The Best Meal in Hungary

I'm spoiled.

OK, so Monday evening I was lucky enough to get in 2 solid hours of swings and snatches via guest leading a handful of brave Hungarians through a Tracystyle high volume group class, could it have gotten any better? Yep.

Mark and I were treated to the most delicious home cooked Hungarian dinner ever.....you know how much I love, love, love home cooked foods! It all started with homemade bread served with goose liver cooked in goose fat! Yum, yum! I seriously could have eaten 3 times more but I didn't want to hog it all! Next?

Well, when we got to Judit's home, before we left to train kettlebells, she had this big pot on the stove that had been simmering all day with these huge chunks of beef thigh bones. Anyone that know anything about good soup knows how important bones are for flavor but these were special bones (not really, I'm being dramatic...anyway), these bones had big chunks of marrow waiting to be knocked out and spread, again, all over some homemade bread! (good thing we had some!)

But let's not forget the broth....OMG! Seriously good beef broth with veggies and pasta. I'm completely motivated to start baking my own bread (once a week), but the soup is the first thing I'll make when I get home. Finding thigh bones may not be that difficult, I' thinking maybe I can find them at Mi Pueblo.

Everything else was super yummy. Potatoes I normally don't eat, but not because I don't like them, so of course I had to help myself to a healthy portion. A popular salad here is cucumber, dill and sour cream or yogurt and garlic, similar to Greek. Aniko made a wonderful tomato, prosciutto, pine nut, red onion salad, dressed with pumpkin seed oil (Judit gave me a bottle of the oil to bring home! Yay!)

Top it off with a firecracker raspberry cake! Could my birthday month be any better? Well, as I said in the beginning of this post I'm totally spoiled for good food and nothing else even comes close! Tourist foods? Blach! But I'm managing to camp out from my hotel room fairly nicely!

Here are some popular flavors or foods that I'm finding common here in Hungary (I'm sure I'm forgetting a few)

poppy seeds
lots of cured meats and cheeses (sausages and sheep's milk cheeses)
pumpkin seeds
blackberries (blogpost to come)
blueberries
strawberries
watermelon (cantaloupe)
greek style salad (romaine, tomato, cucumber, cheese)
cucumber and tomatoes in general
cabbage (of course)
potatoes
liver

Every place you go to eat here in the main tourist spot has some kind of traditional Hungarian dishes like soup/goulash, and as I mentioned last year meat! Lots of meat!

I went for a long walk this morning to the Hungarian Staue of Liberty that tops one of the hills across the bridge from our hotel....I'm learning alot about myself on this trip...more to come.