Home Grown Crops On The Dinner Table

The produce is rolling off the land now both in town and country. The food we eat at lunchtime and evenings nearly always has home grown produce in it. It is exciting have the end product on you plate and tasting as good as it does. There is something very special about doing something like this.

Let’s start and see what on the dinner table on a day-to-day basis right now. We have had a continuous supply of onions and garlic and these will last us right through the winter. The lettuce now has finished its season and the space that was left has been filled with more peppers. After May it becomes too hot for lettuce here and you can’t freeze or preserve it.

The strawberries were the next; we had two crops and are still in the middle of the second. Not enough o make jam with but this is the first year they have been laid down. Always enough for a family dessert at the weekend as they are grown in the village. I am not too sure whether I will keep these here next year. The reason is they need watering regularly for a good harvest and that isn’t happening, hence the relatively small fruits we are getting from them. Also, they need to be harvested every day and that isn’t happening either so a lot of waste form over-ripe fruit each weekend.

The beans I though was going to be a complete failure. I planted 12 rows of beans and only two survived. I didn’t know why. Locals tell me that the seeds were old, but I felt that the two rows that did survive would indicate another reason, perhaps over-watering. Anyway the crops that come from the ones that survived where great. We got at least 8 kg of superb white beans from just that little crop.

The potatoes looked fantastic with the foliage and flowering more pertaining to a flowerbed than a potato crop. All the Colorado beetle and other gorging vegetarian insects were contained with no damage throughout the crop. There was however a massive disappointment on pulling up the first crop. Only a couple of potatoes were found and they were the size of golf ball. It was later realised that this was the shallow end of the troughs made for the watering and apart from the first couple of plants that stood there the rest were a fine crop. It is such a joy to see some potatoes of different shapes rather than the uniformed specimens in imported potatoes in supermarkets.

The beans and potatoes made into a soup by Baba and we just couldn’t get enough of it eaten hot or cold or in a secret raid of the fridge between meals.

Other crops aren’t quite ready yet and we can’t wait. This will be the most successful season growing here because for the first time I have been listening and watching and copying the Bulgarians. Still never as good and it never will, they just seem to have the magic touch with growing here, but I will improve each time I’m sure.

Amazing Cures From The Skalitsa Healing Stones Again

Another couple of special events happened last weekend as I took more guests to the healing stones of Skalitsa. I had one guest staying in my farmhouse and another, a friend from England who had come over just to relax based in a Yambol hotel for a couple of weeks. I decided to show them the powers of the Skalitsa healing stones the first time as I was going the farmhouse to check up and water the crops.

The guest in the farmhouse tagged along as she was very curious and had heard lots of reports both on the Internet when researching about Bulgaria and from local people in the village who she was mixing with staying there. Unfortunately she wasn’t doused with any pain and her trip there was purely for the fantastic views and wide-open space it gave of the surrounding Thracian countryside with the Balkan mountain range in the distance.

My friend had constant back pain and was quite dubious about anything changing that with a visit. He was certainly a big doubter regarding any cure that might come about and was even more sceptical after my accounts of previous cures that had transcended not just to me and previous guests I had taken there and cured, but to many Bulgarians that frequent the place with astounding results. Not only that, but he had just read my book, which had a chapter about the healing stones. He was of the opinion that my book was more fictional based than factual with my account.

I was quite glad I was going as well as I also was quite stiff and sore from all the manual work bending over tending to crops over the last few months. My last trip there cured my back pain after recovering from a slipping disc on recommendation from a Yambol doctor who always is open to alternative medicine. I knew my pains would subside with a spell on a Skalitsa healing stone as it had done so many times before.

We all lay for a while taking in the beautiful surround in the process and the talk led to telling the stories of aliens had been seen in Skalitsa in recent years and UFOs commonly seen in the area. Whether that may have had a bearing on the healing that affects was perhaps another angle on what causes the healing that happens here. In case you don’t know, this particular spot in Skalitsa has a phenomenon of being only one of two places in the world where two magnetic fields are crossed. The other one is in Mexico somewhere. It has been scientifically studied by scientists from Sofia and was confirmed as having positive affects for high blood pressure, headaches, rheumatism, arthritic joints and many other ailments and pains. It is not just hear say.

We spent around 30 minutes in the hot sun on the hot healing stones and as I expected as I sat into the Lada seat to drive back, all my aches had disappeared, I usually give a little moan as I bend to get seated to drive, that just didn’t happen. My friend was shocked, not from my cure of the aches and pains, but from his own experience now of his pains that were no longer there. He just couldn’t believe this had happened although the scepticism was still there from him as he said that the pain would probably return the next day.

The guest who had not ailments to cure said that she felt so much calmer by the experience and that she felt it gave ‘good vibes’ and a calming affect on her. She was a firm believer in alternative medicine in the first instance before the two old blokes had recovered from their pains.

