Bulgarian Cuisine

I’ll just go ahead and say that Bulgarian food is not super different from American food.  I thought it would be fun, though, to highlight some of the more interesting things we have found since coming here.  If you have kept up with James and Matt’s blog, then some of this you’ve already seen.

One thing we’ve found to be interesting, and also quite helpful (if you pay attention), is that on all restaurant menus the amount of food, in grams, is listed beside each menu item.  When ordering an entree in Bulgaria, you will likely not receive any side items with it.  So if you want anything other than the main dish (oftentimes just meat), you will have to order it separately.  Let’s just say that we learned the hard way to begin paying attention to the gram amount.  At one particular restaurant, James decided to order one chicken kebab with a side of fries, and I decided to order some Bulgarian sausage.  Knowing that we would want to eat more than just meat, I decided to add a plate of “fried potatoes” (aka french fries, but this was not known to me at the time), and James ordered a plate of grilled vegetables.  We should have suspected something when the waitress seemed a bit mystified by our order and even came back several times just to make sure she had it right.  Well, you might be able to guess that we got a bit more than we were expecting.  The plate of “fried potatoes” alone would have been enough for the both of us.  Here’s some footage of this feast, after we had already eaten a bit of it.  Oh, and by the way, that is Bulgarian cheese on top of the french fries.  It is good, but only for a couple bites.

You might have already figured out that meat is an important staple around here.  All kinds of meat, but especially pork.  Kebabs, meatballs and sausage seem to be some of the most popular selections in restaurants.  Chicken is pretty common, too, especially for kebabs, but we have heard that it is not uncommon to be served chicken that is only partially done.  Luckily, James’ chicken kebab was about 90% done.

Shopping in the store can be quite an adventure as well.  We have a large “hypermarket” down the street where we can find just about anything we need (minus things like macaroni and cheese, velveeta, rotel…you know, the really healthy things).  I have found myself buying staples like flour, sugar, and spices much more often because they come in much smaller packages (and stocking up doesn’t really work for lots of items, since we have to carry them home).  This is what our spice cabinet looks like:

Another thing we have found interesting is coffee.  Bulgarians prefer instant coffee, and Nescafé appears to be the brand of choice.  It comes in individually wrapped packages, with the choice of plain coffee, 2-in-1 (coffee + milk), or 3-in-1 (coffee + milk + sugar).  I personally prefer the 2-in-1, while James likes the 3-in-1 best.

Bread is another important part of the Bulgarian diet.  In fact, we have heard that a typical Bulgarian man eats half a loaf of bread at one meal.  James hasn’t quite become a true Bulgarian, because it usually takes us 2-3 days to finish a loaf of bread.  I don’t blame them, though, for how much bread they eat, because it is quite tasty and not to be compared with the stuff you pick up on the bread aisle in Wal-Mart.  In a normal week, we probably go to the bakery 2-3 times for fresh bread.

And last but not least, we have learned how to enjoy some of the finer foods from back home.  Here is James rejoicing because he is eating Mexican food for the first time in months.  We were so excited to get a care package from James’ parents with some much-missed corn tortillas, taco seasoning, and taco sauce.

Two months later we finally have a bathroom

If you watched the video we posted of our new apartment, you may remember us saying that the boiler was not working in one of our bathrooms. This bathroom just so happened to be the bathroom with a real shower (at least a real shower as us Americans know it).  Up until the past week we have had to use the small bathroom to shower.  There is no actual shower in this bathroom, however.  It is more of a tiled closet with a toilet, a sink and a shower head mounted to the wall.  Since the floors and walls are all tiled, everything in the bathroom can get wet.  Unfortunately, the drain in the floor seemed to have been clogged from years of use and we flooded the hallway several times.  And it didn’t help that the red towels we bought have yet (after quite a few washes) to cease shedding red fuzz everywhere.  After a few days of using this “closet shower” I started noticing that the floor was taking on a red tint, which somewhat resembled a murder scene from a movie.  We finally realized that the towels were to blame for this problem.  As you can imagine, it was not a fun job to clean red fuzz from the floor.  I digress, though.

