Category Archives: Family

Kalács and Beigli

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Once a year at Christmastime, my mom (as her mom did before her and her grandmothers did and great-grandmothers did before them) makes what we call kalács (pronounced kolach). Kalács, as it’s known in Hungarian, is actually a sweet brioche-type bread commonly served at Easter, but somewhere along the line, Slovak-Americans and Hungarian-Americans smashed a few different holiday breads together and what was once known as Beigli (and still is in Hungary) is now usually known as kalács in English. The reason for the confusion is that the word  kalács (despite being a Hungarian word) is Slavic in origin. But let’s get back to the deliciousness.

 

While the breads can be filled with a variety of ingredients, the standards are walnuts, poppy seeds and apricots. My mom doesn’t really like poppy seeds, so our  kalácses have walnuts and apricots. So we mix up pulverized walnuts with a little sugar and condensed milk. It’s not too too sweet, but you wouldn’t want to eat a cup before getting your blood sugar levels tested. In a second pan we boil down the apricots until they are like jam.

 

This was my first year making the recipe (under my mom’s direct and strict supervision, of course). As she did when I was a kid, she scraped the dough from my fingers because she was worried I had too much margarine on my fingers and not enough was getting into the dough. Don’t worry though, Internet, she only scraped me with the sharp side of the knife a few times.

Dry margarine-coated ingredients are mixed with egg yolks, yeast and sour cream.

And pretty soon a rollable batter can be turned out onto the table.

We form them into dough balls, which then have to rise. This is fun because while over-kneading is discouraged, you can slam the dough balls onto the table. It’s quite satisfying.

After the dough balls rise a little bit, you can roll them out and spread on a layer of nuts or apricots.

After spreading, it’s roll up time, after which the rolls have to rise for another hour before baking.

Then it’s just a short thirty minutes before  kalács/beigli perfection!

Piggly Wiggly Turkey Trot

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This morning at 5:30 a.m. my dad, Györgyi, Brandy, Jeff and I left Dataw and headed over to Hilton Head for the 23rd annual Piggly Wiggly turkey trot 10K. It was an absolutely gorgeous morning and we (along with 1,400 other runners) joyfully trotted through the island. Getting the t-shirt (above) was our primary motivation, but we all ended up having such a wonderful race and early Thanksgiving morning.

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Thanksgiving in Lowcountry

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I’m sitting at the edge of the marsh on Dataw Island, South Carolina. The tide is just retreating and in the distance, in deep water, three shrimp boats lower their nets. It’s raining, but only hard enough to unhinge a few leaves, annoy the alligators and disturb the piles of oyster shells that the raccoons dragged in last night, from the marsh, and struck open with rocks to access the silky nectar inside.

We arrived to my aunt’s home among the great sea islands of South Carolina yesterday. We’ll be here through Thanksgiving, then spend a week in Hilton Head.

Even though I grew up a true blue Yankee, my family has spent a lot of time in the last fifteen years down South. And this part of the country, with its straight-trunk wild-haired palmettos, humid breezes and tidal waters is what I miss the most when I’m away from the States. It’s true I’ve come to romanticize the South, which probably really set-in when I lived in Georgia, but I can’t help it. I’ve lived in a lot of places in my life, but my heart is really at home here.

The Lovely Apple

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I write hard. Or at least that’s probably the perspective of my computer. I work on the computer over 12 hours a day and I “slam” the keys, as my mother would say, as she said when I was young and played the piano. So it was an absolutely incredible surprise that Gyorgyi and my parents got me a new MacBook Pro for Christmas. I’ve had several previous Mac computers, including the MacBook as my last computer. The Pro is a little snazzier. Back-lit black keys and all.

I think that now, between just Gyorgyi and I, we have about eight Apple products. (No, I’m not getting paid by Apple to talk about how much I am in love with everything that they produce.) 2010 was a great year for the apps revolution. From Angry Birds to Words with Friends to the new Google visual recognition applications. But since this is not a tech blog, I thought I would just share a few pictures from Christmas morning that I took with my iPhone and a 1 dollar app called Hipstamatic. The pictures emulate the old Kodak instamatic cameras. I am really looking forward to nerd-tech in 2011.

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Christmas in Pittsburgh

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Yesterday we went to visit our family in Pittsburgh. We almost always go on the day after Christmas, because it’s the one time of the year that almost everyone, adults and kids, are at home. It was a lovely visit, and it was nice to catch up with the cousins, who are almost all adults now and living interesting lives all around the country. We also had a chance to talk to my grandma and my grandpa (who is 91 years old!), show them some pictures and tell a few stories over a Pittsburgh beer. We had to leave early because we had to drive back to Ohio, but the trip was really nice for all of us, and I was glad to see the Pittsburgh crew before heading back to Europe.

