Homegrown and hot!

How lucky we feel, not only did we enjoy a wonderful holiday again in Bulgaria with plenty of sunshine, we were also able to embark on a slice of Bulgarian village life by harvesting our gardens treasures.

Trees are made to be climbed by all little boys and our trees in Bulgaria just seem to be the best for this and even better when plums can be picked at the same time! Molly and I then chopped and stoned these tasty items and made jam with them, we finally could return something to our neighbour to thank him for all his work, even if it was just a jar of jam. What else do you give a man who is totally self sufficient and has absolutely no need for anything. Though the girls did suggest we give him a leather tankard for his rakia, but even for him I think a pint of this very strong plum brandy might be a little too much. The plums that littered the ground were then collected on his instruction and placed in a bucket where we were taken to his cellar to empty the contents into a huge drum in which the lethal brew of his next batch of homemade rakia was fermenting!




Unfortunately the very same trees we delighted in by day, the local wildlife played in by night. Our first experience of this, left my mum terrified that all night, all she could here was a bear walking around on our roof! We reasoned with her that it was very probably a cat that had jumped onto the roof from the over hanging pear tree.
Whatever it is visits us every year and each year keeps us awake with its scampering around, but hey presto! this year we found out it is called a belka and is larger than a squirrel and is harmless, they just get into the roof space in order to find bird eggs in the nests. It is all very well knowing what it is but it still keeps you awake half the night! so following a particularly disturbed night, the evening we started to hear them again we took the matter into our own hands and started to bash the ceiling with a broom very loudly. The noise stopped and the children shouted "mum we've seen them" and sure enough in the trees were three sets of eyes looking at us, the children went out to chase them out of the trees and they turned out to be something similar to a polecat.
So our belkas had harvested their eggs from our roof space and thankfully moved onto another house in the village using the trees as their exit route as well as the path between the tomato vines, what a relief.

That left us to complete our harvest with the tomatoes and peppers our neighbour had kindly planted for us. The only problem was what to do with the huge and abundant amount of tomato's we had now picked. Molly's answer was to make bruschetta for breakfast every morning for whom ever fancied it. The beautifully tactile wooden chopping boards that we sell at THB would do a fantastic job with this delicious snack. In honour of Molly's taciturn efforts to eat as many tomatoes as she possibly can during the holiday I will write out her very own bruschetta recipe.










One loaf of uncut bread
tomatoes
garlic
olive oil
salt

Slice the bread and toast.
Chop the tomatoes into small pieces
Rub a clove of garlic over each slice.
Drizzle some oil over the top.
Place the tomatoes on top with another small drizzle of oil.
Eat straight away or place under the grill briefly.

A truly delicious holiday breakfast experience!

Molly's dad came up with another idea," how about some tomato soup"?,It was the best tomato soup we had ever tasted. The village children who joined us for lunch that day, thought we had gone completely crazy drinking hot soup for lunch when it was 35degrees outside, nonetheless all bowls were empty.

I just stoically made tons of the local 'shopska' salad and we ate it with every meal. This involves mixing chopped tomatoes, cucumber,onion and peppers in a bowl topped with grated serena cheese, which is a white cheese similar to feta that can only be found in Bulgaria. Pasta sauce was another meal we made up with our produce though this was not quite as exotic as the gourmet sauces that we now stock. If you haven't been lucky enough to go away this year these sauces would certainly help to take you to some exotic place during your mealtime.

It wasn't until I started to write this post that I realised how important the trees in our garden have become to us during our holiday. The pear tree holds the hammock, the swing and the rope ladder every year and all the local children come around to play. Nature and natural products play such an important part in our children's lives and it is experience with these that makes the biggest impressions on our memories. How many young people reminisce about a particular play station game they played when they were young, I am sure their most strong memory would be one of climbing trees or baking cakes even if these were done far less often than playing on the wii!