Fat and Football - Experts? Get Stuffed!

It is a home with everyone in holiday mood with some family here. The women go their way into the kitchen watching Bulgarian TV and the men go their way into the evening room to watch live football. Everything had been prepared for the match; well actually it was one of the best combinations to make an evening a very special one. Why am I going to mention food again? You have to in this country as once again the simplest of foods made the evening memorable and I felt compelled to write about it.

Whist we were cheering teams on , groaning at referring decisions and debating the finer points of the offside rule we were tucking into probably the worse food on earth as far as nutritionists and food health experts consider, but 99% of food gurus who know what is best of you have probably never been to Bulgarian and tried any of the food there. Sometimes, in fact most times here, the food is eaten from the point of taste and not considered whether it would give you a couple of extra poor quality years tagged on to the end of your life. I'd rather die slightly younger and enjoy it rather than spending wasteful years stressing out looking for eternal youth and listening to 'experts' who say what you can and can't eat. (Most of this is commercially geared anyway!) Besides, what is the average life expectancy of food gurus anyway? I digress.

This evening the food was prepared well in advance, 2 Kilos of juicy pig ears hade been boiling in a pot on a bottle gas stove outside all afternoon and then were dried off and barbecued just before the match started. Then there was the drink, consisting of home made grape rakia Yambol red wine and dark beer from our largest neighbouring town, Stara Zagora.

The evening started up as the pieces of barbecued pig's ears that had been cut up into morsels that fitting perfectly into bite sizes. Each piece was to be individually and generously salted, then ready for the mouths of the community of football fans to enjoyed as the whistle not just for the kicking off the match but kicking off with the food an drink. The Rakia, wine and beer freely flowed washing down the food that just complimented the football evening so well.

If you look at what we were actually eating it doesn't paint a good picture at all, pure fat and lots of salt accompanied by alcohol, but by golly, it was something very special this particular evening. Why not indulge in something that you enjoy? Most people here do.

Brilliant evening, brilliant food, brilliant drink the only thing that spoilt it was refereeing decisions. My God, how people are called 'experts' in their field, but really just don't have a clue, not just referees either.