i am currently making genuine hungarian goulash.

i can't remember how to spell it in english, but here it is gulyasleves or something. i've deduced from various menus that "leves" is soup. we bought official, approved paprika at the market hall today--a large, daily indoor market that sells everything a hungarian could ever desire: unicum (an herby alcoholic beverage), tokaj (the famous hungarian sweet, white wine), pig legs, cow kidneys, lace tablecloths, veggies of all shapes and sizes, naughty magazines, and paprika. sweet paprika, spicy paprika, dried paprikas all woven together into strings, and powdered paprika.

while i'm on the topic of food, there are some lucky vegetables that just have really cool names in every language. i think that means they are the foods of the gods. for example: eggplant (cool name, even in english) also goes by aubergine (in france), mulignana (in italy), and padlizsán (in hungary). another good one: mushroom is champignon in french, paddestoelen in flemish, and gombas (pronounced "gombash") in magyar. finally, cucumber is also pepino, cukini, and cetriolo.