Oktoberfest,The California Way

On the last weekend of September I was invited at the very last minute to join a bunch of nutty Germans and some other fellow Europeans in celebrating Oktoberfest at a farm outside of Petaluma. I had no idea what to expect - but I ended up having a blast, meeting a lot of interesting people, laughing my heart out at kids being goofy and saying funny things, eating tons of delicious German food and drinking my favorite wine in the world: Grüner Veltliner.

Slow Food Picnic in Sonoma

Last Saturday I had the pleasure to be a guest at Slow Food's fresh food picnic, organized at the beautiful Ranchero Mark West farm tucked in the hills of Sonoma County. I would like to herewith extend my thanks to my two new awesome friends Jonathan Sutton and Tony Ferrari, chefs at Hillside Supper Club, a new slow food restaurant in Bernal Heights, San Francisco. I had a great time thanks to them and would like to share the moment and story with you all in this post.

 Above: some of the delicious food served at the event.

Dinner in Berkeley

It's been 3 weeks since we came back to the States and life is slowly but surely starting to settle in. That entails going to friends' birthday BBQs, cooking healthy delicious dinners, thriving on California's amazing produce, getting fit with yoga, swimming and bike rides, escaping the city with ever-entertaining weekend trips. One thing I came to realize at the end of our trip: there's no place like home. And California is now the place I call home. After exploring the world, I can truly say it's one of the best places to live in. Its wide-open spaces, abundance of nature escapes, mild weather, and overall sense of well-being are some of its perks that should never be taken for granted.

And then the trip really never ends. Every week and weekend are so full of interesting events and adventures, that both Anne and I decided to continue posting in this blog.

Home is where your friends and family are. I guess I am fortunate to have two homes, on two different continents. My entire family lives in Romania, and whether I want it or not, half of my heart beats for that place. All my childhood memories, my upbringing, traditions, customs and family ties bring me back to that place.

Megan is one of my best friends in San Francisco and last Wednesday a small group of us got together at her boyfriend's house in Berkeley to cook up a delicious birthday dinner for Megan. This post is dedicated to her and this special day.

The other half beats here, in California, where I spent the last 9 years of my life. I am fortunate to be part of a wonderful, quirky, fun and loving group of friends. For a solo immigrant like me, they've come to represent my adoptive American family. They've taught me new words, slang terms, hip terms, taught me about pop culture, laughed at me whenever I say things differently from them, or when I involuntarily act as a foreigner. But above all, they're creative, passionate and inspiring. Together we have more fun than most people do, and that is really what holds us together.

 Above: Corina, the bombshell from Norway, chopping veggies for one of the best shrimp ceviches I've ever had.

One thing I missed while traveling was fresh produce. There's a severe lack of fresh vegetables and salad ingredients around the world. Being back, I appreciate the luxury of having such a wide variety of vegetables and fruit available at our fingertips all year round. Megan's birthday dinner was a celebration of fresh, organic, locally-grown food. Her roommate Cole picked up all the ingredients from the famous Berkeley Bowl market and cooked up a delicious Latin American fiesta. Bossing the kitchen like a pro, she delegated veggies choppers, peelers and dough makers.

Above: all the dishes are now ready to eat. On the menu: sopes (thick corn-flour tortillas pan-fried in butter), ground beef chilli, red coleslaw, grilled chicken, pan-fried plantains, cotija cheese. A real fiesta indeed! Good friends and great food - some of the best things in life. With the risk of sounding like a California hippie (which I partially am), such moments fill me with gratitude for what we have here, in this moment of our lives, for being healthy and surrounded by people we love and who love us. Despite the fact that we live in the midst of one of the most consumerist societies in the world, some of us here live our lives in the simplest and most rewarding way possible.

Below are a few more photo captures from Megan's birthday dinner.

Cole's dog, Becky, likes to stare a lot. So we had a stare-out.

Bailey's delicious strawberry, blueberry and peach pies.

The best shrimp ceviche ever known to mankind.

Veggie shopping basket.

Fried plantains.

There's no friendship like Anne and Megan's.

The hot couple visiting from San Diego.

Feeding your boyfriend little scoops of ceviche = love.

Cole killing it in the kitchen.

Warm sopes and fried plantains.

What a babe!

While everyone else is in the hot tub, we talk about Edible City, Andrew's new documentary.

