Columns

I think we all have a grandmother who had some incredible recipes. My Hungarian grandmother made the best pie crusts. The secret? Lard, preferably home-cured.

Many Hungarian recipes call for lard, and, it turns out, there is a reason for that. The extensive use of pork and lard originates from when the Ottomans occupied Hungary (1541 to 1699). The official religion of the Ottoman Empire was Islam, which forbade the eating of pork, so the occupying forces confiscated all of the domestic animals for themselves except for pigs.

Due to the excellent response, we continue to share readers’ On-the-Road Travel Tips during this continuing period of international travel downtime. (Each is followed by my own comments.) It’s exciting to see just how creative travelers can be! In submitting your own suggestion for something that makes the travel experience work better for you while actually traveling, try to keep it to 125 words or fewer; my email is at the end of this column.

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Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 536th issue of your monthly foreign-travel magazine.

It is hard to believe we are embarking in this issue on part 8 of On-the-Road Travel Tips (each followed by my own comments). The response has been continuous and far beyond what we had envisaged.