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All Saints

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A lot of countries in Europe, including Hungary, give a day off for All Saint’s Day on November 1st. Like a lot of cultures, people here use the day to go the cemeteries to visit family member’s graves and the graves of friends. Famous dead politicians, artists, celebrities, national heroes, etc., all receive a lot of visitors as well. It was a beautiful day in Szeged so we took a few hours and walked through two different cemeteries here. The first was where Györgyi’s grandmother, Dr. Szabo Irén is buried. Györgyi brought some flowers and dusted away a few leaves. Then we went to the city’s biggest cemetery to walk around and look at some of the plots of famous Hungarians. Is it strange to say a cemetery is beautiful? Both were. There were opulent and simple graves, family mausoleums and walls of urns. Family members were everywhere: walking, sweeping leaves, recounting stories, lighting candles. There was something very comforting and nice about the whole day. And even though Hungarians aren’t very religious, they do really respect tradition and find comfort in it. I took a few pictures to capture what I could of the atmosphere. I think they speak of the fall and of this town.

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Tuscany

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In the middle of the month we hopped on a plane and flew over to Tuscany to enjoy a bit of the sweet life. That sentence made it seem like we walked out of our doors in Budapest and were in Florence in two shakes, but the truth is that we had what probably all of us would consider the worst check-in experience of any flight EVER. Two days prior to our departure was the final of the Budapest triathalon, so we were in ONE line at the airport that was filtering every plane going to Frankfurt at 7 in the morning and beyond. TEN FLIGHTS. Domestic and international flights, impatient business types, and BIKES!!  Did you know you could check your professional bicycle on a plane? Me either.  But you can!

We cut a few lines, missed a few flights, but by the time we got on the plane headed to Firenze we were popping Xanex like butterscotch drops and happy as clams. And what awaited us during the four days in Florence and Tuscany is something that was just remarkable.

I was in Italy already once when I was 17. Some things have changed and it was certainly more crowded with September tourists. But the light, THE LIGHT. The Tuscan light must have been what the great writers and thinkiers imagined when they pictured eternity, what inspired the the angelic duomos and sculptures. As Dame Judy Dench says in TEA WITH MUSSOLINI:

Florence isn’t just shiny cars and ice creams as little boys think. It’s the human form divine. The body beautiful. And you – yes, you – could be part of that world. To make, to create. To live as those old artists did… is to share a part in the divine plan.

Click on the picture below to see my Flickr slideshow of Florence, San Gimignano and Siena.

 

 

Széchenyi Baths

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I’m back!  It was an incredible month of travelling and adventure with my family, but now that it is October and my parents have been home for five days, I figured it was about time to get back to work and blurbing at Budajest.

To really go into detail about the month will take some time, but I have so many pictures and I don’t want them to get lost in my rush to get it all done at once.  So I will go back to the end of the first week in September, which is just about where I left off anyway.

I had to do a little bit of work that first Saturday, so Györgyi took my mom to Széchenyi Baths. Syechenyi Baths were the first of their kind in Pest, with the temporary bath established in 1881. The permanent structure that you can see today was built in 1913.  There have been various additions over the years, including an entire reconstruction in 1999.

The day that the gals went, it was very cold and rainy, but that didn’t stop them from enjoying the picturesque surroundings and the wonderful, thermal water. Budapest is known as a city of baths, but Széchenyi may be the nicest.

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Back in Bovec

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We just returned from Bovec, Slovenia and tomorrow we will head out for a few days in Salzburg, Austria. Bovec was so beautiful it was almost painful to leave the sleepy town and sweeping mountain shadows.  I have added the Bovec pictures to a Flickr slideshow, which you can view by clicking the picture below. When we get back from Austria and my parents head back to the states, I’ll finally be able to catch up on all of the block posts from this past month.  Happy Fall everyone!

The Castle District, Szentendre & Budapest by Night

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For our last full day with the whole family before my Aunt Donna and Ron left for Paris, we headed up to the castle district for a lovely, sunny afternoon. The weather finally broke into some sunshine and we were able to explore Fisherman’s Bastion, Mátyás Templom and the National Gallery. We saw the wooden fixtures that will become the International Wine Festival this week, in addition to sitting at a little cafe for a cappuccino and water.

After the castle, we drove to Szentendre, which is an artsy town about 20 km north of the city. We explored a bit, did some shopping and had a gyro and strudel before returning to Budapest. At about 5 p.m we met at the Marriott where we enjoyed appetizers and drinks in the Executive Lounge, which has a gasp-inducing view of both sides of the river. As the sun set, the National Gallery and Citadel glowed amber and pink and it was the perfect last cocktail hour together in Budapest.  That evening, a tour bus picked us up for our Budapest by Night tour, which highlights the best of the city’s nightscape, in addition to a great dinner accompanied by gypsy music and folk dancing.  As you will see from the pictures, my Mom was pulled on stage by one of the dancers, with whom she gladly did the csarda dance to end the lovely night.

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