Bailey making pies.

Fresh plantains.

Romanian Food, Probably The Best In The World

Ok, yes, I'm biased, because I am Romanian and my taste buds have been trained ever since I was a kid to love this food. But seriously - you have to try it and you'll know what I mean. Unfortunately, there are no Romanian restaurants in the Bay Area. It makes my heart break at the thought that San Francisco foodies are missing out on such an exquisite display of flavor. Given that we are fortunate to live in an area with easy access to almost any cuisine in the world, you name it, the lack of my own nationality's cuisine in the San Francisco's culinary landscape is a great loss. I secretly dream that one day I'll open up a Romanian restaurant. If you're a foodie, an investor and are reading this, hit me up! Chances are we might do business together.

I know that you're drooling at the photo below, so let me get down to the business of describing what these tasty-looking fellows are.


They are called papanasi and are a famous Romanian dessert. The dough is mixed with a soft creamy cheese, similar to ricotta. It is then deep-fried, holed in the middle and stuffed with sour cherry marmalade. It is served hot with a side of sour cream, which you can drizzle (or downright pour) on top of these things. It's probably a bazillion calories, but who cares... you gotta live once in a while.

Above is one of the oldest and most popular restaurants in Bucharest. It's called Caru cu Bere and is located in the Old Town. It's been around for over 100 years and it has gorgeous paintings on the walls and ceiling on the inside. I didn't take any photos myself, because I've been there way too many times and I sort of take it for granted by now, but here's a photo gallery, to get an idea. The name of the restaurant means something along the lines: "The horse-drawn carriage full of beer." It's always packed, any day of the week and any time of the day, from early morning till late in the night.

Above: my portion from a mixed grill we ordered. Grilled meat is just as important in Romanian cuisine as it is in Argentine or American. We grill the shit out of anything made of meat, but we never grill any veggies. I actually think there are no vegetarians in that whole country. Which reminds of a scene in the movie "Everything is Illuminated," where the main character, this young Jewish-American boy, goes to Ukraine to trace back his family that lived there before the Holocaust. He is served dinner one night by some distant relatives, but they only have meat dishes and he's vegetarian. Upon trying to explain to them that the doesn't eat meat, they look at him confused and exclaim: "What's wrong with you?" This is exactly the kind of thing my grandma would say. (Side note: the red veggies at the bottom of the image are bell peppers pickled in vinegar. Their texture and flavor go really, really, really well with steaks. One of my favorite things in the whole world.)

 Inside the restaurant Caru cu Bere. I guess I took a photo after all.

 Romanian dark beer.

Ciorba de vacuta (beef sour soup) is again one of my favorites in the whole world. I should probably stop saying that, because it applies to almost everything in this post. Ciorba de vacuta is made of many veggies chopped up in small cubes and boiled together with small cubes of beef. At the very end, the souring agent is being added. In Romanian we call this souring agent "bors." The term was most likely borrowed from Russian, but it has nothing to do with the Russian "borscht." The Russian borscht is made of beets. The Romanian bors is a clear and extremely sour liquid obtained from pouring hot water over fermented wheat bran. It is actually packed with vitamin C and great to drink by itself. So, bors is poured on top of the beef soup at the very end of the cooking process, to give it its specific sour taste. (Side note: in many Southeast Asian countries tamarind is being used as souring agent for soups.)

Ciorba de burta (tripe soup) is one thing I've never been able to get into. It's a sour soup packed with little slivers of beef stomach lining.

Mamaliguta cu branza (polenta with cheese) is a typical appetizer in the countryside. The food order is as follows: 1) polenta with cheese, 2) sour soup, 3) main dish (usually meat and a side), 4) coffee and cookies for dessert. The Romanian polenta is very different from the Italian version you might be used to getting at fancy restaurants. It is made of course ground corn, has a harder consistency and is cooked in an iron cast pot. In fact, peasants in Romania eat polenta every day, so they have a dedicated iron cast pot just for making polenta. Polenta is usually served with a salty sheep cheese called "telemea" and butter. It goes down best with generous shots of moonshine (plum brandy.)

