Monday, October 15, 2007

A day out of Budapest; making lasagna at home



Our trip out of Budapest was an all-day excursion to the Bend of the Danube, and the towns of Szentendre (St. Andrew's), Visegrad, and Esztergom (Stephen). What a lovely day this was! We had great weather. We reached Szentendre early, fortunately - the main groups of tourists arrived about the time we were getting ready to leave. Szentendre is a charming town of hills, cobblestone streets, little shops, and galleries. Mostly we wandered around on our own. Ann, Al, and I arranged to go through the museum of a Hungarian potter, Margrit Kovacs. She decided to leave her clay sculptures and money for a museum to Szentendre, when she died in the 1977. Her free-standing sculptures and wall pieces are wonderfully figurative with faces (I realized later) are taken from Medieval altar pieces and paintings.


Our next stop was Visegrad and a wonderful ruin of a medieval castle that had been overgrown and lost until 1932. It's still being excavated and restored, including a great citadel on top of the hill behind the castle. We also ate lunch at a lovely country restaurant overlooking the citadel.
Esztergom is a town built on a bluff overlooking the Danube, with Slovakia on the other side. Built on the bluff is a huge basilica, one of the largest in Hungary, built from 1822-1869.


After we got into Budapest, we got caught in a mammoth traffic tie-up, caused by a motorcycle/bicycle event ,causing streets to be closed. It took about 2 hours to go what should've taken about 20 minutes. Our guide finally let us out near a Metro station, trusting us to get home by ourselves.
--------------------------------------------------
At home today, it was a busy day. I went to the grocery store, and got all the ingredients for making lasagna. That's a major event around here, since I make it in huge quantities. The sauce simmered all afternoon, and assembly started right after supper. When it was all over, we had nine 10x10 pans of lasagna. It was amazing - I don't measure anything...just start cooking, and then see how it comes together. I wound up using every bit of the sauce I had made, all the cottage cheese, and almost all the lasagna noodles. I don't know how that works out. The trickiest part was making enough room in the freezer to get the pans in. Once they're frozen, they can be stacked. Three of them are actually spoken for. I'm glad I don't "cook" very often.
----------------------------------------------------------
Today's pictures are of the entrance to Margrit Kovacs Pottery Museum and of the Citadel in Visegrad. (I don't seem to be able to post any photos tonight - I'll try to add them later.)

No comments: