Every September, Romanians start making zacuscă, a Romanian vegetable spread made with eggplant, peppers, carrots, and onions. I spent all day last Wednesday cleaning and cutting vegetables, then cooking and canning a batch of zacuscă. It was a lot of work, taking almost 12 hours from start to finish! (It was much easier 3 years ago when I made it in the U.S. with the help of a food processor!) Zacuscă is usually served cold on a slice of bread. A spoonful of zacuscă can also be added to the inside of a grilled cheese sandwich. Every Romanian has their own family recipe for how to make zacuscă. Click here for the recipe I used.
Photo: The finished product: the 18 jars of zacuscă I made
Visiting Korond
Yesterday I went with Dorothy (another Nazarene missionary) and Emilia (the manager of Veritas’s International Café) to Korond, a village where local artisans sell their handmade crafts in a series of road-side shops – everything from pottery, to baskets, to wool sweaters, to cornhusk flowers, to wooden toys. This was actually my first time to visit Korond since May 2004, as it is an hour and a half drive away. Although there were many nice things I could have purchased, I concentrated on buying a few items that I would use every day in my apartment – a serving tray, wooden spoons, and a few pieces of pottery.
Photo: The items I bought in Korond
On the way to Korond, we stopped at Emilia’s sister’s house, where we had a very international experience. Emilia’s family is ethnic Hungarian. (Transylvania was part of Hungary until 1918, and many ethnic Hungarians still live in this part of Romania.) They had visitors from the Faroe Islands. Since there wasn't a common language for everyone to use, we sat around the table speaking Faroese, Hungarian, Romanian, and English!
Walnuts
Many of the people who attend our church in Țigmandru do not have steady jobs. Jobs are very hard to come by in the village, and not much more plentiful here in Sighișoara. Consequently, our church members often leave the country for several months at a time to earn enough money to support their families for the next several months. They can also occasionally find seasonal jobs. One of the seasonal jobs many of them find at this time of the year is to go into the forest and collect walnuts. They spend long hours collecting walnuts and are paid a very small amount per each kilogram they collect. On Sunday evening, while in Țigmandru, one of the young men who attend the church ran home to bring me a bag of walnuts as a gift. I tried to pay him, but he wouldn’t accept it. In Romania, people often give gifts of food or handmade items to someone close to them. I felt honored to receive such a simple-yet-meaningful gift.
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