The whole trip was a complete success – Again!

The conversion was now turned to talking business with the experience under the belts. The possibility of organising trips to the healing stones for tourists was the first one. Another other idea was to sell small samples of the healing stones online via eBay. Mmmm! All this talk about turning this village into a tourist spot and ridding it of its peace, quiet and natural unspoilt and untouched landscape was beginning to upset me a bit.

Now I put my hands up and own up to the fact that I do have some stones that I keep in our house in Skalitsa and Yambol from the spot. That’s one thing, but to make it into a big commercial enterprise is quite something else.

However there is the case where people should know about the Skalitsa healing stones and the cures it makes time and time again. It would benefit lots of people using this form of alternative medicine. If it does become more popular perhaps more might rent my farmhouse, which is only a ten-minute walk away.

Very Busy But Bulgarian Food Still Rules!

What a busy couple of weeks! What a great couple of weeks, mainly getting stuck into growing crops and telling people about what it is like in Bulgaria rather than writing about it. My book has been selling really well recently as well and add funds from renting my farmhouse for a week to a decent respectful guest, it all adds up to being able to afford to change the oil in the Lada after three years! That’s how things work here for us living on a day-to-day basis. This busy time looks like continuing for sometime as the growing season moves up a couple of gears. I have said it before and will say it again, the food here grows faster than the pace of life.

Both farms are really doing well and we have had crops of potatoes and beans, which again were cooked by Baba direct from delivery. The bean and potato meal with whole onions cooked to a tee was tremendous – We ate it for breakfast the following morning it was that good! We also are eating this year’s garlic every day, raw with bread as an appetiser, what a great start to a meal and of course so healthy. Everything seems to be coming together now and we will soon not be buying any food for many months on end and probably well into winter – a massive saving on the cost of living.

We have a big problem though, the Yambol home has never has so much food being delivered from this keen Englishman and we only have a small top freezer compartment, we haven’t anywhere to store all the fresh food that we can freeze, i.e. beans. So what we have to do it pick it the day we go to the village farmhouse and freeze it there. In a few weeks that will be full and we will have to use our neighbours’ freezers as we did last year. Sharing all the time is what goes on here. We can’t afford a big freezer our Bulgarian neighbours know that so they help us out. I used to feel so guilty about receiving help form neighbours that were also in a state of poverty, but they insist that it is good to keep their freezer full as it runs more efficiently. They flatly refuse any form of payment including a percentage of the food we store. They just like to help, as that is how it has always been.

Last Friday we visited out local fish store where some friends of the family own it. We always get a handshake and a kiss from the husband and wife partnership respectively before they decide what is the best fish to have this for the evening meal. Today it was recommended we eat carp or Sharon as it is called here. There were two big plastic boxes with fresh water being pumped and circulated with live carp swimming around inside. We singled one out and our friend pounced on it and fished it out. It was weighed and priced and we went off home round the corner with a flapping fish in a plastic bag.

Like most things here, it is a DIY meal without packaging as it was de-scaled. I had to knock it out with a sharp blow to the head to kill it initially it wasn’t the way it is usually done this way here. The normal Bulgarian way is to de-scale with it still alive. This to me wasn’t necessary from two points, suffering and from the practical point of flipping about making it harder to do the job.

After further preparing the fish and giving the dog next door the inners, tail and head which he really enjoyed, it was cut into steaks and Galia took over. There was a special Bulgarian fish herb mix and salt sprinkled over the steaks in a tray and left in the cool place for 6 hours.

The evening arrived and the plate of flour and frying pan of sunflower oil was set out for the final process before tucking in. Twenty minutes later the fish was on the table next to a bowl of homemade shopska salad and of course the starter of bread and raw garlic. The fish was finally enjoyed and washed down with cold beer after a ‘Nastravay!’ and a look in the eye of each other from a small glass of rakia we all shared to go with the shopska salad.

This was a special meal and cost more than we would normally spend on food in the home. The fish cost just over 8 Bulgarian leva, around £3.50 and it was only because we had paying guests staying at the farmhouse this weekend that we indulged in such luxury food. It makes it even more special when these rare occasions happen. Having said that, every day here is special when it comes to home-cooked food.

Well, this post started out quite confused on what to tell, but another Bulgarian food story just appeared as I am drawn time and time again to the process of eating here.

Finally, I have to apologise to many of my blogging friends for not doing the rounds, there just isn’t enough time in the day for this and neglecting things that need to be done here can’t be done. There is much socialising going on here as well in the evenings so the previous non-stop blogging just has to take a back seat for a while. It is very difficult to decide what to write about as far too much happens here. Life is treating us well right now. We are very, very tired at the end of each day, but very happy and thank those bloggers who continue to care about how we are.