The joy of comfort food

Do you know the sharp, ever present feeling of missing something when you travel? I don't mean the one that tells you that you're missing you family, your dog, your guitar or your boyfriend. I mean the one that screams: "I want my mama's food!" I think all travelers feel it from time to time. I've been documenting my homesickness for Slovak cuisine for a few months so here are some samples. They may seem a bit banal but they really put my heart back into its Slovak place.

 

Sour bean soup of my grandma which ended up tasting quite authentically.

 

Carrot salad à la grandpa. I grew up eating this three times a week and I'm convinced that's why my eye sight has improved from +7 to +0.25 throughout my childhood.

 

French potatoes, Slovak style. Yum.

 

Now, I hope I will get to this level of cooking skill one day. It was made for me by my grandma after I made a surprise visit home in October. Eating this game (buck I think) sauce with dumplings and cranberry jam, I knew I was back on the block.

This one is a random piece of bread I snapped in Zambia. It reminded me of rožok, a type of white-bread roll you can only find in Central Europe. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it brought tears to my eyes.

Here is the imperfect masterpiece of my recently-acquired cooking abilities: perkelt. You may have seen this picture up on the blog earlier when we cooked it in Lusaka with the faithful help of my coworkers. In the previous blog post I called it paprikáš which turned out to be the wrong name. I was corrected by my grandma that paprikáš would require adding cream to the sauce. As you can see, Slovaks are very specific about their ingredients.

I also cooked the traditional potato halušky a few times but unfortunately we ate them before I could take any pictures. Yet another good reason to cook them again.

Just one random visit to Slovakia

A few weeks ago, I decided to make a surprise visit home during my fall break last week.

The reasons were the following:

- It's so much closer to fly home from here than from Raleigh, North Carolina!

- I only spent two weeks with my family in August after not being home for a year. Definitely not much time together.

- A small break was necessary to zone out from the past two months of stress, especially related to my housing situation. I just wanted to lie in my own bed, hug my pillow again and feel like I do have a home somewhere after all (this "where do you feel home" question always gets a bit tricky).

So there I kicked it off at Charles de Gaule!

I got to Vienna around 11pm and it was snowing! But by the time I got to Bratislava it became rainy and slushy...

 

The first surprise came when my little brother came from a party and found me hiding under the blankets. The next morning I surprised my mom (we both cried, but don't tell anyone), my middle brother with his girlfriend, and our neighbors. 

On Monday it was time to see my grandparents. On the way to their house I got reminded that these  fall-colored vineyards that line the hills of our capital are something I always love coming back to see.

We spent a wonderful afternoon together which finished by inviting them to a traditional Slovak restaurant to belatedly celebrate my grandpa's 70th birthday.

Later that week we went to see my other grandma who lives in north-eastern part of Slovakia called Záhorie and who still didn't know I was home. The visit included celebrating All Saints Day together and seeing my cousins in a nearby village.

I took the train back to Bratislava and I couldn't resist to take pictures of the train station. Many of my childhood memories are tied to it so I always feel very nostalgic going through.

  

Saturday was a movie/shopping day with my little brother to celebrate a big milestone- his 18th birthday. He's an adult now! And can get jailed!

We bought him some winter apparel (a school bag and a cool scarf that I was told Slovak guys wear these days), went to see Skyfall and grabbed some McDonald's before going back home. Excuse the cellphone-camera quality and our engaged looks.

And on Monday- sad day- back to Paris after 10 amazing days of surprises and cherishing with my family. Can't wait to see them again in December. Next time it will be for a whole month!