Romanian Cuisine
By Trevin Wax on Mar 11, 2008 in Reaching Romania | 
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No matter how hard I tried to fit in with the villagers, I was not as professional a worker in the fields! One Fall morning, I was working in the garden, reaping the harvest of potatoes that we had planted just months before. There were potatoes everywhere! I couldn’t tell when a potato was ripe, although I could tell when they were bad.
A Romanian’s diet consists of lots of potatoes. It’s one of the cheapest foods available, and one can make it so many different ways. It can be eaten baked, mashed, fried, etc. It is a standard food at almost every Romanian meal.
I enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment when I sat down at the table and knew that I had a hand in some part of the meal’s preparation. Somehow, when you are eating the potatoes you planted, harvested, and peeled, they taste different! It was the same with meat, tomatoes, and other vegetables and meats.
Still, it was difficult to get used to the food in Romania.
During the first year, I had a hard time with the typical Romanian dishes. Sometimes the mashed potatoes and meat would stick in my throat, and I would have to summon up the mental willpower to force it down, for fear that I would gag and throw up. It wasn’t because the food was bad. I loved the meals and loved the taste. My problem was with the lack of variety. It seemed like every meal was mashed potatoes and chicken. Occasionally, we would have cabbage rolls or another dish, but generally, all we ate was meat and potatoes.
© Copyright by Trevin Wax | Print This Post | Share (Twitter, Email, Facebook)
I am currently sojourning in Eastern Europe (Belarus) and understand where you are coming from about lack of variety… Whenever my Belarusian friends comment that I’ve made a dish that is “not Belarusian,” it is inevitably because it lacks the Belarusian staples: potatoes, cabbage, carrots, beets. They also like meat, almost always fried. Baking is still a pretty foreign concept at times.
(I proudly credit myself with introducing locals to spices, like chili powder… though of course, very few of them can actually tolerate it.)
Kristi | Mar 11, 2008 | Reply
I just had mashed potatoes for lunch (of course with meat and veggies)!
I think that Romanians and the Belarusians etc. don’t really understand the variety in food because they’ve never had it. And now, when they can have the variety, they don’t want to change a thing because they are so used with that. I think though, that the younger generation is a little different. The funny thing is that I’ve met several internationals that have been in the United States, but they could not accept the variety of food – including vegetables like squash, sweet potatoes, beans etc.
corina | Mar 11, 2008 | Reply