Our landlords told us from the beginning that the boiler did not work in our larger bathroom, but they thought they only needed to hook something up for it to begin working.  After bringing out someone to look at it, they realized it was going to be a MUCH bigger task than they had originally thought, a task that would require removing the tiles in the wall and replacing a pipe.  Well, the week before Christmas our landlord and repairman worked really hard and two days before Christmas they completed the job, or so they thought.  The tiles were back in place and the boiler appeared to be working.  We thought this was just about the best Christmas present we could ask for.  Several hours after they left, however, the boiler light turned off and the hot water was completely gone.  With it being the eve of Christmas Eve, we hated to bother our landlords, so we stuck it out until several days after Christmas and then gave them a call.  James reluctantly told him that our boiler didn’t seem to be working, to which he replied that he would come over and show us how to turn it back on.  He came over a couple days later, and much to his surprise it really didn’t work.  Well, no one here works between Christmas and New Year’s, so there was no way he could get anyone to look at it before the New Year.  We waited several days after New Year’s and a guy came out to look at it.  After fiddling around with it for several minutes, the light came back on and all appeared to be well.  But no, several hours after they left, the boiler shut itself off and refused to come back on.  We gave him another call, and after waiting about a week for someone to come out, yet another guy came.  Well, it turns out that the boiler was fine all along, but that it was set on too high of a temperature, which causes it to shut itself off automatically as a safety feature.  Turns out all we needed to do was hit the reset button, which is barely visible to the naked eye.  So now we have it set on a slightly lower temperature, which prevents it from shutting down automatically.

I was hesitant to make this post because every time the boiler seemed to be fixed, it stopped working soon after.  I think I can safely say now, though, that we have a functional bathroom.  Check out our new bathroom in the video below and what it went through to get to its present state.

Learning to Make a Banitsa

I posted recently about the Bulgarian pastries (the banitsa) that we really like.  My language helper Maria taught me how to make one today and it was delicious!  I am super excited to make these for our family and friends who come to visit (how’s that for some incentive to make a trip over?).  Basically you take sheets of phyllo dough and fill them with a mixture of eggs, yogurt, Bulgarian cheese that is similar to Feta, salt, and baking soda.  Then you roll up the sheets of dough to enclose the filling and create a spiral shape out of all the pieces.  After brushing egg and butter over the top, you bake them.

On Christmas Eve it is tradition for Bulgarians to roll up little pieces of paper with fortunes on them and enclose them in the pastry.  As people gather to eat the banitsa, everybody finds a different fortune in their piece (for example, good health, intelligence, marriage, etc.).  There is also a coin in it, which is considered the best item to get in your piece of banitsa because it means you will become very wealthy in the coming year.  Below is Maria cutting out the different fortunes so we could roll them up in foil and stick them inside the pastry.

And here is the finished product!  Yum!

More Fireworks Than I’ve Ever Seen in my Life

If you want to see a good fireworks show, just come to Bulgaria for New Year’s.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.  It sounded like a war zone outside.  All week fireworks have been going off day and night (but mostly at night), and last night there were thousands.  We were at our friends’ apartment until about 10 last night, and it is a good thing we walked back home before midnight because there was hardly a spot to be seen where fireworks were not exploding.  Once midnight came, car alarms were going off, people were yelling, there were explosions every second, fireworks were being thrown out of windows above and below us, and I think at one point a firework might have ricocheted off of our window.  So, I apologize for posting two fireworks videos in the same week, but I had no idea on Christmas that we were in for such a show on New Year’s.  You should also know that I risked my life to get some of this footage by opening our window.  James quickly reprimanded me, though, which is a good thing, considering how close those things were coming to our window.

Enjoy the video and Happy 2010!