Sarmale de varza (minced meat rolls in pickled cabbage leaves). Above is my mom, starting to make about 200 of these rolls. Many Romanian dishes are very labor intensive, and I often feel bad for all the women who spend half of their waking life cooking up for their families. My mom is definitely one of those women, she works her ass off in the kitchen every day and always whips up the most delicious meals. The minced meat for "sarmale" can be either just pork, or a combination of pork and beef. My mom adds beef to make them "leaner" and "healthier," but I think they're tastier just with pork. You can also add smoked bacon for extra flavor. The meat mix also contains rice and condiments. The pickled cabbage leaves are carefully pre-cut to the right size, so that the sarmale are not too bulky. When they're ready, they are layered in pot as follows: one bedding of finely cut sauerkraut at the bottom, a layer of sarmale, then another layer of sauerkraut, followed by another layer of sarmale and so on... until the pot is full. The pot is filled with a water, oil and tomato sauce concoction and set to boil for a few hours.


 And this is how the end product looks like.

Pan roasted chicken livers with mashed potatoes.

 Grilled ribs.

Goulash - a Hungarian stew that is also very popular in Romania.

White bean soup with smoked ham and bacon. It's served with raw red onion on the side. This dish is probably the Romanian equivalent of "comfort food." There's nothing that tastes better than a hot bowl of this soup on a cold winter day.

 Gingerbread cookies.

 The two Annas and I were very excited about the candy selection. We went craaaaaazy!

A great variey of halvas with all kinds of nuts and raisins.

I'd like to add that this blog post covers a very small selection of the amazing Romanian cuisine. It only covers some of the foods we ate while on this trip.

From Delhi Belly to Hot Tibetan Beer

It's already been over one month since we stepped foot on Indian soil. The more time you let pass between the actual occurrence of events and the moment you write about it, the dimmer and less intense the memories, thus the more impassioned the writing. I'll do my best. In this blog post I'll talk about some of the food we ate in India and Nepal. Not so much about India, because almost everything we ate was quite the same as the typical Indian fare we get in the U.S. Indian cuisine has a lot of variety and diversity, but the dishes that are most known internationally are those coming from the north (Punjab area), such as meats and dishes baked in tandoori ovens, vegetables cooked in masala curries, as well as the famous southern dosas. We haven't spent enough time in India to experience all the different types of cuisines, such as the more tropical dishes in Kerala or the more "meaty" curries from the north. We also have had some bad experiences with food, but I'm sure had we been in different circumstances we would've enjoyed Indian food better than we did. After India, we spent two weeks in Nepal, where the food is safer to eat, and where we felt like enjoying life again after the grim food experiences of India.

Tongba - hot millet beer specific to Tibetan tribes in the Himalayas.

Part One: The Trials and Tribulations of a Western Stomach in India
This blog post is at its 2nd draft, after the first one has been nuked by a browser crash. I feel like the first draft was more savory, and I'm trying hard to reconstruct its vibe. Before we arrived in India, we've been warned multiple time by fellow travelers about all the health problems we might have from eating Indian food, what to avoid, what and where not to eat, what medicine we should have with us. We've been told not to touch meat in India at all, under any circumstances, to brush our teeth only with bottled water, and to make sure that the caps of bottled water are sealed at time of purchase. Apparently, people (especially at hotels) refill used plastic bottles with unsafe water and re-sell them to unsuspecting tourists. Drinking regular water in India can lead to severe diarrhea and even dysentery. We became really paranoid in checking the caps of every bottle of water we purchased.

Samosas for sale on the street in Old Delhi.

I can say I have a pretty sturdy stomach, I can eat almost anything, including very spicy food, and I love trying out new things, including street food. We ate street food in all the countries we've been to, and never got sick. In India, we carefully avoided street food and ate mostly at the hotels where we stayed. Yet, despite all the precautions, I got very sick two times within the two weeks spent there, both times violently puking my heart out like never before in my life. Kudos to Ciproflaxin, the amazing traveler's upset stomach antibiotic, that saved both Jenny and I at times of excruciating cramps and nausea. I thought I had a strong stomach, but India really put me down on my knees.

