One of the longest running agri-business events in Hungary, the National Agriculture and Food Show at the Hungexpo in Budapest celebrated its 77th year. As usual, all 10 national parks were represented in the exhibition halls, and Aggtelek National Park's hucul horses also gave carriage racing demonstrations at the neighbouring Kincsem Park racecourse. I worked the stand with my colleague Balázs on Friday and Saturday. We were placed directly across from Babolna Farms booth, a big agricultural concern trying to rebrand itself as the Happy Chicken Republic. Somehow I doubt their factory farms have gone free range. Balázs' fiancée Kata's best friend also had a stand selling homemade cheese from their farm in Homoródalmási, Transylvania. Kata and her husband Kálmán make some excellent semi-hard and soft cheeses, including natural flavoured, paprika, garlic and others. The 4000 HUF/kg price was a steal. If I had not been travelling on Sunday I definitely would have bought a kilo.

I walked around a bit with my Kata, and we discovered a chocolate master from her home town of Dombovár whose premier product is a Hungarian Rhapsody Bonbon honouring composer Ferenc Liszt. His chocolates are used by the Hungarian state at diplomatic functions, and he has won several international awards. He gave us a big bonbon which we ate on our 3rd anniversary last night along with some organic Philippe de Chalendar 2011 (cab.sauv.-merlot barrique) Dobosi Vineyard.

Another kind of chocolate we sampled was salty, similar to the Dutch double-salt droppjes that I love so much. The chocolate came from the famous Parajd Salt Mine in Transylvania. We bought a kilo of salt here.

Every couple hours one of the national parks highlighted one of their certified products. I was lucky enough to be there on Saturday when a microbrewery from Szarvas (70/457-80-30, szarvasiatta@gmail.com) in the Körös-Maros National Park held a beer tasting. They have red beer, dark beer, plum and cherry beers. Very good stuff.

Years of enduring hucul horse breeding work at Aggtelek National Park were recognised with the presentation of the OMÉK bronze and silver medals by Minister of Rural Development Dr. Sándor Fazekas to ANP Director Balázs Veress. Agrármarketing Centre Deputy Director Imre György Lipcsey and Balázs Fekete, President of the Hungarian Animal Breeder Association presented ANP with certificates recognising its successful programme. The racing carriages were driven by Kincső Vajda, Gábor Jóna and Zerind Veress with assistance from Gergő Boros and Krisztián Boros.

At home, we bottled three kinds of ketchup. The first recipe was Hungarian, and while good, we did not let it boil down long enough so it is a bit watery. The second try was from Martha Stewart. This came out thicker, but very spicy from the star anise. By the third recipe, Jamie Oliver, we were starting to get it right. Still a bit too spicy with too much fennel, but good. The trouble with making ketchup if you do not have summer kitchen is that it feels like you have to use half a propane tank just to reduce it by half, and that is just not cost effective. Maybe next year we will do it in the bogrács. We also made about 20 jars of tomato sauce, 2 small jars of sun dried tomatoes, a couple jars of salsa, 4 jars of pickled green tomatoes and sage cordial recently. All these preserves are going on our beautiful new shelves that we, mostly Kata, put up in the newly renovated basement. Even though the potato plants are still flowering and green, we began digging them out and storing them packed in hay. Kata also gave into her impatience and harvested the rhubarb rather than waiting the 3 years they recommend for rhubarb from seed. The best part this year has been the joy of being able to harvest the walnuts, pears, quince and apples that for the last 18 years have been stolen by neighbours before we could get to them. We picked 5 baskets of walnuts, plenty for the year, and we might be able to get one more basket if we get a good wind this week. We still have sloe berries, rosehips and hawthorn berries to pick.

I missed the last 2 mushrooming trips with my class, but made it to Miskolc Mushroom Association's mushroom exhibition at the Herman Otto Museum/Pannon Tengeri Museum in Miskolc. There were over 170 types of mushroom on display that we oohed and aaahed over, sniffed, handled, and sometimes tasted. Several experts were on hand to answer our questions. It was good to finally see some of the poisonous ones first hand. The museum itself looks quite interesting, and maybe something to do on a rainy day in the future.