Is Quorn available in Budapest

markru wrote:

I am a near vegetarian, that is I eat fish but no meat products. In the UK we could get hold of a meat substitute called "Quorn". Does anyone know if there are any stockists in Budapest or elsewhere, i.e. just over the border in Austria. Thanks mark

Could try here: http://thebritishpantry.hu/

or over the border here:

http://www.bobbys.at/shop/

Do you really want to eat Quorn?

Wikipedia (which is always right of course), says it's bad for you.

Thanks Fluffy2560

I really do like Quorn and it is not bad for you. It is a fungus just like a mushroom, made from micoprotein. It tastes like beef, chicken or whatever you want it to but no animal dies for it. I like the taste of meat but do not really like the thought of an animal dying for my plate. The Americans tried to bad-mouth Quorn because it really caught on in America and threatened their market leader, cannot remember the name of it, so they wanted Quorn to be taken off the market. They failed. They also did not like that they used albumen from non free-range chickens but that also changed and that argument went away.

The british pantry does not have it. I will look at the other site, cheers

Mark

markru wrote:

Thanks Fluffy2560

I really do like Quorn and it is not bad for you. .....

The british pantry does not have it. I will look at the other site, cheers

Mark

You could always call them and ask. Maybe they'll bring in supplies.

Meat has always been a big thing in the Hungarian diet. I don't know how many veggies there are in Hungary, but it must be almost zero. I mean, kids are brought up on the ceremonial dispatching of pigs etc and some I guess see the chickens being prepared for the pot while out in the countryside.

But that said, the Hungarians are pretty good on agricultural things, food processing and so on, so maybe there's a similar substitute made from that fungus.

I personally try to eat a balanced diet avoiding very fatty and sugary foods. I find that almost impossible to do in Hungary. Everything is very fatty and very sugary. Ignorance abounds. I'd say the diet here is very poor for those with particular or special needs. A great deal of caution is required.

I think the rates of heart disease, diabetes etc here must also be very high. I once went for an emergency rabies vaccination here (I'd been bitten by a dog) and the doctor who saw me told me he was a heart specialist moonlighting for extra money. I was rather surprised as he was chain smoking the whole time he gave me the jab. He should have known better!

Hi,

No idea about "quorn".
For meat replacement there used to be some kind of gray, textured soy product, that tastes nothing like meat, only looks similar, and is a whole day affair to prepare... I guess it must have given all meat replacement products a bad name: I know a lot of people who try to avoid or minimize meat consumption, but none of them seems interested in imitation meat.

In traditional Hungarian cuisine meat products and dishes can have rice or bread-based stuffing to dilute the meat while retaining the taste BTW.

fluffy2560 wrote:

I personally try to eat a balanced diet avoiding very fatty and sugary foods. I find that almost impossible to do in Hungary.

That's odd. Indeed there is a widespread preference for horribly unhealthy food by the general public, no arguing that.
But the fraction of people who care are a big enough market to sustain all kinds of alternative food shopping and dining facilities (at least in Budapest.) You can just as easily decide and live on let's say Indian food entirely if that's your preference: You can buy ingredients or eat out almost anywhere in the city.

We live in a village, and even here there's a green grocers with wide variety (we put avocado in sushi, and I just walk in there and expect to find some), the bakery carries dozens of different whole-grain breads, there's unsweetened fruit juice and other health-conscious food stuff at "the" shop (yes, there's only one real shop, the horrible "CBA" franchise). On the plus side we can easily get fresh unprocessed dairy products, free range eggs, chicken, etc.

Fluffy, I sometimes get the impression you only hang out with a horde of nomadic Hungarians trapped in some kind of time-bubble, still tenderizing meat under the saddle. How did you manage to teach them English? Or is your archaic Hungarian getting better?
:-)

szocske wrote:

That's odd. Indeed there is a widespread preference for horribly unhealthy food by the general public, no arguing that.
But the fraction of people who care are a big enough market to sustain all kinds of alternative food shopping and dining facilities (at least in Budapest.)