баници

One of our favorite Bulgarian foods is the ‘баница’, or ‘banitsa’.  It is a yummy pastry made of phyllo dough and it can have a variety of fillings.  The most popular filling seems to be one of the really common cheeses around here, called ‘сирене’, or ’sireney’, which is like a stronger version of feta cheese.  We have also bought some frozen banitsas (much to the dismay of our grammar teacher, who rolls her eyes when she hears we have bought anything less than the real thing) with a pumpkin pie filling and with an apple filling.  Today, though, our landlady brought us the real thing, made of cheese, and it was delicious!  Both my language helper and our landlady have promised to show me how to make these in the next week or two, so we’ll see how it turns out.

баница със сирене (cheese banitsa)

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is nearly over here in Bulgaria.  It’s really strange for us that Christmas is just beginning for our families back home.  It has definitely felt strange this Christmas.  While we are so thankful to be here, it’s just not the same without our families.  We both agree that the highlights of this day are the Skype conversations we have had (and will have later) with our families.  Although Christmas didn’t feel quite like Christmas this year, we were able to feel a little more at home by buying a Christmas tree, listening to LOTS of Christmas music, playing LOTS of Christmas music on the violin and banjo, watching some Christmas movies, and making a big meal today.

Here are some highlights from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Before our Christmas Eve meal

We celebrated Christmas Eve with Jon, Andrea, Samuel and Jenny.  They all came over to our place, and we ate a big meal followed by watching It’s a Wonderful Life.  For dinner I fixed Cincinnati Chili.  If you’ve never heard of this, it’s like regular chili without the beans, plus some spices like cinnamon and cloves, and it is served over spaghetti noodles.  We also had a wonderful salad, thanks to Jon and Andrea, and some fresh bread from the bakery with various spreads.  The Bulgarians definitely have some delicious spreads and dips–we had ‘lutenitsa’ (a spicy tomato sauce), an eggplant spread, and also a dip that consists of plain yogurt, cucumber and dill.  We moved our dining table in front of the fire place because it gets kinda chilly being right by the window.

Our attempt at a Christmas tree

Above is our Christmas tree, which we have grown to like.  You probably can’t tell from the picture, but its branches are frosted white.  We thought we were buying a plain green tree, but when we got it home and out of the box, we discovered that we had picked the wrong box.  (Pretty much all the stores here have a “no return” policy, so we were stuck at this point).  Then a couple days later we went to buy lights and ornaments and ended up with a strand of green lights.  There’s nothing wrong with green lights, but I don’t know that I would have ever considered them for my tree in the States.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Day we spent just the two of us.  We had lots of fun roasting our first turkey and making gravy, green bean casserole and mashed potatoes.

James is thinking "I hope this works!"

Mmmmm...green bean casserole!

The green bean casserole was probably the most tedious part of this whole process, since neither cream of mushroom soup or french-fried onion rings are available here.  I don’t know what we would have done without the Internet to help us make substitutes for these.

Another highlight of our day (well, evening) has been the fireworks that have been going off behind our apartment.  We’ve seen fireworks occasionally since we’ve been here, but tonight it seems like a new show begins every half hour, and last night we woke up to the loud noises and bright lights coming in our windows.  Here’s a little bit of the show for you:

Cheesy Alfredo Pie (Not Recommended to Try at Home)

Tonight I had planned on making homemade fettuccine alfredo, but it was a bit of a disaster, one which elicited the following comment from James: “I mean this in the best possible way, but this is probably one of the worst things you’ve ever made.”  I was in no way offended by his comment, because although this meal was edible, I could not deny that it was entirely undesirable.

I found a recipe for the alfredo sauce on the Internet and it looked easy enough.  Melt some butter, add some whipping cream, parmesan cheese, some salt and pepper and a little parsley.  This would have been plenty easy were it not for this culprit:

Whipping Cream, the Bulgarian way

Let me tell you that this stuff was NOT the same thing you would get in the States.  At least not the kind I buy in the States.  No, this stuff was saturated in sugar.  The kind I buy at home needs a little bit of sugar added before it tastes good on a pie.  This might have been TOO sweet on a pie.  As I got my first whiff of the alfredo, I thought “hmmm….that smells like a dessert”.  James disagreed but once he had tested it, he quickly agreed with me.  It was very sweet.  I did my best to make up for it by adding lots of extra salt and extra parmesan cheese, but it was pretty much a lost cause.  We were determined to eat it, though, so we added even more salt and pepper once it was on our plates.