I believe the reason why eating in India is notorious for getting people sick is the unsanitary condition in which food is prepared, stored or presented. The streets are always packed with people, animals and motorized traffic. The air is loaded with smoke and dust. There are flies everywhere. Food is served on the side of the road, uncovered and unrefrigerated. A bus drives by leaving a trail of exhaust smoke that settles on the food. A rickshaw goes by that stirs up a cloud of dust. A cow goes by that leaves a big moist dung right in front of the food stand. And then the ever present flies, who probably sit first on the warm cow dung, then on the food, then on people's faces, then back to the cow dung. Either Indians have acquired a remarkable immunity to diseases caused by dirt, or they shit their pants as much as we tourists do, but don't complain about it.

Above: jalebi, a dessert made by deep-frying flour in a circular (coil-like) shape and then dipping in sugar syrup. I wanted to try it, but our driver kept telling me it will make me "berry, berry sick" and that he won't stop the car on the side of the road, should there be a bathroom emergency.

We ate samosas on the street and they were delicious. I particularly loved the environmentally-friendly, bio-degradable bowl made of dried banana leaves. For those reading this post who don't know what a samosa is, it's a savory pastry made of dough filled with a spicy mix of potatoes and peas, then deep-fried. It's probably my most-favorite Indian treat and I wish you could find it on the streets of San Francisco as a snack, as easily as you can get it in New Delhi.

Above: thali is a plate consisting of various pulsas (lentil curries), alu (potato curry) and chapatti (a type of flat bread, baked on top of a hot plate and seemingly more popular in India than naan. I ate this at a street vendor in Old Delhi and fortunately I did not get sick. It turned out to be quite delicious. Whether you get sick or not from food in India is like playing Russian Roulette. This food on the street caused no harm, while later, food eaten at a nice hotel restaurant destroyed us.

Naan, rice and some vegetable curries at our hotel in Mandawa.

Our snack reserve for dire times. When in doubt, eat some snacks instead of shady food.

Above: the food that made me violently ill. A couple of hours after eating this innocent looking rice biryani (fried rice with vegetables) and paneer masala (cottage cheese cubes cooked in masala curry sauce), I ran to the hotel room bathroom and projectile-vomited 5 times in a row. God knows what they put in this food.


India is mostly a vegetarian country. In Rajasthan, the majority of the population is Muslim, so they don't eat pork. The rest of the population is Hindu, and they don't eat beef. The only meet you can find is either chicken or mutton, but meat eating overall is not very popular in this region of the country. We involuntarily became vegetarians for the 2 weeks spent in India, and surprisingly I didn't miss meat at all. The cuisine is rich and diversified enough to feel satisfied just with breads, rice and vegetables. I realized I could easily live without meat, at least for a while... (Now that I'm in Romania, the smell of grilled sausages coming from my mom's kitchen is so insanely good that I'm glad I'm not a vegetarian.)

Above: menu at a McDonalds in India. I've never been happier in my life at the sight of a McDonalds logo on the side of the road. I, who NEVER EVER eat at McDonalds in the US, who despise and loathe the bad quality of their products, was actually happy at the sight of a store that sells food cooked in sanitary conditions. It was like a haven of safety for us, where we could stuff our hungry bellies with something we knew for sure was not going to make us sick yet again.

Above: at the Pink Floyd Cafe in Pushkar (the blue city). We loved the way this place was designed. We loved the music, the ambiance and the food as well. The cafe had a rooftop patio overlooking the city - a gorgeous view especially at sunset.

At Pink Floyd Cafe I ordered momos, a Tibetan dish consisting of pot-stickers filled with spicy finely chopped vegetables and served with a spicy tomato salsa. The pot-stickers are very much like Chinese ones, and can be served either boiled, steamed or fried.

Above: at our hotel restaurant in Agra, the food was surprisingly good. I'll talk a little bit about the hotel itself: much like other hotels we stayed at, the windows of this hotel were barricaded with metal bars, opaque glass and thick curtains. Even in daylight you couldn't tell if it was night or day outside. You couldn't see anything through the window, you couldn't open the window. Most of the times, the windows would face towards a wall, an empty and dirty lot or just the noisy and dusty street. The hotel owners thought it was a good idea to isolate its customers as much as possible from the chaos of the outside world by adding all these window-closing layers to the golden prison called hotel. The image above was shot during day time, in the bar area of the hotel, where they added fluorescent neon lights and a disco ball to enhance the "night club mood."

