Florin Bucur turned 10 today and I was invited to represent the Juttons since 2/3rds of the family is back in the states. Yes, I had to "tough" it out during another Romanian family eating marathon. Hey, someones got to do it.Things got started at around 2 pm with snacks and drinks as I met more friends and family of the Bucurs. I also had the chance to practice some more Romanian since I was the only foreigner there. Fortunately, many of these folks had some pretty good English language skills and made it alot easier for me. As usual, the hospitality was awesome and everyone went out of there way to make sure I was comfortable (and well fed too).
You ate what?
The first course, the soup, was by far the most interesting and something new for me to try. It was a soup called "Ciorbă de Burtă". Ciorbă (pronounced CH-EE-OR-BUH) simply means soup and "Ciorba de Burtă" translates to Tripe Soup. The main ingredient of Romanai Tripe Soup is a cow stomach along with vinegar, sour cream, veggies and garlic. The stomach pieces are very chewy and you can see one of those bad boys on the picture to the right. It was actually pretty good, but you all know I will eat just about anything anyway.Just Grill it
From there, 2 courses of grilling followed. The first batch was grilled chicken. It was served with cucumber and tomato salad in vinegar.
The second grill course (by now it was about 5 pm - 3 hrs and counting) was sausages served with mustard and bread. You can see Gabby Bucur, the grill master working on the sausages. When it comes to eating large quantities of meat, these Romanians take 2nd to nobody, period!
Of course, we had cookies and other stuff for desert too. This isn't the first time we've had one of these all-afternoon Sunday eating sessions, so I was smart enough to eat very little for breakfast this morning. Even so, I probably won't be hungry for the next 18-24 hours!
