Budapest

Budapest…or BootyFest as James liked to call it. It ended up becoming the group phrase for the weekend…it didn’t help that we saw a lot of inappropriately dressed girls that supported the name.

The week before Lindsey left for New Zealand, we wanted to take a little trip- so we looked up the cheapest flights on RyanAir and Budapest it was! We found a great little apartment in the Castle district…only slightly misleading… so we headed out!

Finding a place to stay can always be a bit of a nightmare…for example, this place looked awesome- it was advertised as an off branch of a hotel, sounds easy and accommodating, right? It was an apartment owned by 2 people. No hair dryer, the hot water lasted for only 1 person, no internet, and the power cut on us- frequently. As the Italian’s say, “Alora (Oh well)!” 

The most important rule we had to follow was to take our shoes off…he even provided slippers for us!

The owners were extremely nice! They gave us a several local places to eat in the surrounding area. The first night, we ate at this semi-hole in the wall, with amazing food. Let’s just say the Hungarians KNOW how to cook. I had this delicious paprika chicken with dumplings. We drank and ate until they basically asked us to leave! Hungarians don’t stay out as late apparently. Then we took a little stroll down by the river. On the opposite side, the parliament building stood- lit up for the world to see!! What a breath taking view!

 (I have way too many pictures of Katie up in my personal space...)

The next day, we walked. A lot.

The best part of the morning was getting on the subway. Katie had a stoller for Carson, and this subway station had NO way to get down except for the escalator. And this escalator was moving FAST. We ultimately caused a scene. The lady that worked there didn’t speak English, not one of us had ever taken a stroller down and escalator, and we were holding up the line. Perfect. It was decided that Katie would carry him down the broken one…just like using stairs right? So Katie starts carrying, and we hop on the ridiculously fast one and realize that this escalator is about a mile long…maybe not a mile- but REALLY long and really steep. I look up and don’t see Katie. Great. So we all get off, and get on the up escalator to meet this:

The Hungarian man from Texas!! Life Saver.

Lindsey took us on a Rick’s Steve’s tour around town. The tour accidentally started with a Starbucks run!

We went to an awesome WWII museum at The House of Terror, which was the Nazi Headquarters in Budapest. The exhibit was so incredible- very artistic and informative. At the beginning of each room, there was an informational pamphlet that explained the history of the room. There were rooms about torture, the prisoners, the lives of prisoners of upper, middle, and lower class, the voting system, the propaganda, and we even got to go down into the torture chambers.

 

Next up- the Turkish Baths. Originally, I thought it was going to be disgusting- lots of people in the same water…public. Sick. There are a lot of natural hot springs underneath the city, so the Turkish baths are still in use today. There are different pools that are different temperatures- there is a proper way to go from pool to pool, but we just hopped right in, threw the baby around a little bit, and worked up a good little appetite. The architecture was beautiful, it was clean, and not too crowded! The only down side was that Kaitlin and I could NOT for the life of us open our changing room door. The lady was not happy because we had to change “suites” aka closets. 

 

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The next day we were able to go the awesome market!! It is HUGE! Tons of meats, paprika, dried fruit, and langos! We searched hi and low for this Hungarian speciality- surprisingly much harder to find than I would have thought! It is a fried bread, with sour cream, and mozzarella cheese on top. Sounds weird. But AH-mazing. 

 Dried strawberries are my new favorite thing!

I loved wandering around looking at all of the little trinkets- I even bought some Hungarian Easter eggs- hand painted. Can't wait to put them out!

We rushed out of the market and raced down to the parliament building to get a tour- it was suppose to be pretty awesome...sadly, their government was in session, so all tours were closed. Lindsey was rather irritated because she had called ahead to ask if it was open, apparently we got bad information. We even tried to go early the next morning before we left...no such luck- the line was SO long!

The evening ended with a walk up to Castle Hill. It was like a quaint little village that overlooked the hustle and bustling city. We got some beautiful pictures!! 

Budapest was a blessing. We were able to get away from the craziness of Vicenza and the Army. We were able to walk around and discover a new place and be reminded of the world outside of the bubble we live in. I am so thankful to have wonderful traveling buddies! I mean, let's be honest- not everyone can travel together, and the fact that I have 3 awesome friends and we can travel together is huge!

Oh, Fall

I'll be honest with you, I am a summer girl. I like the heat, and while it definitely got hot and humid here in south Georgia, I honestly didn't mind it. People have called Columbus, Ga the "armpit" of the South because of the humidity and heat- but I would have to disagree with that statement. It definitely gets hot and sometimes hard to breathe due to the 100% humidity, but you get use to it. James, on the other hand- loves fall. It is his favorite time of year. He loves wearing sweatshirts and long pants with this boots. So this household LOVES 2 out of the 4 seasons. Perfect.

Even though I am a self proclaimed "summer girl," I LOVE pumpkin. I use to have pumpkin pies for my June birthday. So when fall comes around- I am really pumped because I get to stock up on the pumpkin. And Starbucks has a pumpkin spice latte- so that helps.

This past week, I went a little over board on the pumpkin. But I made a pumpkin spice latte in the crockpot- amazing- and made pumpkin scones.

Both of these recipes I found via pinterest...another obsession. The latte was to die for...sadly I accidentally left it out over night and the milk definitely went bad. So I am going to make it again...this week. Then James can have a cup of homemade pumpkin latte every morning before work.

The pumpkin scones on the other hand looked great....didn't quite taste like a scone- more like a muffin. I do have a theory for why they scones weren't really scones- I think the pumpkin made the dough way too moist. I think I can correct it by adding more flour to counter act for the moisture that the pumpkin adds...but I also think I could add more pumpkin to make the taste full of more flavor, but then that is even more flour to add. Oh well. I'll let you know if it actually works and makes the scones actually taste like a scone.

