Спасибо for the correction.

For practice:

Akkor rossz a tojás, ha miután feltörtem, furcsán néz ki (homályos, valami nő benne, piros pöttyöket látok), illetve rossz szagú. A tojásokat mindig külön pohárban töröm fel, nehogy az egész ételt rontsam el vele. Miután megnéztem és megszagoltam, nyugodtan beletehetem a serpenyőbe. A barátnőm azt mondja, hogy amelyik úszik a vízben, az már nem jó, de ez csak azt jelenti, hogy már nem a legfrissebb és óvatosan kell bánni vele. Szeretem a rántott tojást és a töltött tojást és a tükör tojást is de az utolsót csak pirított kenyérrel.

Szegeden élek. Ez körülbelül 4 óra busszal Pécstől. Vonattal még hosszabb az út, mert Budapestre kell utazni és ott átszállni. Így Szegedről Pécsre 180 km-t kell utaznom északra, ahhoz hogy délnyugatra menjek. :D A busz egyenesebb útvonalon megy.

Eggs have gone bad if, after opening one, it looks strange (cloudy, something growing in it, I see red spots), or if it has a bad smell. I always break eggs in a separate cup, lest I ruin the whole meal with one. After I've looked at it and smelled it, I can safely put it into the frying pan. My girlfriend says that the ones that floatin water are bad, but it just means that they aren't so fresh any more and need to be treated with care. I like scrambled eggs, deviled eggs, and over easy eggs but the those I only like with toast.

I live in Szeged. It is about 4 hours by bus from Pécs. It is much longer by train, because you have to travel to Budapest and change trains there. So from Szeged to Pécs I have to travel 180 km north in order to go south west. :D The bus goes on a straighter path.

Thanks for the information. :) I suppose that in general, then, "unheard of leaf vegetable that's being suggested for a salad" can be replaced with "regular salad leaves" and "unheard of vegetable being suggested for pasta" can be replaced with "vegetable i like in pasta" and "some cheese that i dont know what it tastes like" can be replaced with gouda, which is good on everything.

I wonder if leaf parsley's roots taste the same as root parsley's. Wikipedia says they are smaller, since they're not being grown for the root, but I think since it's pretty much the same plant, it should taste at least similar. I don't know if you garden, but if so, you might plant some regular parsley and when the time comes to dig them up see how much root there is. Otherwise, if you shop at farmer's markets, you might ask the parsley-seller about the roots. Types of carrots (in Hungarian anyway) are sugar beets (called sugar carrot), parsley (called white carrot), and carrot (called orange carrot)

I am planning to move in about a year's time, to live with my girlfriend who I'm engaged to and live together. I cannot move sooner because to move in with her, I need to apply for a partner visa, and then wait for it to be processed. It is theoretically possible to move somewhere else, in the interim, but it's only a year, and I don't think I have the energy to move right now. Also, I really like my landlady. She's the kindest person I know. My previous apartments were much worse. At the last one, I was attacked and then stalked by a neighbour and the landlady talked to me about the commandment not to commit adultery (neither of I nor the neighbour are married.) Before that things were kinda okay for five months, then the landlady had "new ideas for the apartment" and I had to move into the first place I found. Before that I was living with an aunt would say to me without warning "we're going somewhere in an hour. wash [explicit list of body parts including private ones] but dont wash your hair or [random list of body parts]." and never mind if I already had plans (like a class to go to or something). There was more insanity that that, this is just an example. And before that there was a mother who was worse than the aunt. And before that there were two parents, which was the worst of all.

Here, the neighbours say hello in the stairwell and that's it. No one bothers me. I'm not afraid to leave the apartment. My landlady is understanding. So, fungus is a step up. and there will be another step up in a year when I get to live with the girl of my dreams.

I have two cats that can't be abandoned for a week, and im not sure where i'd go anyway.

Well, it was food left out of refrigeration as well. I've never really thought of ramen as cooked food -- it was heated in the microwave for the required time, though, so I suppose you're right.

