Sunday, November 17, 2024

ZOLTAN KASZAS STAND UP COMEDY

 I enjoy the YouTube videos by DryBar Comedy....  search for DryBar and Zoltan Kaszas.

ZOLTAN COMEDY  Funny!

Zoltan Kaszas is a Hungarian-American comedian and actor. He was born in Budapest in 1987 and moved to the United States in 1991. 

Friday, November 15, 2024

Sunday, November 10, 2024

MEATLESS HIGH PROTEIN LENTIL STEW : FOOD BANK RECIPE

MEATLESS LENTIL STEW

This is a hearty stew and you won't miss the meat.

4 cups dried brown lentils (rinse and look for little rocks that might need to be removed. In my entire life I've only found one rock!)

One quart chicken broth (or use four packets from chicken flavor ramen noodles to flavor a quart of water.)

Two bay leaves.  (Some people say leaves of bay don't add any flavor to soups and stews but others say these leaves add soul - something no one can quite define but that exists!)

In a pot, cook the lentils in the broth. 

I bring to a boil, put a lid on it, and then lower the heat to medium.  At about the twenty minute point, when the lentils are softened, I shut the gas off and allow the lentils to absorb any broth left. This happens in about ten minutes. They should be soft and easy to chew.

Olive oil for saute.

One can potatoes (which are already cooked), drained, or boil and cut up one medium potato.

One can carrots (which are already cooked), drained, or two fresh carrots sliced.

One can tomato sauce. (If herbed, you may not want to add more spices.)

One fresh onion diced; red especially good.

Two tablespoons oregano or marjoram dried herb.

Two tablespoons powdered paprika.

In a sauce pan, on medium heat, saute the onion, add the sliced carrots, then the cut up potato, then the spices. Add the tomato sauce last.  You want the onions and carrots and potato to be soft.  Stir around, add more olive oil as needed, add salt, about a half teaspoon, or as desired. Then add the lentils to the sauce pan and stir well. Continue to cook on low with a lid on over the pan for a few minutes.

If you use canned potato and carrots, the cook time in the sauce pan is less, but just use lower heat, because the tomato sauce will still need to thicken.

Part of the fun of this recipe is the differences in textures and colors.

*** Green and other colors of lentils will work but be sensitive to the cooking instructions on the package as they do have different cooking times.  Don't throw different colors of lentils in the same cook pot.

If you use the raman noodle chicken flavor packets, you can still boil up the dried raman and use it for another recipe.

Saturday, November 2, 2024

GENETEKA POLAND DATABASES - SEARCH FOR HUNGARIAN SURNAMES


 

Yes, there are sections of the Geneteka for Ukraine and Belarus, and it is a work in progress, but here we will link to the PODKARPAKIE province which hugs the present Slovak border - which used to be the Hungarian border.

GENETEKA POLAND DATABASE - PODKARPAKIE

Try running some names such as Szabo and Takacs... Matyas*  Balint ... Soltesz ...



Sunday, October 27, 2024

UKRAINIAN GENEALOGY DATABASE PRA.IN.UA and THE STATE ARCHIVAL SERVICE OF UKRAINE

The top post was originally published on the MAGYAR-AMERICAN blog on July 22 2019

Special note November 2018. Some parts of Historic Hungary are now in Ukraine. Ukrainians also lived in Hungary.

Image result for public domain free download vintage ukrainian

Those of you who have been in the United States for a couple generations at least may be only partly Hungarian / Magyar.  Your family may also have origins in Slovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, or Ukraine as well. Yes, we intermarried with our "own" people : people who shared a religion or the experience of Central and Eastern Europe. Those of you who remember grandparents or great-grandparents who lived in ethnic ghettos of immigrants before the family started moving out to the suburbs may remember hearing so many languages spoken when you went to visit. You might also be part RUTHENIAN, of the mountain people who lived in the Carpathians in what became four different countries. Close to 4 MILLION people in the database born between 1650  and 1920  - rush to the site and see the possibilities.


A wealthy man who instigated his own genealogy research and believes the ancestors remain with us so long as we remember their names, Igor Howszowski, is responsible.


LINK TO THE DATABASE UKRAINIAN GENEALOGY DATABASE - PRA.IN.UA

**********************************************************************************

February 2024 : The United States State Department announced that it will provide aid to the Archival Service of Ukraine to ensure the protection and digitation of the documents of the National Archive Fond of Ukraine. International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas in cooperation.

March 2024 : A records searching on-line project to document the victims of repressions of the 1920s-1950's added to the Ukrainian Martyrology of the XX Century database.