Two things I am grateful for in this experience: 1) I now know which whipping cream not to buy (although I have an inkling that they are all the same here), and 2) we were going to have Jon and Andrea over for dinner, but they were unable to come because they’ve all gotten sick this week.  I am NOT glad for their sickness at all, but glad that they did not have to endure such a terrible attempt at fettuccine alfredo.

I am also thankful that James made an excellent salad and that at least part of our meal could be enjoyable.

Yum.

To make up for this disappointment, I am going to go treat myself to a nice warm cup of instant coffee and an apple “banitsa” (a yummy Bulgarian pastry).

Jenny

This post is to make up for my last post when I said that I wished winter would take care of some of the dogs around here.  I actually really love (most) dogs, and today we got the joy of watching Jon and Andrea’s dog Jenny.  She’s a very sweet and smart dog.  She, like James, has had several run-ins with the mean dogs of the neighborhood.

I think she really understands us when we speak

So cute

The First Snowfall of the Winter

Today we woke up to a lovely sight, several inches of snow on the ground and more falling.  It has snowed a little every night this week, but most of it melts by mid-day.  We are hopeful for a white Christmas, and it looks like we may get one, at least according to the weather forecast for the next week.  Snow, snow and more snow.  We feel like little children getting all excited about a snow day.  It is just so unheard of for us Arkansans to get snow that stays around for much more than a day or two.  And not to mention, large amounts of snow.

From our kitchen this morning

The parking lot behind our building as seen from our kitchen

Snow behind our apartment, later in the day

One down-side to the cold and snow (I’m sure we’ll come up with more once the winter progresses and snow is no longer a novelty), however, is all the stray dogs around here.  Stray dogs are EVERYWHERE here.  Today in a coffee shop we watched out the window in fascination as five or six dogs showed up all of a sudden and began fighting and chasing each other.  It was quite a humorous sight.  Maybe fighting helps keep them warm in the snow and is a better alternative to sitting and freezing to death.  I’m not really sure.

There is one dog in particular who likes to “guard” the entrance to our building.  Several weeks ago this dog would bark its head off at us every time we came home late at night, but it seemed he was more bark than bite because he would never get anywhere close to us.

Mean dog approaching

"Guarding" our entrance

When it gets cold like this, though, the dogs become hungry and irritable.  In the last week he seems to have grown more confrontational.  James has almost been attacked by this particular dog twice.   Today this happened as we were going out.  The dog was trying to bite James’ legs.  James tried to kick at him, but this didn’t seem to do much (probably only angered the dog more).  Luckily, a man was walking by just at this time and began yelling at the dog in Bulgarian, which took care of the problem pretty quickly.  I can only hope that the winter weather will put an end to this problem (sorry to all you animal lovers out there; I do love dogs, but not the vicious type).

In the front of our building

Also in the front of our building, looking at the Sofia Business Park

James

Me

I hope you enjoy these pictures of our winter wonderland.  We took most of these pictures after I wrote the first part of the post.  The vicious dog returned while we were taking the pictures in front of our building, only it appeared that he had been injured since we had last seen him because he was limping.  This time he actually seemed a little bit nervous around us.  I guess somebody gave this dog the proper perspective.

Can you tell he has a limp now?

Someone was nice enough to build him a small home here

Let it Snow

Contrary to the title of this post, we have not seen even a flake of snow here in Sofia.  Many people here have told us that this winter is unusually warm.  Mt. Vitosha, however, has gotten several dustings of snow since we’ve been here, although this morning was by far the most we have seen.  Snow is predicted for Saturday and we are ready as of yesterday, when we bought our snow boots.

From our back balcony

A close up of Mt. Vitosha