Well, it's not that easy. I missed off the salt on my list. Everything is laden in salt, sugar and fat. Hard to find, say anything tinned that doesn't have loads of salt and sugar in it. OK, tins, but sometimes, it's necessary. Believe me, I've tried to get tins without the evilness (salt, sugar and fat). Eating out is WORSE because you have no idea how they prepared it - deep fried it and doused it in salt and probably used lots of sugar as well.

szocske wrote:

We live in a village, and even here there's a green grocers with wide variety (we put avocado in sushi, and I just walk in there and expect to find some), the bakery carries dozens of different whole-grain breads, there's unsweetened fruit juice and other health-conscious food stuff at "the" shop (yes, there's only one real shop, the horrible "CBA" franchise). On the plus side we can easily get fresh unprocessed dairy products, free range eggs, chicken, etc.

I am not sure if you are talking about "bio" stuff. There's a lot of hype on "bio" stuff. The bio label is not so important to me. All food, wherever it comes from has fat (saturated and unsaturated), carbohydrate and complex or simple sugars in it. Doesn't matter if it's "bio" or not. To get the right diet, you need to balance up these sources of calories plus obtain the right levels of roughage, vitamins and so on.

BTW, avocado has lots of calories in it.

As for CBA, oh, dear, I sympathise. Don't know if you remember the dreadful Julius Meinl. Mrs Fluffy is convinced that had a machine there which used to wipe you bank cards. 

szocske wrote:

Fluffy, I sometimes get the impression you only hang out with a horde of nomadic Hungarians trapped in some kind of time-bubble, still tenderizing meat under the saddle. How did you manage to teach them English? Or is your archaic Hungarian getting better? :-)

Maybe it's true, I am stuck in a time warp somewhere and this is actually the Matrix.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but you seem to be repeating the part where I admit greasy, salty red meat with a choice of overcooked, salty rice or deep fried potatoes plus something sugary to drink is the norm.
You can't just walk into the first restaurant, or pick the first thing from the store shelf at eye level unless you want to suffer the same early disability and death our average Kovacs Janos can expect.

Just last week I noticed how horribly my collagues eat at our back office, and picked up 600HUF worth of produce from the market (a whole lettuce, spring onions and a huge cucumber). Took me a whole 10 minutes to wash and dice, and we all had some salad at lunch. Some of them admitted this was their most healthy meal for months.
I think onions (green and purple) could be the key to feed Hungarians vegetables: it's manly enough for everyone, even everyone's role model, the proverbial rough-tough peasant who has bacon for snack eats onions (yellow ones, which we call "red").


What I'm trying to say is that it should not be a problem to find the alternatives. For health and diet conscious locals it takes barely noticable effort and attention to avoid the gunk. You can get grilled chicken with green salad at McDonalds even.
The trickiest part is big family dinners hosted by relatives... :-)

I know nothing about canned ingredients, even the village shop is open every day and has a freezer with the same stuff with a smaller amount of preservatives.
Or do you mean canned meals, like "szekelykaposzta in a can"? I rather have ramen noodles than any of those, so you are right there.


I guess what I'm trying to get at is that if you experience difficulties, that's not normal, and we are here to help.
(I understand it might feel odd after having lived* here for so long, but we won't tell anyone you know in real life :-) )


*: is that the right tense there? English teachers drill us on all those tenses as the cornerstone of the English language, whereas the native speakers almost never use more than the basics. In literature use of trickier tenses is either a caricature of convoluted style, or the setup of a joke involving time travel.

Hi



I miss the taste of certain meats such as bacon. I turned vegetarian because of the cruelty implications and not because I did not like meat. A lot of people ask me if I am offended by them eating meat in front of me and I always say "No" and I am being completely honest.

Saying that I do find the smell of cheap meat cooking a real turn-off but I can honestly say that the meat in Hungary is of a better quality generally than in the UK. That is unless you pay the earth from a free-range or organic farm or butcher.

I do agree with anyone who says that the diet in Hungary is either high in sugar or high in the wrong types of fat. This semms to be historic but more people are trying to reduce both in their diets. I am amazed by the lack of alternate foodstuffs in eateries, vegetables are very easy to make into something tasty.

Quorn is a good alternative as it still has the texture of meatstuffs but you can also use the same flavours you would normally apply to meat. It is a pure protein and no relation to soy.

