My mother’s rules about weekly TV limits and bedtimes went out the door during the Summer Olympics in Montreal when we stayed up to watch Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci as she achieved seven perfect scores. This video includes each of those performances and brought back great memories for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl9QpC8_LiE
I’m not sure I thought about Romania much since then until I married Allan and his father worked with the Romanian community in Loma Linda. Dad had been a pastor, a teacher, an executive in the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, and, after he retired, his volunteer work with the local church made him so many friends that, when he died, people sent enough food that we filled the freezers of family and friends, and ate for months. Anything that wouldn't freeze well, we ate as quickly as possible. The extended Darnell family gathered for three meals a day for the following week. I will always be grateful for those times together. I also remain grateful for the cabbage rolls.
The cabbage rolls came in a pot larger than I had seen before. It was oval, maybe 18 inches long, 12 inches wide, and 12 inches deep. I had never had cabbage rolls and they were so good! I ate them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week and there was enough for me and for anyone else who wanted some. I can’t promise that this link has the exact recipe, but it comes from the website of a Romanian cook and it looks about right except for the modifications a Seventh-day Adventist would make, replacing the pork and bacon: https://adorefoods.com/traditional-romanian-cabbage-rolls/
The Romanian mom of Kaitlin’s middle school friend Vivian is a great cook. I have likewise enjoyed the restaurant Parsnip in Highland Park and Dunarea in Anaheim. At Parsnip, I ate paprikash and polenta dumplings, and I wrote about Dunarea for my Moldova blog, so I won’t repeat it here, but it is well worth trying.
Knowing how much I love Romanian food, last week Gladys and I picked up a picnic at International Meat & Deli in Garden Grove, a Romanian market. The grocery section has cookies, teas, fruit syrups, jams, chocolates, pepper sauce in jars, and other pickled vegetables. The deli section has sausages, meats, cheeses, and desserts. Gladys and I selected chicken bologna (it’s hard, but not impossible to avoid pork at a Romanian deli), creamy white cheese, fresh baked bread, a poppy seed roll, and a concoction of custard, cream, and three kinds of spongy light cakes, white, spice, and chocolate. We took our picnic to Huntington Beach to watch the sunset. The sunset was beautiful and the food was delicious!
Romania may be known for its food, but it is also known for its association with Dracula. Dracula may not correctly represent Romanian history, but there are tourism opportunities to set the record straight about what happened in the fifteenth century. I read Bram Stoker’s version as a teen, and it is online in case you want to see what all the fuss is about: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345
As we move forward in history, there are several more accurate resources about Romania that are easily available in English:
· The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania by Emily Gerard representing what life was like in Transylvania almost 150 years ago: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57168
· The movie Queen Marie of Romania showing Queen Victoria’s granddaughter speaking up for her adopted country: https://tubitv.com/movies/622106/queen-marie
· Night by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, a Romanian who experienced the Holocaust. I picked it up from the library.
· I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys which gives a glimpse of life under Communism. This is also available through the library.
· Four contemporary works through Words Without Borders which are available here: https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/collection/january-2015-romania/
To experience Romania more broadly:
· Watch various traditional dances from Romania: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6l8oS4K10k
· Listen to a little less traditional, but still Romanian, cimbalom playing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9V5ay_25PY
· Be horrified by the dark roles of Edward G. Robinson, a Romanian American actor who was well respected. The Red House is a good example of his work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ1fIRRzuTU
· See the central Romanian Bucegi mountains in The Father Who Moves Mountains, a thriller on Netflix
· See Brașov, a cute Transylvanian town, in Love is a Story, a romance also on Netflix
If you are out and about in California, there is a Romanian Festival every year in Roseville. The organizers shared videos from previous festivals here: https://www.romaniancentersacramento.org/
If you are out and about in Romania, see here for some great places to go: https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-romania/ I am so ready to explore and I would love to go! I look forward to that time when we can travel broadly again. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace, health, and safety to flourish in Romania and throughout the world.
Photo credit: Majkl Velner https://unsplash.com/photos/nKY59_d9FlA
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