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PUMPKIN PIE

This is similar to the custard filling of a traditional American pumpkin pie.

Ingredients:

Winter squash: peeled, boiled, mashed, and drained

(750 ml.. about 3 cups)

4 eggs

1 cup sugar (about 250 ml)

ground cinnamon (1 ½ teaspoons)

ground cloves (about ½ teaspoon)

grated nutmeg about ½ nut

Reduced fat cream, about 1 ½ cups 400 ml

Traditionally you also include ginger (I forgot it)

and you use low fat condensed milk (I couldn't find any at the

Spar).

Traditionally the dish does not include raisins. I happen to

like raisins. So much for tradition.

Usually the custard is baked in a pastry crust. The traditional crust

has quite a bit of fat, however, so I prefer to serve the dish

just as a custard.

Also, traditionally, the custard is baked at about 350 degrees F.

Instead I put the custard in a water bath: the container is set in

boiling water on top of the stove and is cooked until the mixture

becomes firm. You know it is done when you can insert a knife

into the middle of the custard and the knife comes out perfectly

clean.

Robert Lewis

a shot in the kneecap

well, it is all i am hoping for right now. 7:30 this morning, a shot into the right knee, Monovisc, at $300 a pop, not covered by health insurance in Hungary, thank you, but maybe by my ins in the US, have to send receipts and cross fingers.

Paul Anderson arrives today, this pm, so expect to spend the evening and tomorrow with him doing the sights of Tata, which include an annual Fish Festival,the tents already being set up around the southern edge of the lake, close to the Eszterhazy palace, so we will sample that, plus Barta and the Platán , and have Berci and Josi join us at some point.

The apartment is clean, Hajnalka, my finance manager buddy at the school, suggested i get a couple of cleaning ladies to do a good scrubbing, i was fine with the idea, had thought about it but didnt know how to begin to ask for suggestions, so am in fairly decent shape, guestwise.

Sunday we will head to Budapest, Paul has a hotel room just off the Oktagon, only one metro stop from the Opera, so we will go there first to park his bags, then head off to the coffeehouse.

Three students joining us, two young men from my 1st year class, and a young woman from the 4th yr. They live in different cities, so we will have a way to rendezvous on the train, plus a fallback plan in Budapest. It is the Marriage of Figaro, Paul and I will be content with the seats that do not have the sightlines for the supertitles, so the students should be ok.

School is a mixed bag, as always. The main issue that it boils down to... whether or not a student is willing to read. About half of them do not read at all, other than advertising slogans. But those that do read, it turns out, are not taken aback by my insistence that we tackle some real books. I am doing Uglies, by Scott Westerfield, a distopian setting in which people undergo radical plastic surgery at age 16 to ensure that all are equally hollywood pretty, with only minimal variation. This week a student asked me if I had volume 2 in the series... She has already finished the first book, 400 pages. I am so impressed. I plan on ordering a couple of copies and just giving her one.

have some pictures to download and some reports of a trip to austria,but that will come later.

WEAK KNEES

Really struggling with knee pain. Hard to walk, climb stairs, etc. Easier on bike. Seeing doctor on friday, maybe a simple fix, maybe not. I am apprehensive.