Humidity has been around 80-90% recently, and the temperature that day was probably no higher than 30. The amount of growth was small -- just a few clusters less than a centimetre in diametre, but black and definitely fungus. I put it on the opposite side of the room where it wouldn't be near me and let it grow a little longer and it was covered within a few days.

The building is made entirely of concrete. If you think of a stereotypical cold war era eastern european apartment building, you'll get the idea, though ours has been prettied up (insulated, new windows put in, painted cheerfully) by the city. The walls in this room are hard to the touch, but in my bedroom, the wall is slightly spongy, but not visibly damaged in any way. The sponginess is uniform throughout and feels like I'm pressing against styrofoam instead of concrete. I assumed it was some sort of insulation.

I live on the fifth floor with cats and have no fly screens. There are shutters in the bedroom, so I leave the windows open and the shutters closed, so that air can get in, but cats can't get out. The window in this room leads to a balcony, though, which the cats are scared of because they don't like the noises from the street, so I can open the window in here as well if I keep an eye on them. They really like sitting on windowsills, though, so I'm careful about that. The cats aren't allowed in the kitchen (enforced by a closed door), so I can leave windows open there. I can also air out different rooms alternately with closed doors.

This is what the fungus looks like that was on my clothes: http://pics.livejournal.com/pthalogreen/pic/0012sbbx I managed to wash it twice yesterday, which decreased the smell and made the spots go away. I want to wash it a few more times before deciding what to do, and I think washing will kill at least enough of the spores to make it safe for me to throw them out, if I deem them unsalvageable.

There is a doctor I know of who would see me for free that I could go to. I've lived here for almost three years, and I really like my landlady. Also, I'm planning to move in with my girlfriend in about a year. It can't be sooner, because it will take a long time for my visa application to be processed. I am still at the satge where I have to run around and gather things for the application, but health problems makes it difficult. I want to improve my life as much as I can before I can move, but I'm reluctant to do drastic things ilke move out when I know I'll be moving again so soon.

My preference is a happy medium between the two. My experience vascillates between "chewing little rocks" or "i'm eating baby food" yet I like lentils, despite these problems.

My lentils are labeled in greek (ПΟΛΕМИΔΙΩТНΕ КΥПИАКХ ΦАКН), and my greek is worse than my russian (i can recognise about half of the letters and only those words which English stole and didn't change very much) but they look red to me and definitely not green. I got them when a friend was moving home to Cyprus and didnt want to lug her pantry back with her. That must have been five years ago. She gave me several bags, and a little lentils go a long way.

Because I live in a former eastern bloc country (Hungary). My only guess is the fridge is that old. (It's not mine, but it came with the apartment I live in. The building I live in is Russian built too. :)

I will look again it, to make sure I got the letters right and to make sure it is pointing at what I thought it was. Since my Russian is so bad, when i checked last time what the words said, I was repeating "V soft sign K L" to myself so i wouldnt forget it before i got back to the keyboard. (I was confident i could remember min and maks) so it may have stood out in my head enough that i forgot what it was set to.

But it's definitely cold in fridge, so it cannot be set to "turn off."

This time, I take my camera with me :)

.... and discover that it is set to maximum (МАКС).

Here is a picture http://pics.livejournal.com/pthalogreen/pic/0012rat7 . It also has another setting "НОРМ" which im going to assume is the "normal" or "medium" that i was remembering that it had. I think I set it to maks some time ago in attempt to solve the food spoilage problem.

