Bulgarian Daze

Tonight we were invited to a tasting at a new Egyptian restaurant in town. Of course, this invitation stems from the diplomat friend I made way back at the beginning of our stay here. I have never eaten Egyptian food, but it was…..AWESOME!! EXCELLENT!! I cannot say enough about it!

I am not sure what all I ate, but I do know that I HATE EGGPLANT in real life, but for some reason, the Egyptians have a magical way about them that cooks it just right. They had all kinds of spices and seasonings, meat, rice, bread things, grape leaves, sauces, and a whole bunch more. Every single thing was delicious. Even the desserts (and you should note that I am not much of a dessert person–that is not my favorite part of a meal…weird I know….). Oh, and they also had special juices, one that was made from cane juice and one that was a form of coconut milk, both super yummy!
There was a whole room full of diplomats from all kinds of countries–Austria, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Croatia….and then there were Mark and me. We were among two other non-embassy people. But everyone was nice and friendly and by the end of the night we had business cards and email addresses, and a feeling of regret that we had not met all these people before.

We really needed a fun night out like tonight. We are a little down on BG right now. We are tired of the same old food, the same old routine, the same grouchy storekeepers, etc. To have a meal that was so so so different in a room full of English-speaking professionals really was a treat. When we come back here–and you know we will since the business is here and bigger than ever–I plan on going to this place for sure. I will even make sure the newspaper does a good write up on the gig.

I am sorry I didn’t make more of an effort to hang out with my Egyptian friend more often. The year was just so crazy and we were here and then gone and then here and then gone again. But I know we will see him again when Mark has to come back for a week or two here to check on things. And we both vowed to make more of an effort to hang out with him, along with other people we met tonight.

And to top the evening off, we even got a cheesy little Cleopatra pen, which, oddly enough, we desperately needed. No one seemed to have a pen on them and we needed to exchange email addies with people. Leave it to Cleopatra to help out some Americans in trouble. hahahahaha!

Anyways, if you ever have the opportunity to eat Egyptian food or just hang out with Egyptian people, you should definitely do it!  Believe me, you won’t regret it!

While we were in the U.S., we found that most people were curious just about our day-to-day living. Sure, the adventures are funny (to some….not always to us….), but really y’all just want to know what life is like.

So, in an attempt to have you live right here with me, here is an evening in my flat. And I say “my flat” because I am the only one here in the evenings. I root around in my huge refrigerator for something to cook:

The picture really does not do justice to how small the thing really is. You can see the basic contents: limes we smuggled in, two green cartons of milk, two small cartons of juice, some meat and cheese, produce and bread in the bottom bin, butter, a white container of raspberries and a white container of leftovers from last night, etc… The fridge holds a couple of days worth of food. If I’m lucky I can make it a whole week. But usually, because the produce and bread are fresh when we buy it, the food itself only lasts a few days anyways.

Here is what I made for dinner tonight (dinner for one):

What is it?, you ask. It is a breaded fillet of chicken with tomato sauce and sauteed squash and (you guessed it) tomatoes. Did I mention what a staple tomatoes are here? My lycopene count is HIGH!

And for dessert–mmm mmmmm yum!:

These are the cherries and strawberries I bought yesterday, cleaned up, sliced and are ready for eating. Altogether, all the fuits and vegetables here cost about $1.75. Yes, you read right. $1.75 for the squash, tomato, kilo of strawberries and kilo of cherries. This, of course, excites me far more than it does Mark. He’ll eat everything but the cherries. he doesn’t like them. Heh. More for me, I say.
Jealous, aren’t you?

You know we are spoiled over there in the land of milk and honey. We can get milk and honey, and all manner of fruits and vegetables all year long. So…if I feel like having a nectarine in the dead of winter, I can get one. It will cost more, but I can get one.

That is not so true over here. Actually, not true at all. There are times I want a certain ingredient for dinner, and try as I might, I will not be able to find it. Take, for example, the bell pepper.

This item was a staple here all summer long, even into the fall. Hardly a dish was made without it. But when we came back after Thanksgiving, they had all vanished. Not a pepper in sight. There was a skinny looking cousin of the bell pepper—perhaps a chile of some sort???—but NO peppers.