We do have a hard time of it in Hungary being vegatarians but our close friends here in Cserkut, (committed meat eaters), invited us around on Christmas day and they made everything vegetarian including paprikat.

My post about Quorn has turned into a post about diet which is good as I see a lot of Hungarians at my therapy centre with diet related diseases.

szocske wrote:

*: is that the right tense there? English teachers drill us on all those tenses as the cornerstone of the English language, whereas the native speakers almost never use more than the basics. In literature use of trickier tenses is either a caricature of convoluted style, or the setup of a joke involving time travel.

The use of tenses in the English taught here is always pounced upon as very important. It is not important to us Brits and we all tend to use wrong tenses and happily get away with it. I get very annoyed if normal past and future tenses are not used as with the English youth of today but if someone should have used a "past perfect tense" instead of a "past tense" I could not really care less.

The need to speak is much more important that the use of perfect tenses. I am just grateful that, with my limited Hungarian, so many people can speak just a little English perfect or not.

So lets just all speak to each other and not concentrate on all the perfect tenses.

Yes, by now I am quite aware how little our English teachers understood about language, but subconsciously I still try to conform to their rules :-)

But back to diet now :-)

I'm so proud of my "onion is manly" revelation from this morning I'm going to preach it to vegetable-haters around me :-)

What kind of therapy do you practice? You could help spread the word: "real men eat onions!"

Hi

I practice two kinds of therapies as does my wife.

The first is well known and is Reiki.

The second is not so well known and I believe I am the only man trained to do this and it is NMT. Women seem to be so much bettter at it than us mear mortals. NMT stands for neuro muscular transmission. Many people suffer from muscular problems such as frozen shoulders, cramped muscles after a nights sleep etc. This is due to the soft tissue moving and the muscles being in the wrong place. Did you know that muscles do not have any memory unlike ligaments and tensors etc. If they move the brain does not know they are out of place. This you may think does not matter that much but the nerves going through that soft tissue or muscle become mis-aligned and then the signal from the brain (just an electrical impulse really) cannot get to the part it should and therefore problems occur where fingers, joints, limbs do not respond over a period of time. In NMT we can feel where the nerve is mis-aligned and adjust it back and restore movement. Over and above this we find that the physical ailment often has an emotional problem behind it and then we treat that as well and that is a bit more complicated but also based on well known scientific principles. We are able to de-stress people and give them a much better quality of life. It is very rewarding.

I think we should all spread the word of onions, good health but possibly no friends due to bad breath though.

szocske wrote:

I'm so proud of my "onion is manly" revelation from this morning I'm going to preach it to vegetable-haters around me :-)

What kind of therapy do you practice? You could help spread the word: "real men eat onions!"

I am not sure all the women would like major onion munching by men. Unless they do it too.  It's one of those vegetables that tends to be a bit smelly at both ends.

I think generally what I wanted to say is that there's a tendency to label food as nutritious or somehow good for you but the reality is that in Hungary, there marketing aspects has not caught up with the healthier food lifestyle. That also applies in many other countries.

As an example, I particularly single out Coca Cola who only last week (in the UK), labelled some packaged water as nutritious when it contains 7 teaspoons of sugar (hardly healthy). Advertising Standards in the UK told them to remove their adverts and not to repeat it. Obviously, packaged water is a lot more expensive that water out of the tap that does the same job. Promoting tap water is not in their interest.

Certainly the older generation (>60?) here in Hungary (as far as I can see), do not not know anything about healthier living - obesity, lack of exercise, smoking, heavy drinking, scoffing fat, etc etc..I could go on....but I think you all know what I mean.

I am also not very sure the medical profession here is focused on prevention rather than cure. From what I've seen and heard, it looks like it tend to be something has to be wrong with you before they'll attempt any education and by that time, it could be too late. It makes economical sense to prevent rather than treat.

Oh, btw, the salad at McDonalds is OK but lay off the dressings. It's full of sugar and fat. You can download the nutrition guide for McDonlads online.

Budapest is a big city, i am vegetarian, lot of my hungarian friends are vegetarians, sporty, health conscious etc who hardly ever (except when visiting mother...) eat traditional hungarian food. It is entirely possibly without any problem to live here as very health conscious vegetarian (like myself or my friends).

