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!

Holiday time

Well, it finally arrived the end of term and the start of the Summer holidays. We go away soon to our second home in Bulgaria where we exchange our English village for a traditional Bulgarian one, and we are all very excited. I think Toby has caught the bug first by finding the hundreds of paper airplanes he made after Christmas, and with his friend Jo took them out onto the front lawn and proceeded to launch every single one of them. The girls looked out the window horrified calling " mum look at the mess Toby has made!" I looked out the window and it was such a lovely sight seeing the boys playing with their planes surrounded by all the ones they had launched so far, I had to run and get my camera in order to capture the image.

Paper airplanes are such a lovely nostalgic item, at the shop we now have a twist on this with postcards made from balsa wood which when written can be made into airplanes and posted! I am sure Toby would love to receive one of these. We also have a whole new range of paper airplane goodies just in time for my holiday. There's a purse and travel wallet designed as though it is an airmail letter, as well as a large bag which would be a perfect hand luggage bag and then a photo album to put all the photos of your holiday in. They are all just so quirky and different, a definite pre holiday treat for yourself or a gift for someone about to go travelling.

If the airmail range doesn't tempt you then the travel map range which not only includes the travel wallet and passport cover but also a luggage tag might. This range definitely has an air of sophistication about it I think.

Not everyone in the household is as excited about going away for 3 weeks though, Ellen is very concerned about the animals and is going to miss them all dreadfully. I can understand why she feels this way, only today the ducks had us giggling and running for the camera when we found them hiding in my sage bush, all we could see was a rustling in the bush and then suddenly these two cheeky little ducks would pop up. Great entertainment!Luckily for them we have 3 sets of friends who are coming to stay in our house each week and look after them for us. I just need to convince Ellen that they are going to enjoy their little holiday just as much as us. Its not as if she wont have any contact with animals on holiday, we usually have a gaggle of ducks and geese waiting at our front gate in the morning ready for their breakfast. and the donkeys wake us with their braying each day. We usually play the game of who can guess the correct number of donkey and carts we will see on our way to the beach each day, some how dad always wins, I think it must have something to do with the many alternative routes he takes each time! cheeky!!

We have a wonderful farmer who lives opposite us who looks after our house and plants our garden with tomatoes and chillies so that they are ready just in time for our arrival. I have plans to make lots of pasta sauce this year because I couldn't bear to see the wastage when we left last year, we were literally drowning in tomatoes. My own tomatoes instead will be enjoyed by my wonderful house sitters I am sure, I think also they will get some broccoli and lettuce and no end supply of potatoes.

Luckily my dahlia bloomed just in time for me to enjoy it before we go away. I have never grown dahlias before but my 2 neighbours have a bit of a rivalry thing going on' who can grow the prettiest biggest dahlias'. I would like to say it is friendly rivalry but I don't think it is! Anyway I have been drawn into the contest by one neighbour who presented me with a bulb and said " Here you go Sam see if you can grow that". Help!! So I planted my bulb and watched it grow into what was starting to look a bit like a triffid before I took the courage to plant it outside and hopefully avoid any late frost. It was looking a bit iffy for a while, I was beginning to think I had grown a stalk but no flower, but then it started to appear and now I have an enormous yellow bloom! No comparison I know to the many many enormous blooms grown in my neighbours gardens but myself and the children are just as pleased with ours. I was also able to cheer Ellen up a little by being able to pick our first handful of sweet peas, she particularly loves the smell of them and immediately found one of my jugs to display them in. The trouble is the flowers look lovely in jugs but I also like to use the jugs, and I do have trouble using something for food that has had flowers in. Then I realised that what we need is a new vase to put our sweet peas in, but one that looked vintage, utilitarian and practical and as luck would have it TreeHouseBlue have just got in the vintage American milk bottle vases which I know would look so great with the sweet peas in.