And so I am learning to eat by what is in season. For example, now is the time here for mandarins/tangerines (though we are starting to come to the end of it). Every few days, I march over to my favorite market lady and buy a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of tangerines and eat them all.day.long. (As a matter of fact, I am munching on one as I write this.) Until they are gone. And then I march back. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

But here is my newest dilemma. Once the tangerines go away, what then? Because what I am seeing frightens me—a lot! I see radishes. Kids–you know what radishes are. You grow them for the Del Mar Fair in the summer. Tons and tons of radishes.

And who can eat a kilo of radishes? Not I! Can you imagine the heartburn? I get heartburn off one radish. A few, or even a kilo would make my chest burn with the fire of a thousand white hot suns. Oh, the anguish.

So…all you Julia Childs out there…help a sister out. 1. How can I make a radish not cause such heartburn? 2. What else can be done with the radish besides slice them into a salad or eat them with salt?

Just so you know, I have an endless supply of food-related stories. I could go on for days about the hunting and gathering we do here. And here’s another one…

When we moved here, we knew we would not be able to eat the same way we do at home. I mean, we live in the Eastern bloc now. Surely, they don’t sell quadruple-stacked cheeseburgers and chocolate shakes here. And they don’t! But thinking in your head that food will be different and actually suffering the deprivation ON A DAILY BASIS are two different things. We really understand those Survivor challenges now. You know, like when they throw away the immunity idol for an Oreo cookie and you’re sitting at home thinking, “You fool, you’re going to risk getting voted off the island, lose a million dollars for a lousy Oreo cookie??? I would NEVER do that”. Turns out, yes you would!!

It’s not the fast food you miss, it’s the simple little items you find so easily in your cupboards at home, like Wheat Thins or Mac ‘N Cheese or Cheerios. So, within the first few days, we found a market and shopped. The only real breakfast foods they had there were very oat-y and grain-y cereals. I chose Fruit-X, which is essentially raw fiber and dried fruit. For my gluten-challenged relatives, that cereal would have sped up your digestive death, seriously. But we ate it, and even pretended we loved it. “Oh, this is good”, I would gurgle through my milk and fiber-filled mouth. “Oooh, and so healthy, too”, Mark would spit back. We were loyal to Fruit-X, until a few weeks ago…

…when we found another market. Yes, we cheated on our first market. We just assumed that all the markets carried the same basic items. You know, like how Ralphs and Albertsons have all the same stuff? Not here! They are all different. In the new market, we walked six steps to the very back of the store and saw a shiny, colorful cereal box that said “Cini-Minis” on it.

At first, we acted all cool about it:

“Oh, look, they have cereal here”.
“Hmmmm, interesting”.
“Well, should we get it?”
“Well, we may as well try it”. I mean, if you’re going to twist our arm and MAKE us do it, then we will.

The next day, we opened the top of the box, and the familiar, heavenly smell of wheat mixed with unnatural sugars and fat, combined with the sweet, sweet scent of cinnamon wafted out.

“HURRY IT UP. POUR IT INTO MY BOWL!!!” I screamed at Mark. I actually drooled. You know, that dangly piece of saliva that you don’t even realize is there until it drops on the table right in front of you, and then you try to wipe it up real fast so no one sees it, but then your husband calls you out, “GROOOOOSSSSSSSSS!!!” Yeah, well, that’s the kind of drool I had.

And I savored Every.Single.Bite. In both bowls. Then I calmly left the table, rinsed the dishes and slam-dunked the almost full bag of Fruit-X into the trashcan.

