A recipe and a friend :)

I wanted something sweet last night and started looking through my cupboards. I found bread, ketchup, rice and some assorted spices and chocolate powder. The only thing I had that was sweet was sugar. So... I quickly realized how often I've had sweet rice for lunch at the hospital and thought "Voila! I can make sweet rice!" Perfect.

It turned out so good, I wanted to share it with you. Be aware - it really does take about 30-40 minutes if you keep the temperature below medium (on a 1-9 scale, with 9 being the hottest - I had it at cooking at a 4).

GERMAN SWEET RICE

1 c. dry rice
2/3 c. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
2 c. water
3 c. milk
2 tbsp. butter

Spray a 2 quart saucepan with Pam. Add dry rice and water. Cook over medium low heat until most of water has been absorbed. Add milk and continue cooking slowly, stirring frequently.

Remove from heat while rice is still rather soft. Add sugar, butter and salt and mix well. Should be cooked in last 30 to 40 minutes before serving.

If rice becomes too stiff, add a small amount of milk and heat through. Pour into bowl for serving, sprinkle top with sugar and cinnamon.

...

I would ease up on the milk (maybe 2.5 cups) and I added cocoa powder, cinnamon and vanilla to the mix when I added in the sugar. FINOM! DELICIOUS!



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A Day in The Life of Gábor

I made a new friend this last weekend on my trip into Romania. Because I took a LOT of pictures of him doing things throughout the weekend, I didn't figure I needed to take any of me doing these things - Gábor could just walk you through the festival for me. So, without further adieu, I present Gábor and Mera Days:

Gábor came along as a driver. We took two vans full of future volunteers and a children's band (I wrote about the Romano Glaszo band a few posts back...) Here, we took a break just inside the Hungarian/Romanian border.


So glad we didn't drive that thing! There were SOOO many horse carts throughout the village. It's the sound I woke up to and the sound I went to sleep to - the clippety clop of horse carts going by. It was a little surreal - like stepping back in time :)


"downtown" (I say that in such a way because it's a VILLAGE), there was a little market, where you could buy all kinds of homemade treasures. Gábor went jewelry shopping for his daughter... and snack shopping for his ears :P


making kürtőskalács - a Transylvanian specialty.


kürtőskalács = love.