Go to the site to see what's happening in this war-torn country with archival records and charity support of the effort to preserve them.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

THE AUSTRIAN-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE : GALICIA : CADASTRAL MAPS : HOUSE NUMBERS : GENEALOGY GEN-TIPS SERIES #7

PLACE NAME WORDS OF HUNGARIAN SETTLEMENTS - THE ROOTS WORDS  and OLD MAPS OF HUNGARY

My intention here is to help the English speaker and reader make sense of Hungarian place names so that they will feel more familiar. You will see some of these word "roots" all over the maps!

***
OLD MAPS ONLINE - HUNGARY  (Yes, yet another map resource.)

This is a list of root words.

HAZA - Home

HAZ - House

HELY - Place

FALU - Village

FALUSKA - Hamlet  (Suggests very few inhabitants, maybe around a bend or in a valley, smaller than a village)

KISVAROS - Small town

NAGYVAROS - Big town

VAROS - City or Town

UTCA - Street

***

PATAK - Creek (Smaller waterway than a stream)

FOLYAM - Stream

FOLYO - River

TO - Lake  (accent over o)

OCEAN - Ocean

***

SATOR - Tent  (Used to describe the look of a hill or mountain.)

PUSZTA - Villa or Big House (at least compared to the average house in the neighborhood.)

KASTELY - Castle  (Applied also to large houses.  Does not mean there is a fortress or moat.)

ISTALLO - Barn

TEMPLOM - Church

***

UJ - New

REJI - Old

***

MEGYE - County 

Note about names of colors for settlements, rivers, and so on... Sometimes places were named, not because they looked white or black or red or yellow, but because the color indicated a direction.  I realize this could be map-centric.  White would be north, Black would be south.  So for instance The Black Sea is South of where?

FEHER - White or Light Color

FEKETE - Black or Dark Color

PIROS - Red

SARGA - Yellow

****

All posts in this series have the tab Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tips
C 2024 Magyar American BlogSpot - All Rights Reserveincluding Internet and International Rights

Saturday, October 19, 2024

CAVE DIVING UNDER BUDAPEST : MOLNAR JANOS CAVE SYSTEM : WONDERFUL PLACES IN HUNGARY #27

SCUBADIVING COM : CAVE DIVING UNDER BUDAPEST

by Tobias Friedrich

This is a beautifully written article about the extensive cave system under the city which has tropical heat.... Technical advice for scuba diving is given.

MJ CAVE HUNGARY : THE STORY OF THE CAVE

Excerpt: The cave is a good example of modern phreatic hypogenic caves, since it has been formed by mixing corrosion below the water table.  Mixing corrosion occurs where flow systems of different orders (with different chemistry and temperature) meet via tectonic lines or through diffusion. Besides the tectonic control, the network maze of cave passages follows the south-southwestward dip of the Upper Eocene limestone and marl.   

The scientists regularly analyze water samples and map the pattern of water flow inside the cave.  Research of the species is an exciting field as well.  They found 3 species of them in the the cave, and there are two Amphipoda one Isopioda and one Neotaenioglossa species.

The Molnar Janos cave is a protected area since 1982.

from Wikispecies - Wikimedia

Click on the label Wonderful-Hungary to bring up all posts on this theme.

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

THE AUSTRIAN-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE : GALICIA : CADASTRAL MAPS : HOUSE NUMBERS : GENEALOGY GEN-TIPS SERIES #6

Austrian-Hungarian Empire

Österreichisch-Ungarische Monarchie in GERMAN

Osztrák–Magyar Monarchia in HUNGARIAN (Austro-Hungarian Monarchy)

Maps for the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, which includes Galicia, now Southern Poland, as well as today's Slovakia, part of today's Ukraine including Cadastral maps (or in America Plat maps) will be in GERMAN, LATIN, Hungarian, or other languages...

Just as today there are SLOVAK names for previously HUNGARIAN NAMED settlements, some settlements were renamed in GERMAN.

Here are some links to what is sometimes called Village Finders.

JEWISH GEN START PAGE  Seek the GAZETTEER

But let's return to the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LIBRARY OF CONGRESS : MAPS and GAZETTEER ADVISEMENT AUSTRIAN HUNGARIAN EMPIRE

Excerpt: We are equally fortunate in possessing a comprehensive gazetteer to search for place names in the former Austria-Hungary, and that is Josef and Karl Kendler's 1905 work title ORTS-UND VERKEHRS-LEXIKON VON OESTERREICH-UNGARN.   .... To our benefit the Kendler gazetteer has been digitalized in its entirety for research VIA THE LIBRARY's WEBSITE .... A major drawback of the gazetteer, however, is its absence of geographic coordinates, which can be remedied by using the online Jewishgen Gazetteer or some other published gazetteer.  

All posts in this series have the tab Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tips

C 2024 Magyar American BlogSpot - All Rights Reserveincluding Internet and International Rights

Saturday, October 12, 2024

A PATHE AMSTERDAM FILM PRESERVED : SCENES FROM HUNGARY 1926 BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS : HONGARIJE

There are seven parts to this film...  Mezokovesd, dancing, marriage in Debrecen, horses in Hortobagy, Kosice, and scenes in the Carpathian Mountains.  Those are the mountains which include the recently mentioned Dukla Pass, so important to the wine trade - Galicia into Hungary.

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

THE AUSTRIAN-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE : GALICIA : CADASTRAL MAPS : HOUSE NUMBERS : GENEALOGY GEN-TIPS SERIES #5


Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tip # 5

While MAGYAR AMERICAN focuses on Hungarian culture and society, we can learn a lot from research in Poland, Slovakia, and other parts of what was the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

Hungary and Poland have history together - both good and bad. Rakoczi's armys destroyed towns in southern Poland, for instance. 

I mentioned before, here at MAGYAR-AMERICAN BlogSpot about finding some Hungarian surnames in church records for Galicia - Poland, and a notation in a marriage record in a Roman Catholic church that the bride came from Hungary. That was a small town involved in the wine business. I suspect this would be more true in records for cities, such as Krakow.

I think you'll find that people with means would travel far for marriages. They were also more likely to marry in the more impressive churches and cathedrals. And if you "know" that a certain noble ancestor lived in a place but their marriages and other records seem to be missing consider the larger church or cathedral not too far away.

Although it was an extremely small sample, I recently ran the names of the known nobility who owned a particular area of Galicia just a few miles from the then-Hungarian border in the GENETEKA databases and none of their names came up. So what was happening? First, some of the churches, while incredibly beautiful and ornate inside, didn't seat too many people. So if you were having many guests to your religious ceremony, you needed more space. But then, you probably needed more space for the festivities as well, and somewhere for guests who traveled to stay for a few days. Also, you might have a private chapel or church on your own property and having services there would protect you and your guests from the villagers intent on witnessing the goings-on and invading your privacy. However, this also means that they kept private records of their births and marriages if those names are also not coming up as recorded in any of the dozens of church books now transcribed for the Geneteka databases. Today I would think that such records would make their way to the diocese archive but back in the day? Common people were keeping records of births and marriages and deaths handwritten in their Bible...

In January 2022 I did a series called  Pro Genealogy Tips - Galicia which you can reference.

GENETEKA English

You  might want to run some Hungarian surnames in the databases of other European countries as well.

Some of the noble families donated their private records to The National Archives in Hungary.

All posts in this series have the tab Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tips

C 2024 Magyar American BlogSpot - All Rights Reserveincluding Internet and International Rights

Saturday, October 5, 2024

THE AUSTRIAN-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE : GALICIA : CADASTRAL MAPS : HOUSE NUMBERS : GENEALOGY GEN-TIPS SERIES #4

 MORE MAP RESOURCES     Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tip # 4

When AUSTRIA ruled Hungary and the southern part of now-Poland, called Galicia, the two countries were subject to modernization notions coming out of Vienna.  Because of Austrian rule, census took place, maps were made, educational standards were raised (though that was easier said than done), and military service as well as taxes were demanded.  

As previously mentioned, today's house numbers and the numbers on old maps from a hundred or more years ago - and mentioned on church records - are unlikely to coordinate. What's key is to find a map that shows properties on or about the time the ancestors lived in the town. We previously looked at an excellent resource called HUNGARICANA

But there are other resources for maps.

One of the best is ARCANUM which used to be called MAPIRE. These are historical maps of Europe. The site has four categories. Maps of Europe.  City maps. Country maps.  And Cadastral maps.

Under Cadastral we link to ARCANUM MAPS : HAPSBURG EMPIRE

As I mentioned in my first post, which was a bit of a history lesson,  Galicia - Southern Poland, parts of what is now Ukraine, and what is now Slovakia - as well as some other geographical possessions of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (aka Hapsburg Empire) fall into one category.  So maps at this site include from the HUNGARIAN, CROATION, BUDAPEST, AUSTRIAN, and UKRAINIAN archives. (To find them we may research possible German names for the same settlement.)

But, you may be surprised to learn that our very own LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS A WONDERFUL ADVISEMENT AND COLLECTION.  You can go right there at this link:

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS : AUSTRIA HUNGARY CARTOGRAPHIC RESOURCES EASTERN EUROPE

Excerpt: As Empires go, that of Austria Hungary was among the briefest, having lasted only form 1867 to 1918, nevertheless, its constituent nations served as major sources of emigration to the Unite States in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

All posts in this series have the tab Austrian-Hungarian Empire - Gen Tips

C 2024 Magyar American BlogSpot - All Rights Reserveincluding Internet and International Rights

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

THE TAROGATO : A HUNGARIAN WIND INSTRUMENT

   
The film was made with the support of the 
Hungarikum Committee and the Ministry of Agriculture.