Budapest Semesters in Mathematics: Cooking!

Here's my latest cultural post about cooking! As I have said before, the food here is very inexpensive in comparison to in the states... well everything but meat and good cheese. There are also a lot of amazing places that people can get a good meal from for less than 4-5 USD; however, the hard part about going out for me though is, of course, my gluten-intolerance. I printed out an amazingly helpful little card from CeliacTravel.com that explains, in Hungarian (you can choose any language), all of the things that I cannot eat and the precautions that must be made in preparing my food. I cannot explain to you how much easier this card has made my life. Even though I can find food at just about every place that I go to, it comes with a large price tag. Most of the inexpensive, although very tasty and fairly healthy meals are made with some type of gluten product. Because of this, I often have to pay double what my friends do in order to get a meal that fits my diet. Because of this, I have resorted to cooking at home a lot more than most of my friends do.

I have quite a lot of experience cooking. Growing up, I always loved to bake and any meal that required most of its cooking to be done in the oven was a favorite of mine to cook. Because of this, I became pretty good at making things like baked mostaccioli, meatloaf, enchaladas, etc. Upon entering college, I began practicing more with stove top cooking and I improved slowly. My pass of improvement skyrocketed this summer though when I spent the time living with my older sister Ashley and her boyfriend Ryan in their house by Notre Dame. There they cooked almost daily and I tried to help and contribute as much as I could. Because of this, I can now handle cooking most meals on a stove top with little to no problem. This has really been helpful while cooking in Hungary, but not nearly as helpful as I would have liked...

Even though food here is much less expensive, the food is very particular to Hungary. This means that finding the ingredients for meals that I love to make is practically impossible. Yellow cheeses, refried beans, affordable beef, peanut butter, many seasonings, etc are nearly impossible to find, and when you do find them they come with a steep price tag. Because of this, I have had to mix up my cooking style a little bit, and lately I have been trying to cook healthier meals so that I don't gain too much weight eating the amazing food here. My most recent cooked meal was a pasta dish with beef, spinach, and tomatoes. It kinda reminded me of a dish that my mom used to make when I was in highschool. I've also made other dishes here like meatloaf, taco dip (so hard to find the ingredients), mostaccioli, and cheesy potatoes. You can see images of the meals I've made below.