Hungary

I cannot express how much I like Hungarian food. When someone from one of my several cooking groups asks, “Have you done Hungarian yet?” I don't tell them I made Hungarian food four times back in 2018. I just say, “We can do Hungarian!”

My first Hungarian party was at Bea’s. I made Hungarian mushroom soup: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/17897/hungarian-mushroom-soup/. Others brought goulash, chicken paprikash, stuffed cabbage, a sour cream cucumber salad, and some kind of nut roll. I don’t have their original recipes, but here is a site with many similar ones: https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/hungarian-recipes/

The second Hungarian party was with Heidi and Linda. This time I cooked and they brought Hungarian music and poetry. I repeated the Hungarian mushroom soup because it was so good, and I think I made stuffed cabbage and homemade bread to go with the amazing lekvar I ordered online. Heidi read poetry – was it by Magda Szabó or Ágnes Nemes Nagy? Here’s an example: https://allpoetry.com/Agnes-Nemes-Nagy. Linda brought a record player and records so we could listen to Franz Liszt. You can listen to the Hungarian Rhapsodies on Hoopla without ads or on YouTube with ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRKT8BuMmqY

I made goulash for the Hungarian party at Lidia’s. Lidia is Hungarian and an amazing cook, so again we ate very well! Finally, I made Hungarian cream cheese cookies with my leftover lekvar for a cooking and conversation group from the Redlands branch of AAUW. Those cookies brought up many stories of grandmothers who made something similar: https://www.food.com/recipe/hungarian-cream-cheese-cookies-with-prune-lekvar-271543

Besides cooking with friends, I’ve also had two great experiences with Hungarian food that can be found in California. In 2019, Vonnett and I ate several kinds of Hungarian pastries from the House of Hungary, one of the International Cottages participating in Balboa Park December Nights. And last week, when I was visiting Suzy for her birthday (we are all thrilled to be vaccinated!), we took Mom and Dad into San Francisco to pick up food from Paprika, a Hungarian/Czech restaurant. We had the caprese platter with mozzarella, tomatoes, pickles, and local bread; the cheese platter with Parmigiana, Reggiano, Jarlsberg, and Brie; the vegan sausage with sauerkraut; chicken paprikash with mashed potatoes; and vegetable goulash with gnocchi. This is the favorite meal of all I've dragged my family to so far. Everything was delicious!

There’s more to Hungary than the food. Starting with children’s literature, I read The White Stag, full of mythologized Hungarian history, by Kate Seredy years ago. Seredy has written additional books inspired by her childhood in Hungary. Folk-tales of the Magyars on Project Gutenberg might have a similar feel: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42981

To experience adult literature from Hungary, I read Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó. In this sensitive portrayal of conflicting needs, an adult daughter takes her aging widowed mother from her village home to live with her in an apartment in Pest. As my parents age, I could see myself making some of the same mistakes she did, so I felt that I learned something from this book. I also looked up Hungarian literature on Words without Borders. Here is a linked story and if you click around, there are essays by Hungarian literature professors on what their literature means to them: https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/the-guest-the-bone-fire-gyorgy-dragoman-ottilie-mulzet-first-read?src=gaborschein

Walking with the Enemy and Keep Quiet are both excellent films based on true stories from Hungary. The first is about a man who pretends to be an SS officer to rescue Jews during the occupation by the Nazis. The second is about an anti-Semitic man who learns of the Jewish ancestry his parents had hidden from him. Both are available for purchase online.

Here are more online resources that I used to travel to Hungary while staying at home:

· Rick Steves' "Best of Hungary" covers Budapest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs_w9cwJ1Fg

· House Hunters International has several episodes in Budapest on Hulu.

· Hungarian Vagabond is a comedy that reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's on Amazon Prime.

· The Museum and Library of Hungarian Agriculture has put up coloring pages from a dictionary of roses: http://library.nyam.org/colorourcollections/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2020/01/Agricultural-library-Budapest_ROSES-1885.pdf

I still want to watch N is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdös on Kanopy and On Body and Soul on Netflix. Hopefully soon!

If you actually went to Hungary, you might see some of the places reviewed by The Crazy Tourist: https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-hungary/. Your local travel advisor will have the best advice. Shout out to my favorite travel advisor, Kaitlin Darnell at Laura's Travel in Redlands. May the travel industry survive and thrive. May we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace and health to flourish in Hungary and throughout the world.

Photo credit: Tobias Reich https://unsplash.com/photos/PwK4H7zykHE