I’ve given you a few food nightmare stories, but I think it’s time you hear about the yummy side to life here. There are a lot of foods here that I’ve never seen back home or even heard of, but they are delicious!!!! For some reason, many of the best foods end in “itsa”, I don’t really know why this is, but here are a few examples:

Banitsa
Banitsa is a croissant like bread that is light and flaky. In the middle of the bread is a layer of feta cheese. It is REALLY GOOD!!! You can buy banitsa in cafes and at stands out on the sidewalk, but it is not nearly as good as the home-made stuff. How do I know, you ask? Well, because Mark’s partner’s wife made us some. She made us a whole bunch and we ate every.single.bite. until we rolled out of their apartment, down 6 flights of stairs and about one kilometer home. Here’s a picture of banitsa:

Lutenitsa
Lutenitsa is a sauce-like “salad” (they call it a salad) that is made from tomatoes and peppers pureed together. It looks like a thick ketchup or a thick salsa, but it tastes a little more peppery. “Lute” means hot, like spicy, so that’s why it’s called lutenitsa, although in truth, the salad really isn’t spicy at all. They just call it that because it’s made from peppers and you could, theoretically get hot peppers. Even so, it was really good, and I think it would be extra tasty on the banitsa……hmmmmm…. Here’s a picture of lutenitsa:

They also have really good ice creams here, like crème brule ice cream. Sounds weird, but it is actually quite tasty. When it’s not raining (a rare occasion lately), we like to walk the dog down to the ice cream stand and get a couple of cones and eat them on our way back. They have mini ice cream stores right out on the sidewalks here, so you don’t even have to go inside to buy it. They must know how much we like it!

And the white meat….they really know how to cook a piece of pork here. I have had a fear of pork for, well, my entire adult life. Part of this stems from my mother’s really horrible pork chops we were forced to eat as kids (sorry, Mom, but it’s true). It also comes from Mr. Price’s biology class in high school where he told us all pigs have worms called trichinosis and if the pork is not cooked well enough a worm will live inside your arm muscle forever. I’m serious. That’s what he told us. So I went 10 years without eating the meat of a pig. But I overcame it. Now, here, I am learning how to cook it.

They usually cook a pork chop type piece of meat and serve it in some yummy sauce with mushrooms and put it over rice. I really like it. They prepare chicken in a similar way, though sometimes the sauce is lighter and there may not be mushrooms.

So there you have it, food is not all weird here. It is actually usually quite good. We have never eaten anything bad when we are out. The problem just comes in shopping and ordering, but we can usually get an English menu. It gets a little scary when you don’t know what you’re eating! So, sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you…come on over, it’s safe to eat, really!

*This is the title of a great children’s book–read it if you haven’t already!

**Don’t read this post if you are eating.

One of the things Bulgaria is known for is its cheese. They use a goat cheese, similar to feta, on everything from salad to french fries. Now, I love cheese as much as the rest of you. My favorite kind is that powdery, yellow astronaut-looking cheese you mix with milk and put on the macaroni and cheese. You know the stuff. I also enjoy a slightly rubbery, individually wrapped American single on a sandwich or in a quesadilla. If I’m feeling really fancy, I’ll cut up that jalapeno havarti cheese, or eat some brie on a cracker (this is especially popular at the thousands of baby showers, bridal showers, and tupperware/Mary Kay/Pampered Chef parties women force each other to attend).

But the cheese here….well…it’s probably something fantastic to you cheese connoisseurs. To me, it hurts. It smells like old Teva sandals worn for a few too many years. I can almost taste the curdling milk (kids–hate to tell you this, but cheese is made from milk after it is no longer good enough to drink). That being said, I like it in small doses on the salads and french fries, but not on sandwiches or crackers.

I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but Mark and I shop by looking at pictures and guessing what we think the food is. It’s a fun game we play. Sometimes we hit a homerun, like with this tomato-y salsa stuff. Other times we don’t, like today.

It looked like hummus. The roasted red pepper hummus that is especially delicious when you buy it fresh from Henry’s and slather it on pita chips. We got some crackers (as close as we could get to pita chips) and headed on our way. I made a nice ham sandwich, gathered my “hummus” and “pita chips” and relaxed into my lunch. I layered my cracker with a tomato and a giant scoop of the roasted red pepper hummus and bit right into it.

Turns out….NOT ROASTED RED PEPPER HUMMUS at all!!! It was the stinky feet cheese doctored up with some red I-don’t-know-what spice disguised just to trick me into tasting it one more time. Needless to say, I spit that right out of my mouth and ended my dining session right then and there.

Perhaps you are thinking–well, Kristy that was fairly stupid of you to just bite into something before you knew what it was. And I agree. It won’t happen again, I assure you!