It's really hard for me to remember выключить because my knowledge of Slavic languages (and understanding of Russian via cognates) comes mostly from southern slavic languages which I have studied, like Serbian, and uključiti in Serbian means "to turn on".

neat

googling "when is ripe" in hungarian gave me a site with a chart (but not all the fruits and veggies i could think of) as the first link. im sure further links down the google results page would include the missing ones.

i will try making the water soapier. also, evaporation plays a problem if i leave it too long. but i want to get in the habit of cooking often enough that i wont have to worry about that. i remember i used to wash any stray dishes while waiting for water to boil. i have lots of tricks like that i seem to have to rediscover again and again. a couple years ago, i had an epiphany that soapy water made things clean, not soapy, and that helped for a while, until i forgot again. i mean, i never stopped using soap, and i used soap before that point, but there was a moment when i understood at an intrinsic level that the soap applied to a dish could be removed from that dish, and the dirt would be removed along with it, through the application of water, and that all dirty things could be made clean, that nothing was dirty beyond repair. whereas othertimes i remember that i don't like the taste of soap and i sink into a vague suspicion that i'm just adding soap to the dirt and making soapy dirt and wonder what makes me so sure that adding soap to a spoon will make the food that later comes onto that spoon more edible. The manner in which I wash dishes doesn't really change, but by mental approach to it changes from disgust at the wrongness on the dishes to delight at the opportunity to right a wrong.

Spinach canned. Hm, so it does. I'll keep an eye out for it. My mental image of the aisle in the store that sells canned food mostly contains corn, peas, and beans, along with a few types of soup (mostly goulash soup, the one i like best), but googling in hungarian tells me there is indeed such a thing as canned spinach. i've seen it frozen, too, in small enough quantities that it could conceivably be eaten in one sitting. and i think frozen spinach would keep for at least a day in the fridge as well.

oh, the english wikipedia page for turnip shows something completely different. the dictionary I was using was wrong. I'm not really familiar with turnips, I guess. What I call white carrot is, according to wikipedia, actually parsley root, which looks somewhat like parsnips, but doesn't taste like them. it's not really carroty in flavour either, just shape. you put it in soups and stews, and chicken noodle soup should have at least one of them and at least one carrot as well.

the roasted squash sounds easy and good. i think i have a vague memory involving squash, zucchini, tomato and pasta with a creamy sauce. which sounds easy to make.

i'll give leek another chance. :)

cream of broccoli soup is wonderful. i tried to make it once, but it wasnt very creamy when i made it, and i used too much broccoli (and therefore too much water and too much of everything else), but it was good.

I remember finding a recipe once online that if I took out everything that I was confused by/didn't think I could get here/didn't like, I was left lentils and water. i didnt like lentils and water all by themselves, and realised that anything i could add to it would be something of my own creation, not resembling the original recipe at all. it's not usually that bad. usually it's something like "capers" (which seem to be something pickled, but i only like pickled cucumbers) or "cheese-whiz" or takes an english cookbook off the shelf and flips through randomly "parmigiano-reggiano (a small handful)", "radicchio", "swiss chard." The book was a present from my mother, but almost every recipe contains something we don't have here, or something i don't like, or something expensive. I've mostly given up on the cookbook as useless. :)

Anyway, a quick googling of "mikor érik" (when is ripe) got me to this page: http://www.hazipatika.com/topics/zoldseg_gyumolcs/seasonality (warning, not in english)

although it doesn't list strawberries. for july, it says: sweet cherries, gooseberries, black currant, watermelon, sour cherry, peach, currant, apricot, plum. the ones that are in the middle of their season will be cheapest. the ones just starting or just ending will be expensive. so my bet is that sour cherry is cheapest.

for vegetables: zucchini (meh), kohlrabi, lentils, sunflowers, capsicum (bell pepper), tomato, pattypan squash, pumpkin, green peas, and horseradish.

If I can figure out what's wrong with the fridge (and whether it has an easy solution), I could make cherry soup http://www.chew.hu/meggyleves.html (recipe in English)

i dont know if they have vanila sugar where you are, but it's equivalent to a tsp or tbsp (but definitely not a cup) of a vanilla i think. you could just keep adding small amounts of it until it tastes good. :)

on the veggies list, the only things on that list that i've cooked with before and would know how to make something edible are: lentils, tomato and capsicum (Both of whom are just starting their season and arent at their cheapest yet)

but there may be other fruits and vegetables not on this list.