Saturday Házi Buli!

I know you're all dying to hear about our first international potluck dinner (house party is házi buli in Hungarian). Sorry I didn't post about it sooner, but hey, life is nutty.

We did most of our shopping on Friday, which included picking up a bunch of veggies from the Friday piac at Hunyadi tér after Hungarian class. Our plan to remake Guszti's fish soup turned into chicken soup with Jack's father's original Polish recipe. I bought drumsticks and wings at the Match on Saturday, a few hours after noon and after finishing a good practice session at Liszt Ferenc.

Our first guests arrived just as we were finishing cleaning the apartment, and Jack was heating the soup. Haofan and Juam are both from China, and had brought the ingredients for another chicken dish. Haofan lost no time in setting up to cook, while Juam stayed back and watched (claims he can't cook). His dish was drumsticks fried in oil and sugar, and then spiced with something having that certain je ne sais quoi. He says you can make it just with regular Hungarian paprika, too :-)

Petr arrived a while later, with loud apologies for being late (which he wasn't). He brought a few beers and a homemade meat loaf thing from his mother in the Czech Republic. It's like chicken puree wrapped around a stick of salami and hard-boiled eggs. It looks remarkably like bread. Very unique. He also brought the biggest smiles and loudest laughs (more like bellows) of anyone I've ever met.

Elisa and Dinah arrived next, bringing with them pasta straight from Italy and green curry from Dinah's Singaporean recipe, which slowly turns your mouth to rubber and leaves you damp. Elisa left her Mom, who was visiting, at home in her apartment to come to this party, so special props to her for the night. Dinah also brought a bunch of packages of dried and pressed seaweed. It reminded me of those breath freshening strips you put on your tongue and dissolve. These were bigger, thinner and tasted nothing like spearmint, but were really tasty, and I found myself eating them like popcorn later in the evening (when I was too full to eat anything else).

By this time we're all eating the appetizers Jack made, starting on the wines and generally carrying on. The chicken drumsticks are done, pasta and curry are heating, soup on low heat. Mirva and Caterina added even more to the mix, this time on the dessert side. Mirva brought dessert and also Karelian pies, a Finnish pasty which is supposed to go with soup, but I have discovered they are great with jam for breakfast. Caterina also brought dessert, some rice pudding with some orange zest, which I'd never had before. She also took care to artistically write "Music" in the top with cinnamon. I didn't get a photo, unfortunately.

We were all ready to dig in when Hosung FINALLY arrived!

We sat everyone down at our extendable (dios gratias) table and turned the lights down low, placing our wine bottle candles I've made around to give a good atmosphere. The next two hours was spent in celebration. We went though course after course of delicious food from all over Europe and Asia, commenting and complimenting, talking and laughing, and some of us rushing around serving food or pouring wine. Everyone took occasional stretch breaks.

We retired to the living room after the meal slowed down. Haofan led everyone in some games involving cunning and observation. They drove Jack crazy. If people found space, they snacked on Mirva's dessert. Named Runeberg's Tarts after the famous (?) Finnish poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg, these are always eaten on his birthday. They taste freakin' amazing.

We ended the night with another party at Szimpla-kert, Blanca's Feliz Cumplianos. We didn't actually spend much time with the celebrating Spaniards, because Petr and I found the cso-cso table and our party migrated there. The power in the room for some reason cut out a few times during play, so some games were lit with cell phone LCD screens. As people drifted home, we went to Szoda (yet another local club) to go dancing. I took this great photo.

Jack and I got home around 3am. This was a wonderful night, and class on Monday reflected the stronger bonds we now have with our classmates. Our tanár asked us questions in Hungarian for half an hour about the party. We sang her the song she taught us on Friday with renewed gusto and vigor (we spent a lot of time singing it on the way to and from the clubs).

You can see the rest of the photos here. I feel so lucky to be here, and I'm gonna make the most of it.