Corn Fed Ohio Boy Digests Eastern Europe
Blogs about food are overrated but the food here is so good that I had to write one. We’ve all seen the photos of your latest kitchen creation and your dainty dining out dishes. This isn’t about showing off the food I eat, but rather showing how made from scratch meals with fresh ingredients have dropped me down a pant size.
Before rambling, I’d like to dedicate this post to my girlfriends mother Georgiana who is gifted with amazing cooking talents and is responsible for 95% of the food I write about.
I’ve heard that you are what you eat but I didn’t know a new diet could change your style. After a month with my new diet, my pants took on this gangster look and I could not prevent my boxers from showing. It came to the point where I needed to poke out an extra hole in the belt to fasten my pants on in a politically correct fashion. I was also growing tired of rolling up my cuffs.
It’s a healthy irony and it all started when I first arrived to Romania. Granted I may sound like a girl rambling on about her diet habits but I was just surprised at my body’s reaction to the new food.
For my first bite to eat abroad, I indulged into a chocolate pastry cake followed by a glass of wine. The next day I woke up to a boiled egg (ou fiert) and a mixed bowl of tomatoes and onions. The following day, some chopped cabbage tossed in tomato sauce with some pickles and fresh cheese. The traditional meals of Romania are Ciorba (Choor-ba), mici (meech) and Sarmale. In this exact order, their english names are soup, meat rolls and cabbage rolls.
They are very rich and heavy dishes that satisfy your appetite but do not leave you in a food coma. Aside from the traditional food, my second favorite part of my new diet is the fresh bread sold at corner side bakeries. Sometimes I walk in to a cloud of flour when I enter these shops and see the bread ladies rolling up the dough…that’s what I call fresh. This bread is not packed full of unnatural preservatives, carbohydrates and lots of sugar. In other words, the shelf life is half of that of many U.S breads sold at the grocery stores.
Curious of how much weight I gained from eating three portions a day and plenty of bread over a 2-month span, I stepped on the scale to find out I was 10 pounds lighter.
I must mention a main cultural difference in dining out that is a healthy standard among most European countries. There are no free refills! So I never find myself slurping down 1,000 calories of pop while waiting for my food. I also cut pop out of the diet and drink only water and an occasional glass of milk.
Now, after four months and 100 loaves of fresh bread, my body has adjusted to the “New-trition” of my diet. I put back on a couple pounds but weigh much less than I did when I arrived.
The hardest part of dealing with my weight is just converting Kilograms to Pounds.
So far here are my most memorable Pofta Buna moments (Enjoy your meal)
- Carving a pumpkin and waking up the following morning to a homemade pumpkin pie
- Eating fresh fish at the black sea
- The Romanian celebration of Thanksgiving accompanied by a delicious baked turkey
- Buying sausages and cascaval on the Transfăgărășan
