With my wicker basket and a bunch of pastic bags, Wednesday and Saturday mornings I go to the piata to do my shopping. The piata is my favorite place here because it is so full of colors, varieties, oddities, people, chaos, opportunity, optimism....

So here are some things on my shopping list (and some NOT planned for things!).

Vinete - (or egg plant) Romanians use egg plant to make salate de vinete and zacuzca as well as other dishes. You can always smell when someone is roasting egg plant - it has an amazing deep, dark aroma like tabacco.

Ardei Iute - (or hot peppers!!!) YIKES! I'm addicted! You can buy them by the kilo- can you imagine eating a kilo (2.2 lbs) of hot peppers! I just buy the little bunches of 8-10 for for about $0.30. I like to spice up my tomato sauces, make salsa or throw them into beans!


Ardei - (peppers)- I buy them by the kilo! I love especially dark green peppers. I eat tons of them!










Paprika (paprikas) is a spice made from peppers- it can be both spicy (cayenne) or sweet (dulce)











Then I see my lady or rather she spots me out first! She is convinced I am from Odorhei... and probably half the market is convinced that I am also from Odorhei - which is a Hungarian town 40km from Sighisoara. I keep saying "sunt din Statele Unite." But she doesn't understand at all. Often, I come to the market and the vendors reading correctly that I'm not Romanian start speaking to me in Hungarian with a secret glint in their eye saying - it's okay to speak Hungarian, we're Hungarian too. So they speak to me in Hungarian and I speak to them in Romanian.

This is my lady who sees me every time I am in the piata and yells out to me - "Sera mana dominsoara!" Then we chat a little, she convinces me that there are "foarte bun morcovi" and I compulsorily buy a kilo of carrots - even if I don't want a kilo of carrots. It only costs me about $0.50 but I have to carry that kilo of carrots home! Still, I like that she remembers me and wants to say hello everytime I am there.

Some other things I also don't buy but just find them to be fascinating and odd include the dried herbs and flowers. People sell all kinds of homemade products like honey, jarred picked peppers, fruit syrups, etc...

At the end of my shopping, I usually stop by the flower sellers who have cheerful bouquets of assorted flowers from their gardens.