Here in Bp there is gym in every block of houses and full of people.

You need to know where to go and especially where not to go but beside that no issues.

Around our office, there is no less than 4 or so vegetarian or vegan restaurants which are always packed. It might be question of age and location, in all countries i know people in countryside tend to be traditional in values while in cities people are more progressive. Older generation is obviously different, for reasons that are subtle, partially as during communist times lot of times there was simply lack of food (not so much here in Hungary luckily, but e.g. my friends in poland told that they got meat maybe once a month) so the values of heavy food is quite understandable.

Every shop has free range eggs etc here.

I haven't had ever problem asking in restaurant how the food is done, if they use butter/lard or vegetable oil for cooking, if they use chicken stock or white wine for risotto etc. Asking helps.

On the side note, local seasonal vegetables are fantastic, very tasty, don't pale in comparison with local produce in northern italy and that is lot.

Theres an asian foodshop shop downstairs in the Central Market that has quorn - my vege friend gets hers there   I don't suppose it is much use to you if you are outside Budapest andf need to mail order though.  Unless someone would post some to you?

Hollycat wrote:

Theres an asian foodshop shop downstairs in the Central Market that has quorn - my vege friend gets hers there   I don't suppose it is much use to you if you are outside Budapest andf need to mail order though.  Unless someone would post some to you?

Thanks for the information. I will look them up when I am next in Budapest.

tomasc wrote:

I haven't had ever problem asking in restaurant how the food is done, if they use butter/lard or vegetable oil for cooking, if they use chicken stock or white wine for risotto etc. Asking helps.

On the side note, local seasonal vegetables are fantastic, very tasty, don't pale in comparison with local produce in northern italy and that is lot.

Can you tell me how I can ask if they use chicken stock. I have tried in my bad Hungarian and my wife has tried in her slightly better Hungarian and all we get are blank looks. Nice smiles but blank looks all the same.

You are right about the seasonal vegatables. We both think that the local veggies are really good, much better than the stuff in the UK. We always aim for local produce when we can and avoid Dutch and Spanish produce like the plague. I have seen how they grow their produce in both these countries and some producers have some iffy processes.

markru wrote:

Can you tell me how I can ask if they use chicken stock.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Searching for chicken stock gives me recipes of plan chicken soup...
(or broth. or stock. or what. we just have one word for soup. A new term is just emerging for thick, creamy soups, made of one vegetable, most often broccoli or mushroom, blended: paste soup.
Expressions involving cream ("tejszin" in Hungarian BTW) are historically mis-translated into "krem", which means paste, just to make life more interesting :-) )

If you are trying to ask if they used something like this to imitate the soup, the term for that is "leves kocka" (soup cube). A different brand of seasoning mix characteristic of fake soup is "vegeta"

In really cheap restaurants, you might be served a diluted soup cube with pasta as "soup", but I'm sure you'll notice.

Proper italian risotto is not cooked in plain water but either in chicken/meat stock/broth or white wine (there are variations depending on the chef but should never be plain water).

tomasc wrote:

Proper italian risotto is not cooked in plain water but either in chicken/meat stock/broth or white wine (there are variations depending on the chef but should never be plain water).

Proper Italian risotto can also be cooked with a vegatable stock such as a "mushroom risotto" I just do not want get caught out with a chef using meat stock as I will be very ill afterwards.

I personally never assumed anyone would just use plain water. I certainly would not when I cook at home.

szocske wrote:

markru wrote:

Can you tell me how I can ask if they use chicken stock.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Searching for chicken stock gives me recipes of plan chicken soup...

In the UK we deem any base liguid used to make a meal as a "stock" These are usually made in quantity and then used for many meals. They can be bought also as a cube as you mentioned and also now as a thick liquid that is diluted with water. These come as Chicken/Meat and vegetable. They are now imported into Hungary but yes you have quessed, not the vegetable variety. Good old Tesco and Spar.

markru wrote:

They can be bought also as a cube as you mentioned and also now as a thick liquid that is diluted with water. These come as Chicken/Meat and vegetable. They are now imported into Hungary but yes you have quessed, not the vegetable variety. Good old Tesco and Spar.

