Transylvanian Food: From Fieldwork to Festivals

Post by Jada Langston

Being here for the last three weeks, I have tried an array of delicious food and drinks. To provide better context I split up this blog post into two separate food stories: an everyday food post where you will learn what we usually eat throughout the day, and a post about food we have eaten at festivals around Romania.

Lunch on site

Everyday Food:

For breakfast and lunch: We usually have a small meal of scrambled eggs or hard-boiled eggs with toast. Then, we pack the lunch cooler before we hurry to leave around 7 am. Around 12 pm at the site we all gather around the cooler to eat lunch. We mainly eat a variety of sandwiches, such as peanut butter and jelly, or ham and salami with mustard, with different fruits on the side. Because one of us is a “ham monster” (Sophia), and because there are so many of us, we go through our basic necessities very quickly. As a result, we have to go shopping almost daily for another kilo of ham, loaves of bread, eggs, and other foods.

Sophia “Ham Monster” Coren, delighted to find a ham vending machine at the Turda Salt Mines.

For dinner: We are much more creative at dinners, where each person has to make a meal for everyone to sit down and share. On a  Saturday or Sunday, everyone chooses a meal to make for the coming week and places the ingredients on a shopping list for Colin and Jess to buy. After we return from the site, one person is assigned to cook that night with a helper. Meals have ranged from shepard’s pie to chicken and dumplings. Once a week, usually on a weekend, we have a leftovers night where we try to finish the meals. In my opinion, and probably everyone else’s,  the best cook of us all is Tina Marcuti.

Langos made by Tina

She make delicious and authentic Romanian food, ranging from langoş, a fried bread that’s stuffed with goat cheese, to bean soup, gulas (a meat and vegetable soup), fasole batuta (a white bean dip) and Romanian meatballs. Tina enthusiastically cooks us food to bring to the site or a small meals to eat throughout the day. Just the other day,  she made deviled eggs that she decorated to look like small ducks.

Tina’s ducks

Festival Food:

So far, I have been two two festivals with food. The biggest one was the Alba Days Fest that lasted from June 8th to 10th. The festival was part of an annual celebration hosted by the city The occasion featured performances from prominent Romanian artists such a Smiley, Inna, and B.U.G Mafia, while also hosting a wide array of food stands throughout the fortress. There was such a variety of different options to partake in, from huge ham steaks the size of your head to a plate of small fried sardines. While I did not have the time (or the stomach space) to eat all of the food, I did try some delicious mici, chicken kebabs with fried potatoes, and fried sardines.

Food from Alba Days

The second festival was a Dacian festival in the town of Cetatea de Balta. Here, we watched re-enactments of the wars between the Roman Empire and the Dacians, which took place in the 1st and 2nd century AD. The Dacians were the people that lived in Romania before the Romans came and conquered the region. Here, we ate placinte, a crepe that can be filled with both savory and sweet concoctions such as the cheese placinte that Lana, Jess, and Colin had and the chocolate-filled placinte that Sophia and I had. The food stands also had boiled corn on the cob and small dessert treats as well.

Romanian sweets from the Dacian Festival

Overall, the food in Romania has been amazing! Thanks to Tina, all of the amazing shops, and festivals, the entire team has been eating fresh food almost daily. I am excited for what other foods are in store for me to eat.

Placinţe at Mama Luţa’s in Ampoiţa

 

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