I’ve given you a few food nightmare stories, but I think it’s time you hear about the yummy side to life here. There are a lot of foods here that I’ve never seen back home or even heard of, but they are delicious!!!! For some reason, many of the best foods end in “itsa”, I don’t really know why this is, but here are a few examples:

Banitsa
Banitsa is a croissant like bread that is light and flaky. In the middle of the bread is a layer of feta cheese. It is REALLY GOOD!!! You can buy banitsa in cafes and at stands out on the sidewalk, but it is not nearly as good as the home-made stuff. How do I know, you ask? Well, because Mark’s partner’s wife made us some. She made us a whole bunch and we ate every.single.bite. until we rolled out of their apartment, down 6 flights of stairs and about one kilometer home. Here’s a picture of banitsa:

banitsa.jpg

Lutenitsa
Lutenitsa is a sauce-like “salad” (they call it a salad) that is made from tomatoes and peppers pureed together. It looks like a thick ketchup or a thick salsa, but it tastes a little more peppery. “Lute” means hot, like spicy, so that’s why it’s called lutenitsa, although in truth, the salad really isn’t spicy at all. They just call it that because it’s made from peppers and you could, theoretically get hot peppers. Even so, it was really good, and I think it would be extra tasty on the banitsa……hmmmmm…. Here’s a picture of lutenitsa:

lutenitsa.jpg

They also have really good ice creams here, like crème brule ice cream. Sounds weird, but it is actually quite tasty. When it’s not raining (a rare occasion lately), we like to walk the dog down to the ice cream stand and get a couple of cones and eat them on our way back. They have mini ice cream stores right out on the sidewalks here, so you don’t even have to go inside to buy it. They must know how much we like it!

And the white meat….they really know how to cook a piece of pork here. I have had a fear of pork for, well, my entire adult life. Part of this stems from my mother’s really horrible pork chops we were forced to eat as kids (sorry, Mom, but it’s true). It also comes from Mr. Price’s biology class in high school where he told us all pigs have worms called trichinosis and if the pork is not cooked well enough a worm will live inside your arm muscle forever. I’m serious. That’s what he told us. So I went 10 years without eating the meat of a pig. But I overcame it. Now, here, I am learning how to cook it.

They usually cook a pork chop type piece of meat and serve it in some yummy sauce with mushrooms and put it over rice. I really like it. They prepare chicken in a similar way, though sometimes the sauce is lighter and there may not be mushrooms.

So there you have it, food is not all weird here. It is actually usually quite good. We have never eaten anything bad when we are out. The problem just comes in shopping and ordering, but we can usually get an English menu. It gets a little scary when you don’t know what you’re eating! So, sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you…come on over, it’s safe to eat, really!