Filed under: van
Word has it that both Northern and Southern mum’s are concerned about our diet so I’ve written an eating schedule to reassure all those who might be worried, and enlighten those who are interested as to how many interesting ingredients you can add to curry.
Breakfast – usually starts with someone getting an arm out of their sleeping bag and putting the kettle on. After that the question is coffee or tea? This should be a given however Ben bought a coffee grinder in Mostar (Bosnia) and Will is struggling to find decent milk. After this we discuss what type of tea to have, then when everyone has woken up we have a fairly fast and nutritious meal of either muesli and yogurt and honey, or bread and jam and honey. When its cold and we can be arsed we have porridge. There is a compulsory Serbian apple before lunch is allowed.
Lunch – often bread, cheese and an apple followed by bread, jam and an apple. In the more eastern part of our trip we are becoming quite partial to stopping at truck stops where there is cheap and good grub if you can decipher the menu. Its usually meat.
Dinner – to quote Nick, our most recent guest, “this is the healthiest I’ve ever eaten.” Some regular favourites are:
- Risotto – established after Balthazar and Josie showed us the way in Switzerland, we stocked up with 5kg of aborio rice in Italy. You can add anything to risotto, the best yet was Cauliflower and Parsley with parmesan.
- Curry – mummysouth curry powder + Harissa from Bosnia + one or more of the following: Potato, marrow liberated from wildish romanian fields, any tinned ready meal from Carrefour, any root vegetable, tinned beans or lentils, cream, any type of sausage, peanuts, raisins etc.
- Pasta – the emergency is with pesto but this is less popular now we can’t find good cheese. Mostly tomato based sauces with seasonable vegetables, you can get 2kg of red peppers for 70p in serbia, or an aubergine for 10p in Romania. The flavouring varies from mixed herbs to balsamic and chilli.
- Casserole – well we’ve only done this once, in Croatia, but it was bloody good and lasted two meals! Still not quite sure what the meat was as we couldn’t read the lable, it was quite tender and had little fat and definitely wasn’t pork.
- Couscous – see pasta and add chilli or Harissa.
- Eating out – this is becoming better and cheaper and better the further we go! The menu is always fun so we usually request local recommendations. Buffets or where you can see what you are choosing are safer but less exciting.
Supper – the day is finished off with tea or wine or beer and occasionally some chocolate then we forget to fill the kettle and fall asleep. How civilised!
We left Brasov looking for adventure - armed with a detailed walking map of the Rodneii Mountain range in the Carpathians, North Romania, and our errant Canadian, Nick. Despite the area being a national park with lots of walking and climbing on offer the little town of Borsa that we chose to stay in appeared not to have noticed. It has high fashion shops and lots of ”super” markets but not a weather forecast in sight! This was unfortunate as we were eager to find out when the clouds would bugger off to allow us to do a bit of walking.
The great BBC was the best we got, via internet in a shed full of small boys blowing each other to pieces on screen. It looked promising so we chose to stick it out for a couple of days and tested out my (Will’s) new sleeping bag by parking in the cloud on a pass at 1400m. The windows froze on the inside and I couldn’t spread my honey in the morning, but I slept so it must work! We still couldn’t see the mountain tops, or anything else for that matter, but tried out our boots and stamina by exploring the grazing and shepards huts and then trying to find somewhere to watch a rather important rugby game. After Romania had beaten Holland in a Euro 2008 qualifier and we’d assured the patron we weren’t dutch we were allowed to watch Jonny and co punish the French over some 50p a pint beer and plum brandy.
Unfortunately for my throbbing head the BBC came good the following morning and we began our days expedition/serious hangover cure by walking UP and breaking the ice with some locals at a soon to be frozen waterfall; a school group and a teacher with Vuica (the local 70% proof medicine) . Still aching we climbed beyond the ski lift and everyone else and made the main ridge which was crisp with ice and absolutely stunning. Head recovered we had an awesome days walking in an empty landscape not disimilar from Ben’s home county of Cumbria. We’ll have to come back and do the whole lot at some point in the future, apparently it takes 5 days and is all around 2000m high!
