Meals in Romania

Romanians like their meat! Almost every meal we had that wasn't a buffet consisted of a large portion of meat, usually served with mash. And generally the meat was incredibly tender, especially the beef and venison. And the mash was always very creamy and lump free.

The only drawback was the lack of veg. Vegetables were hardly ever served with a meal. And yet there was always plenty of salad items available in the buffets.

Some of the meat dishes -

duck leg with beetroot

pork - the only tough meat we had

                       

pork with mash

chicken with potato

chicken schnitzel

For lunch one day we had this venison, this was all meat apart from the small centre bone, then for dinner the same day we had the turkey - problem was we were still full from lunch and couldn't eat it!

venison osso buco

turkey

We did have fish a couple of times -

trout with rice

Apart from the large portions of meat for a main meal, there was also a lot of cold meats for breakfast and for some starters, as well as cheese.

3 photos of sharing plates before main meals -

cabbage leaves stuffed with pork

Hotel starters -

This was a more delicate starter in a nice restaurant, Casa Doina at Bucharest -

Part of some hotel breakfast buffets -

honeycomb

We had dessert with every meal, and they were generally quite heavy, usually cake and with no sauce or cream. A famous Romanian cake / dessert is papanasi, which is rather similar to a doughnut and best served hot. They were served with some form of cream. Some were huge, some were smaller -

this one was huge

smaller papanasi and also apple cake, with cream and jams

We had a delicious meal in Dracula's Castle - Bran Castle - which was the duck leg (above) and dessert was a chocolate pud and funeral cake. Coliva is a funeral cake distributed for the commemoration of the dead, at funerals, and at memorial services. Made of boiled wheat mixed with sugar and crushed nuts, adorned with candies and powdered sugar, ours had some pear or apple on top. It is on the right -  

Another sweet food we tried was kurtoskalacs. It is like a long empty doughnut and covered with sweet things -

I am now on a diet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!