Alcohol is also a big No in India. While officially not condoned in most places (especially the "holy" city of Varanasi), restaurants sell it "under the table." They never have it listed on menus, but if you ask them, they'll have beer for sale. When they bring it to your table, they have to hide the bottle in a bag and you have to keep it somewhere not too conspicuous. The drivers we had also kept asking us if we want them to procure whiskey for us from their secret sources (since alcohol is not sold at grocery stores). I wonder if they thought all Western girls are alcoholics... we politely declined.

Above: a dessert made of rice pudding, raisins and cashews, along with a mango lassi. 

Above: the making of curd on the street. Curd is a type of yogurt that Indians eat on a daily basis. The curd acts as a counter-balance to the spicy food, helping to cool off the palate.

Curd sold on the street.

I have no idea what those things are, but if any of our readers know, please do tell us in a comment at the end of this post.

Part Two: Recovering From "Delhi Belly" in Nepal
We arrived in Nepal via overland border crossing at Saunali. We were stoked to leave India, so we took a few photos in front of the "Welcome to Nepal" border sign, in which we are jumping with joy and cheering. Soon after, we checked into our hotel in Lumbini (the town where Buddha was born about 500 years BC) and we celebrated properly with our first bottle of Everest beer. Well, Anne did (see image below), as I was still recovering from my second episode of stomach sickness from Varanasi, and decided to stay away from beer for a while. Ironically, we came to notice that many restaurants in Nepal had a "recover from India belly" item on the menu, featuring mild rice puddings and muesli with bananas.

Gorkha beer - reminiscent of the fearless Nepali Gurkha soldiers.

Drinking tongba - the traditional Tibetan beer made of hot fermented millet.

Tongba is called "beer" but it tastes more like hot sake. It's served as a large mug filled with fermented millet (grain that grows in cold weather at high altitude), over which you pour hot water from a kettle filled with water. The straw is flat and narrow at one end, so millet grains don't go inside when you sip through it. The hot liquid tastes less alcoholic than it is, but after a while you start feeling a strong buzz. The taste really reminded me of the hot sake you get in some Japanese restaurants. Tongba is a Tibetan drink, just perfect to warm you up on those cold Himalayan days.

A soothing lemonade with mint at Olive Cafe in Pokhara. We loved that restaurant sooooo much, that we went there every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Everything was cooked to such an extent of perfection that I literally licked the plate at the end of every meal. I remember once the waiter took the salad plate away from me, and I desperately stared at the last drops of delicious dressing left on it. We also visited their sister restaurant in Pokhara and the New Orleans Cafe in Kathmandu, both under the same ownership. Last time I talked to Anne, she was planning on writing a letter to the owner of the restaurant, to congratulate him on what a delight his restaurants have been for us.

The Middle Eastern plate at Olive Cafe: baba ganoush, hummus, feta cheese, fresh hot pita bread and salad. It's what Jenny religiously ordered every day.

New Orleans style fish cooked with spices and vegetables and served with pita bread.

Tomato soup and a fresh salad. After India, we were crazed to eat as many fresh raw veggies as we could.

Above: Nepal's most ubiquitous dish: dal bhat, which I absolutely loved and ordered as much as I could. This in fact was my last dish in Nepal before leaving the country. God bless you, dal bhat!! I shall look for you all over San Francisco. By the way, does anyone reading this know if there are any restaurants in SF where you can find dal bhat? Dal bhat literally means lentils and rice, but the dish is actually much more than that. As the image above shows, it's a sample of 4 or 5 different things served on a metal tray with partitions. Dal is a yellow soup made of lentils and spices. Bhat is boiled white rice. It is served with a vegetable curry (tarkari), which is usually potatoes, cabbage, carrot and cauliflower. You also get small servings of very spicy chutney or tomato salsa and some pickes (achaar.) In some restaurants, this is served with papadum (a crispy flat bread, also typical in Indian cuisine.)

Dinner at New Orleans Cafe in Kathmandu. If only the margaritas were stronger, this would be the perfect dining place.

Spices on the streets of Kathmandu.

We concluded our last night in Kathmandu with a pitcher of margarita. It was our last night in Asia, our last day of traveling together with Jenny and, more or less, the end of our 6 month trip, the exotic part at least. After Nepal, we went for a quick sting in London, then Zurich for Anne and Romania for both of us. From here, we are flying back home, to our beloved California, and much dreaded San Francisco foggy summer. What a trip this has been!

Monica, May 15, 2012