More to come about our trip to North Carolina!

Stop putting things on the stove.

I have had way too many close calls in the kitchen in the past two weeks. It all started with the mini kitchen fire. I was cooking some food for James' 8hr pass and put one of our kitchen towels on one of the hot burners. Who knows why I thought that would be a good idea, but the worst part is how long it too for me to figure out what was burning! The flames finally clued me in. Thank God that the faucet was running and the sink was empty (because that NEVER happens), so I quickly threw the towel in the sink. I can now put my whole fist through the hole that I burned. Whoops.

Then a couple of days later I put one of Fawn's grocery store bags- the reusable ones- on the stove. It was logical because I had just unloaded all of the vegetables onto the counter, so I just slide the bag over to the stove. Well later that day, I was making some oven dried tomatoes when once again I smelled the burning. So I go into the kitchen, look at the tomatoes- which looked fine, and realized that smoke was coming from the bag. No fire yet, but now there is a hole in Fawn's awesome reusable grocery bag.

To add to my mishaps in the kitchen... the oven dried tomatoes looked GREAT at one point. They smelled so good! But when I took them out of the oven the were still REALLY mushy- so they weren't quite done yet. So I left them in over night with the oven set at 100. (You are actually suppose to cook them over night, I was just trying to speed the process along) This is what I saw when I woke up:

I"m attempting to make these one more time. Then I'm done.

Manna Monday's

Last week was week 3. And I was so consumed with preparing for the possibility of James coming home I forgot to tell about the awesome fried okra I made. Every Monday Fawn, Meredith and I eat dinner at Fawn's house- it has been happening since week 2 of IBOLC and Fawn's mother-in-law has started to call it Manna Monday's at Fawn's. Manna- like Meredith and Anna. Hahaha- creative. So last week- I made fried okra. Fawn got a ton of okra from her CSA and was not sure how to cook it and neither one of them has eaten it before...Welcome to the South.  I love fried okra. So I went out to buy a huge thing of vegetable oil

Every time I deep fry, I never have enough oil, so I decided to go ahead and buy the massive bottle so next time this won't happen.

And then I forgot to take a picture of the finished product. Clearly still not sure to doing this whole blogging thing. But its okay- because the handful of people looking at this know what fried okra looks like. So I'm not concerned.

Productive

I guess that my day ended up being productive. I tackled my project for the week- my baby gift for Rebecca. I will probably head to Hobby Lobby again tomorrow to pick up some more things to modge podge because it was so much fun and now I have a ton of modge podge left over. Rebecca and I met in Oklahoma- we worked on the same floor at the hospital. We got along really well and I attribute that to her being from Alabama. We quickly bonded over the fact that we were new to the state and didn't have any friends- the best way to make a new friend. I was was even more excited when I found out that she was pregnant. Literally almost cried. Then I moved and she moved and I never got to throw her a shower... but I got invited to her shower in Alabama! So that is where I will be spending Saturday night and Sunday. I decided to get crafty for her little one Grace Anne. This is what I made:

 Yes, the birds on the G and the R are upside down....thus the reason for another trip to Hobby Lobby- might be redoing those. And then I made the sides of the G and the R the same paper as the face of the A and the side of the A the same paper as the face of the G and the R. Confusing. Here is another picture.

I loved doing this! I decided that projects like this are going to be the way to go... doing stuff for other people can definitely help with the sadness that I have recently been feeling.

Then I went to the grocery store- so I could make these awesome cookies that I found on pinterest and I got some ice cream with Fawn, Renee and Tirzah! The little was so precious. She kept me entertained the whole time.

Then came home to make these DELICIOUS cookies!

So all in all a much better day than it started out.

The Deep Fryer.

I got a deep fryer for Christmas from James' parents. I was so excited! But for some reason it has taken me until now to actually use it... I am a terrible daughter-in-law. I think I might have been a little scared to use it...probably a good thing, considering these things are dangerous. BUT my cool deep fryer has some built in safety features- a magnetic plug (so if someone/thing happened to trip over the plug the whole tub of boiling oil wouldn't come down), the basket can rest completely submerged in the oil- for the frying, or it can sit out of the oil- to let the oil drip off- but it is still underneath the top. Somehow, with all of these safety features, I still manged to burn myself- but only once, and it will probably never happen again. I was really excited to fry some chicken because the grocery store had drumsticks on sale so I picked up a huge pack! It was even better because we were going to a pool party- so why not have fried chicken?! So I coated the chicken in eggs:

And then flour.

Then made James run out to the store to buy more oil...didn't realize how much it needed. When he came back I heated the fryer up to as high as it would go and started to put the chicken in!

See the window...another added saftey feature, so that I can see if the food is cooked without taking the lid off...but unfortunately the window fogs up and you actually can't see it that well. But VOILA! The chicken was done...or so we thought.

James was dying of hunger, so I let him eat a drumstick early...good thing, because once he got down to the bone, the chicken didn't look completely done. Well, let me rephrase that- James and I didn't really know what done was suppose to look like, so decided to stick it in the microwave for a couple minutes just to make sure. Genius! Not so much.  After about a minute or so, I heard a loud pop, opened the microwave to find blood covering one of the drumsticks, sliding down the inside part of the door and on the ceiling- of the microwave. Sick. The blood stained chicken turned me off and we decided that we didn't want anyone to even try the chicken. So we left it sitting on the counter and went to the pool party empty handed. Fail. James decided that he was so hungry that he was going to eat me instead of the chicken:

Luckily, I tasted like sunscreen, so he decided to take a normal picture.

Lesson learned: Next time use smaller pieces of chicken. And yes, there will be a next time.