After Laura left us, we spent the afternoon doing laundry and preparing to visit friends in a neighboring town. I met Adriana in one of my classes at the university, and she asked me to tutor her children in English all year. Andreea and Ramona are two adorable little girls who amazingly talented at languages. They speak Romanian, French, AND English. My current challenge with Andreea is reading, and she has made lots of progress already.
Adriana and her husband Dan invited us for dinner, and we've been trying to find a date all year that would work for all of us. They then invited us to spend the night because we take the train out there, and it is very limited in the evening.
Our weekend began by introducing Aaron to Dan and the girls, and the girls were VERY excited to have company for whom to perform. They had lots of energy and entertained us for a while before being sent upstairs to amuse each other. We then spent a bit of adult time chatting and having Aaron get to know the family with whom I've spent most Wednesday and Friday evenings. Dan is a doctor and educated us a bit on the removal of stomachs and how the body can cope afterwards. I for one was very fascinated.
After chatting and tasting a special Romanian drink, we sat down to a traditional dinner, with everything homemade and delicious. We started off with bread and three vegetable dishes (forgive me if I'm forgetting anything!): green beans in homemade egg mayonnaise, celery root in homemade egg mayonnaise, and garlicky potatoes with olives. Mmmm. Adriana explained that homemade mayonnaise is made with one hard-boiled egg yolk and one raw egg-yolk, plus oil and some seasoning. It puts Helman's to shame!
For our second course, the meat-eaters had chicken (which was something like schnitzel), and we all had fried potatoes that were partially boiled and then cooked in spices and oil. They reminded me of a vegetarian version of my grandmother's bacon-fat potatoes, which, though I am a vegetarian, might still have the power to convert me for just one tempting moment! I was glad to know a vegetarian version (including some special Romanian spice mix) could compare! To top it all off, Dan made a garlic sauce to put on top of everything. He normally likes to make it with yoghurt, but he used cream this time, and either way, I think it must always be delicious. It was spicy with the heat of the garlic and reminded us of sauces we've had at Turkish restaurants. It was at that point that we realized there was a lot of Turkish influence on Romanian food.
Dessert time came, but we all thought we might explode if we continued to eat, so we took a break to watch a movie--The Day After Tomorrow. It was very dramatic and supplied ample entertainment before we had Adriana's apple cake with homemade whipped cream frosting. It was very good--flavorful but not overwhelmingly sweet. Now, because I took my camera but neglected to take any pictures, you have no pictures of our actual time there in this entry, but we are providing you with a few pictures of Romanian food that we learned about. When I was tutoring one afternoon, delightful smells of dough and cinnamon were pouring from the kitchen, and Andreea and I looked at each other in the middle of our lesson to say at the same time, "Oh, that smells so good!" Andreea's great-aunt was there and had made what she called a "tarte" of apples but was really much more perfect than that.
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| Romanian Apple Pie. |
I couldn't leave without knowing the recipe, so we realized that we could communicate with what we both knew in Italian (I don't know Romanian, and she didn't know English or French). The dough is made with yeast, equal parts milk and water, and flour. You make a firm but moist dough and knead it until it's smooth. You let that rise. For the inside, you grate apples and put a bit of sugar and cinnamon on them and let them drain. This produces a sort of juice. It did take a while before I was able to understand what to do with this juice--in the end, she brought me the cup and said, "Por Dan! Yum!" Ah! Now I understood. Then, you put the apple mixture on a round of dough and twist the dough up to seal it in, making a dumpling-like object that you put in the oven to bake and become perfection. Oh so delightful.
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| My attempt at garlicky tomatoes. |
After the movie and more discussion of various cuisines, we went to sleep, listening to the incessant rain that graced us with its presence that weekend. When we woke up the next morning, we learned about the glory of Romanian breakfast. Aaron enjoyed a steak covered in butter, and Dan shared his special salad with me. This consisted of grinding garlic with olive oil and tossing it with salt and cucumbers and tomatoes. You then eat it with bread and let the juices soak into all the dough. When you do this, you have the sweetness of the bread, still crunchy on the outside, then mixed with the tartness of tomatoes, spice of garlic, mellow coldness of cucumber, and the touch of sea salt. Divine. I think Dan was a little worried he found a worthy opponent to enjoying such a salad. He let me have the last of the garlicky olivey tomatoey cucumbery liquid for my last piece of bread. That was a true act of generosity. I have been making an attempt to imitate this for my lunch every day this week. I can't wait to have a mortar and pestle again so I can crush instead of chop the garlic!
We spent the afternoon digesting and watching some more movies: Mission to Mars and Runaway Jury. This basically doubled the number of movies we watched this year. It was good to have some American cinema education on foreign soil. We played with the girls and chatted a bit more until it was time to catch our train. Overall, it was very relaxing, and it was nice to spend time with a family and get to know them better. We look forward to many years of friendship!
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