol fashioned cultural and linguistic mystery. I turned to my dictionary, two of them actually, a matching set written by the same Hungarian language experts: one is Hungarian to English (Magyar-Angol), the other English to Hungarian (Angol-Magyar). So I started from the Hungarian side of the equation by looking up the presumed word for cumin: kömény. The dictionary tells me that this is the Hungarian word for caraway, yay! No more confusion! But that was a little TOO easy, and it didn't account for the entire misunderstanding in the first place. So I dug into my English to Hungarian dictionary and looked up cumin: kömény. What!? No help there, so I turned to caraway and saw the very same entry: kömény. So I have one dictionary telling me that two very different spices are the same, while the other is telling me that kömény only means caraway.

With this mystery only half solved, if anyone looks these words up the authorities are telling them that one Hungarian word is just as good as two English words when in reality that just isn't true and it misleads good people seeking knowledge, I had to go deeper...

So, I did a little digging on the internet and found a site for spices and found a little history on the matter. To begin: caraway is more native and has been adapted on a far wider culinary scale in Northern and Eastern European countries. The opposite is true for the part of Europe and Asia where the cumin fruit reigns supreme. Some languages also have equal and opposite names for the two spices that include naming the native fruit by a local name, then referring to the other fruit by a similar name, but with an exotic twist. For example, in Hungarian you now know that caraway is called kömény whereas the foreign cumin can go by the exotic misnomer of egyiptomi
kömény: makes a lot of sense, right?

This is a picture of cumin fruit, yes, they're fruit too!