The mood was tök jó (that, believe it or not, is how Hungarian say "excellent") at the "Third International Őrség Tök Festival" in Őriszentpéter over the weekend, hirtv.hu reports. Several thousand visitors, including many from Austria, Slovenia and Croatia, tasted various tök (pumpkin/squash) dishes, and carved pumpkins in the western town, near fields where pumpkins have been grown for their oil for more than a century. The program included a tök pushing competition, a tök beauty contest (we think that may be this year's winner at left) and a tök lamp parade. Meanwhile, a tök "king" and tök "knights" were elected in the evening, though interestingly, no tök queen. Maybe they were afraid her carriage would turn into a tök.

In honor of the event, tabloid Blikk published five tök recipes, including the following two:

Tökmagos saláta (Pumpkin seed salad, top right)
Directions: Wash 300 grams of sauerkraut (savanyúkáposzta), toss it with a handful of cooked beans, a couple of tablespoons of pumpkin seeds, add some pumpkin seed oil and leave it in the fridge for an hour.

Tökös-mákos rétes (Pumpkin-poppyseed pastry roll, top left)
Directions: Mix 250 grams of rétes (pastry) flour and an equal amount of regular flour with a tablespoon each of sour cream and oil and some warm water until you get a ball of dough that is not too sticky to easily remove from the bowl. Divide the dough into two pieces and flatten it. (If you are in Hungary you can skip this step and buy two standard packages of rétes crust.) Mix 200 grams of ground poppyseeds with 100 grams of ground or powdered sugar. Shred one kilo of tök and mix it with the mákos cukor (poppyseed sugar). Put the filling onto the pieces of rétes, roll them up, dab them with some egg mixed with sour cream and bake until "pink."