You can buy stock cubes here similar to Oxo no problem but I don't think they are imported. But you're right never seen the vegetable ones.

Am interested to know if anyone knows where one can get stock cubes locally that are not incredibly salty? All the ones here seem to be made out of pure salt. I just looked at some Knorr and Tesco brands in the cupboard and it doesn't say exactly on the packet how much salt, except salt is the main item in the cube (amount of ingredient is listed in order).

Reason I mention it is that salt increases one's blood pressure and that is bad for you.

Tesco have a lot to answer for. I don't see Fiery Diet Ginger Beer on the shelves. I have to import it from the UK. My wife once asked them (at my insistence) why the don't bring in some more British stuff but there was no reply.

I think I have seen some vegetable stock cubes (but only knor type).  I can check the shop next time I am there if you are interested.  It was in a Match supermarket nr Blaha.  Another thing hard to get is Cranberry Juice.  The shop at central market stocks pretty much everything.  I am sure you would get the vege stock cubes there.  I go on a shopping spree once every month or so to stock up on the stuff I can't get elsewhere.  It is expensive though

fluffy2560 wrote:

Am interested to know if anyone knows where one can get stock cubes locally that are not incredibly salty?

Oh yes, didn't I mention this before? All seasoning mixes, stock cubes as I now learned here, even smoked meat (which is a seasoning ingredient in otherwise vegetable-centric foods, bean soup being the prime example) are invariably inedibly salty!

You can buy the composing herbs, spices, dried vegetables in bulk, and mix your own. We do that, with the added benefit of growing and drying some of our own herbs and veggies. Herbs and spices seem quite picky in where they like to grow, so there is serious "trading" going on between like-minded gardeners both in dried products and saplings.


In a common Hungarian diner risotto is made out of yesterday's "porkolt" (thick stew of meat cubes) and last week's "rizibizi" (white rice cooked in salty water, sprinkled with thawed peas)

I've been at most a dozen times in proper restaurants my whole life, and only half of that in Hungary, so I can't really help you there.

At home we cook rice in water with just a pinch of salt, and the above mentioned non-salted mix of dried, ground stuff.

You might be able to ask what kind of stock it's made of like this:
"Milyen levesből?"
Or directly whether it's from meat soup:
"Húslevesből?"

Hope that helped!

My wife says the "bio" isle in shops sometime has salt- and sodium-glutamate free seasoning mixes. Another trick is to look through the selection of marinate mixes (pác, pác fűszer keverék), because those can't have any salt, and might have the blend you are looking for.

szocske wrote:

My wife says the "bio" isle in shops sometime has salt- and sodium-glutamate free seasoning mixes. Another trick is to look through the selection of marinate mixes (pác, pác fűszer keverék), because those can't have any salt, and might have the blend you are looking for.

Ok, thanks Grasshopper, I'll get the missus on the job (as I cannot read the packets).

tomasc wrote:

Budapest is a big city, i am vegetarian, lot of my hungarian friends are vegetarians, sporty, health conscious etc who hardly ever (except when visiting mother...) eat traditional hungarian food. It is entirely possibly without any problem to live here as very health conscious vegetarian (like myself or my friends).

Around our office, there is no less than 4 or so vegetarian or vegan restaurants which are always packed. It might be question of age and location, in all countries i know people in countryside tend to be traditional in values while in cities people are more progressive. Older generation is obviously different, for reasons that are subtle, partially as during communist times lot of times there was simply lack of food (not so much here in Hungary luckily, but e.g. my friends in poland told that they got meat maybe once a month) so the values of heavy food is quite understandable.

Hi

Can you tell me where these vegetarian restaurants are as I am coming up to Budapest in may with my wife and daughter and we are all vegetarians.

Thanks

Kind regards


Mark

Most of these is not purely vegetarian, but does have vegetarian dishes:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= … 69086&z=13


I guess these are specifically vegetarian:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= … 6&t=h&z=13

Quorn is now available at the British Pantry

There is also a product in Tesco called "Haas Szója" which appears to be made in Hungary and is not expensive. I've had it and it tasted fine.

Of no help to anyone, but just had to share this:

http://thehairpin.com/2013/02/qreamed-quorn