Cherry Chutney on Chicken?!

Aaaaalrighty, so this is going back a bit. Just be happy knowing that Hungary is being so good to me, that the task of writing travel blogs just seems so boring. But non the less I will now attempt to tell you some good stories!

So around Thanksgiving time I was thinking that I really would do anything for a bit of turkey with some cranberry chutney and a piece of pumpkin pie. I started talking to my friend Laura (shes also a Canadian Rotary exchange student) up in Budapest about this and she was thinking the same thing, so a week or two after Thanksgiving I was up in Budapest with Laura deciding on a menu! After we got the menu figured out (with many an email and phone call home to get the reciepees right) we were off to Tesco, the supermarket! After two hours, two hungarian-english dictionaries, losing myself in the huge god-awful store, and uncountable alterations on the part of our reciepees we were checking ourselves out.
It turns out that we couldnt find a whole turkey anywhere (apparently this is a Christmas special only), we thought 'no problem! poultry is poultry!' so we opted on two chickens (I admit, quite a large alteration considering the whole reason we were doing any of this was for a TURKEY dinner, but hey! you have to adapt when you are half way across the world-or so I am told). After the turkey/chicken decision we moved onto the next item on our grocery list: cranberries. Now I love cranberry chutney, one of the best parts of the turkey dinner (or chicken) for me. We ran (literally) all around this store looking for anything cranberry and all we could find was cranberry-blueberry jam. No dice. For those of you who dont know me, I am quite a stubborn person (I prefer determined thank you!) so we went back to the frozen section and picked up some cherries, and I claimed that since they look close to cranberries they may prove to taste close enough once youve loaded them up with cinnamon and cloves. Now I have to admit that right about this time we realized what we would be eating: cherry chutney on chicken! A far cry from cranberry chutney on turkey, but you have got-to-do what youve got-to-do.
Once back at the house we got on preparing just about the best part of the affair (since turkey and cranberry chutney were counted out) the pumpkin pie. Along with not finding some other ingredients, we couldnt find canned pumpkin. Although this didnt really surprise me, I was hoping for it. But problem solved, we bought a whole pumpkin. For the next four hours at the house we broke apart, cut, peeled, chopped, and boiled pumpkin. It ended up being one of the best pumpkin pies I have ever tasted, but really, the amount of work. I am sure there is a really easy way to do it, and that we needlessly fumbled our way through it, but there you have it.
The next day we got on preping for the real meal. This all went pretty smoothly. Lauras host mum and dad were inviting their friends for the meal, so we were pretty excited for the added company. It turns out that one of their friends is a very good chef, so by excited I mean we were a little closer to nervous. By the time they arrived everything was ready and we were very ready for a Canadian meal. We put the whole chickens on the table and I realized that even if I would every now and again carve the chickens at home, it wasnt me that was the professional here, and I didnt really fancy feeling like a nob in front of this chef. So after quietly joking about it to Laura I told them that in Canada it was custom for the guest to carve the turkey (in our case: chicken). They didnt buy it, but he did carve the chickens for us. Needless to say the meal was fantastic and everyone followed Canadian tradition and had four servings of everything.


The following weekend Zsoltis (host brother) family came up from their hometown, Mezobereny. It was really interesting becuase in the two months that I have been here it was the first time that Ive been around a 'traditional-type' hungarian family. By that I mean a mum dad and kids. In this family, Zsolit is the oldest then his two younger
sisters: Kayta 18 and Tímy 17. It was good to be around a family, its wierd how you miss that, but it was good to have a noisy (not to mention slightly chaotic) house for a few days.
Although his mum and dad dont speak english his sisters did, and like any other Hungarian, when I asked them if they know english they said 'a little bit' when they can really speak near perfect english. Everyone here says that here, 'barely' or 'not really' then they open their mouth and they can speak perfect english. After we sat down and ate enough for a small army (not even exagerrating) and having THREE full courses of desserts- I couldnt even get through the first, and when they commented on it I said I was a beginner, they all laughed before saying that yes I was, but that I wasnt to worry becuase by the time I go back to Canada, they will have taught me how to eat properly. Everyone else had at least one serving of all. I really did feel like an amature. After we were ready to explode they said that we were off to the spa! Bathing-suit get ready! By spa, they mean something closer to going to the hot-springs (this water was the 'healing' type as well). Inside there were about 30 different pools full of 'healing' water heated to different temperatures and different jets and different kinds of steam/sauna rooms (finn, swedish, bio, natural, aroma...). We ended up spending 6 hours there! Needless to say i was like a 100 year old little prune by the end. And very ready to eat another 15 course meal (funny what water does to you).

Now the most exciting news that I know all of you have been waiting for! YESTERDAY IT SNOWED!!! Every other hungarian was very depressed becuase they were all hoping that this year they would get away with it not snowing, but as soon as it started snowing I ran outside (like any sensible canuck would do) to catch some flakes on my tongue. I didnt even try to explain why we do this to my hungarian friends I was with, but I have been told that it is something in our DNA that makes us Canadians do this.

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