VickyC.me

It’s always interesting moving to a new place. For example, when I first arrived in Canada, I was introduced to the BLT Bagel, eating fries with ketchup AND mayo, and of course, the poutine.

In Spain, there was the bocadillo – a sandwich made of the most solid baguette you will ever encounter, and jamon – a cured (and VERY potent) ham.

And Budapest. Well, I’ve shared with you my chamomile experience. Now I will share my grocery shopping experience with you.

When I’m in a country that I don’t speak the language of, I find going out and about very nerve racking. I remember the first time I ordered McDonalds in broken Quebecquois French (is there any other kind of Quebecquois French?!), I was SO proud of myself. I remember talking to my mum on the phone and telling her, with much enthusiasm, that I understood when the lady asked me what drink I wanted with my “Trio”.

And with grocery shopping, it was easy enough to figure out what was what.

Fast forward to Budapest. It’s been difficult. I’m not gonna lie! I mean, Hungarian is so complicated, and has so many alphabet letters, and the sounds are so different – I still can’t get the “gy” letter right.

Anyway, so you can imagine the time that I have trying to figure out what to buy. When I needed breadcrumbs, my boyfriend told me that they are called “prezli” or “panir”.. So off I go to the store. And I don’t see anything with those words on it.. But I do see a package of what I presumed to be breadcrumbs that was labelled “morzsa”. So I brought it, and cooked with it.. So I’m quite sure that it was indeed breadcrumbs. So I was quite happy with myself.

And then there was the couscous. The bloody couscous. I decided to make stuffed peppers with couscous and cheese and other bits and pieces and it was going to be delicious. And I got to the store and realised that I had absolutely no idea what “couscous” was in Hungarian. So I wandered around the pasta and rice section, and then to the breadcrumbs and flour section, and even the condiment section. And then I finally found a tiny bag of what appeared to be couscous. The words on the bag did not look like anything I could recognise, and there didn’t appear to be any cooking instructions. So after picking it up and putting it down about 50 times, I walked away.. but then walked back and repeated the whole process again, I thought, “I don’t care, I’m going to buy it, it looks like bloody couscous, I’ll cook it the same way and hope for the best”.

So I got home, and spent the best part of an hour on Google before figuring out that I had brought millet. Which isn’t just for winged creatures. At which point, my boyfriend came home and informed me that he didn’t think that he liked couscous. Needless to say, he nearly got covered in a bowl full of it. But I cooked the peppers (after finding a millet stuffed peppers recipe) and it was delicious!

So, the moral of the story is… just buy it and hope for the best! And if your boyfriend says that he doesn’t like something, just make him eat it anyway!!

Tags: Budapest, Cooking, Couscous, Grocery, Hungarian, Hungary, Language, Millet, Shopping, VickyC, VickyC.me

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at 5:16 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.