Jewels!

Introducing the Bulgarian pepper (чушка) - one of many anyway - and what a wonderful vegetable it is too. This sort is called капия, that is, pointy. Seeing piles and piles and rows and rows of these at the market is a delight, especially in the sunshine; they're so bright and shiny like jewels - and smell superb too - that they induce a feeling of happiness, but maybe that's just me! Having recently purchased 25 kg of these peppers, we had a day full of roasting, skinning and preserving yesterday. Ideal winter food, let me tell you :O) Stew, pasta, filled pastry, salad, soup... versatile and yummy.

Moving on to some more jewels, now is the time to be harvesting cornelian cherries (дренки), from the cornelian cherry tree (дрян), or Cornus mas. I first came across this tree (or shrub) in Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden by Lee Reich, Timber Press. The line drawings in this are very accurate, so much so that I immediately recognised the mystery tree that was behind the house (back then in a thicket of plum trees). It turned out that there are two bushes just by the front gate too, as well as about a dozen baby to juvenile trees all across the garden! Not only is it beautiful in Spring, with it's profusion of yellow flowers when there's not much other colour about, it's interestingly veined leaves throughout Summer add to its charm, along with these ruby red fruits of course, and finally, in winter, it's an unusual plant for already having its buds formed (and, for this reason, they're used in Christmas baking as a charm - the number of buds foretells your fortune for the coming year).

Back to the present, I'll be harvesting our cornelian cherries throughout this week, for proper 'dealing with' next weekend. But a word to the wise! They may look red and ripe and lovely, but it's very easy to get a shockingly sour one, and astringent to boot!!! In fact, most of the people I know don't eat them raw, and if they do then it's only after they've been picked and laid out in a single layer in a cardboard box for several days, to allow the sugars to develop a bit more (so I'm told). They also turn much deeper in colour, very dark and rich. Last year I made some sweet cornelian cherry 'marmalade' (a runny jam really but great on waffles), savoury Georgian shindis satsebeli sauce and I also dried, a bit too thoroughly, what was left over - lovely in pilafs and stuffed marrow or pumpkin.

Having mentioned Uncommon Fruits, I should also report that it features several other plants of interest that are present in Bulgaria. I was reading through it one day, put it down, then a little later went for a wonder on the track just outside the house. I'd been admiring a flowering bush in the garden of the abandoned house opposite and went to take a closer look. I though "That looks familiar" and, lo and behold, there was a mature clove currant (Ribes odoratum). Top features include it's vanilla and clove scent, apparently edible berries (like black currants) and great trumpet-shaped flowers (far bottom). Several of these have since turned up in the garden, yay. Not so good is that the goats have managed to eat most of them, but I have a few left!! As far as I know, none have ever flowered yet, though they do have to reach a certain size/age to do so. Next Spring? Last but not least, a plant that I know grows in Bulgaria, and whose fruits definitely get collected, is the medlar (мушмула). Apart from buying a bag full of these fruits from the local market last autumn I've not come across them outdoors, but frankly I've not looked very hard. I do want a medlar or two in the garden eventually so an outing to the local woods, which are just a few minutes from the house, should be mounted in the not too distant future I hope!

Something on seeds

As I've been spending a fair amount of my 'free' time working on saving seeds from the garden of late, I thought I'd show you the fruits of my labour, thus far anyway.

I'm delighted to say that I've been able to collect my first 200-odd chickpea seeds (picture right, and centre below) - нахут, or леблебия (a nod to Turkish here I think) - having nursed my approx. 50 chestnut chickpea seeds, bought last year, through to maturity. I still have most of the plants to harvest - they have some green leaflets left to wither first - so I am hoping to top 500 decent seeds for saving and resowing, and possibly even eating. This project has been a real pleasure (if a little nerve wracking at times; I've had to rush out and cover them several times to stop them getting battered by heavy rainfalls) and they are beautiful plants.

Also quite newly saved from the garden are a good number of sugar snap peas (r - pea is грах but I'm not sure how the 'sugar snap' is described here), dried broad beans (l - бакла) and green beans (far bottom- боб) of assorted colours, the latter two being generously given to us by different neighbours.

That covers food seeds for now, but I have also been collecting mature seeds from my sweet pea Matucana - which I thoroughly recommend for their beautiful, almost glowing, deep pinky purple and mauve flowers - as well as pot marigold (невeн), a small amount of peony (божур) seed from the big peony we found in the garden, an overabundance of soapwort (сапунче) and, much earlier this year, plenty of fritillary seeds.

New arrivals - Onk!

Having gone quiet on you for a long, long time, I most definitely need to pull my socks up and tell you about some things going on here recently. To get things going again, I must introduce my new feathered friends: our three lovely geese.

Please meet Enoch (m - centre, about to have a nice head and neck wash), Biscuit (f - left, with a fabulous bouffant up top!) and Noodle (f - right, being ladylike and also keen for a wash).

We've had these dears for a bit over a fortnight now and they seem to have settled in. They've been grazing up and down the 'wilder' area, and generally having a sit in the shade, watching the world go by and preening. Amusingly, the like to loiter near to the goats and if the geese are out first in the morning they go and search for their cloven-hoofed friends.

Having been rather quiet at first they are all a bit more vocal now - much to my delight as I love goose noises! - especially when the young stork, or its parents, fly over back to the nest. So there's hope yet for them being good guard geese. The girls in particular were a bit wary on the first couple of days but now all three waddle over when they see a human with watering can or food. They're all characters and last night we discovered that they love watermelon :O)

A colourful first

For at least the last two Springs, the big, old apricot tree at the back of the house has sported only leaves. No surprise really as the preceding winters for those two years were particularly cold but this Spring we've been treated to a beautiful covering of blossoms, which smell particularly good too, mmmmm.

We may even be in luck and have a second 'proper' apricot in the garden, though we were told by the neighbours it was like an apricot but had smaller fruit - however, this was when we knew very little Bulgarian, so perhaps it's simply a tree with less impressive edibles? I eagerly await some fruit setting (the bees seem to be doing their bit).

Fingers crossed that the current, shall we say boisterous, rain and wind leaves some blossom on the tree for long enough to get to that point!

Here at last - welcome Spring

Happy Spring! I think it's now safe to say that Spring has arrived in our corner of Bulgaria. There hasn't been any snow for a few weeks now and green is spreading across the hillside, and most welcome it is too. The crocus bulbs that I popped in last autumn have been treating us to a show of white, purple and glowing orange (thank you Mum!) and I've been without a coat and/or jumper working in the garden (so much to do...).

I've spotted my first three storks of this year flying over the house last weekend, so I've hung up my martenitsa on a young apple tree near the house. Fingers crossed that we'll have another stork pair make use of the nest that was built here last year (though Mr. Stork flew off with another female and Mrs. Stork eventually gave up sitting and flew off too); I hope we see little 'uns this time.

Speaking of little 'uns, I may become a 'grandma' in April and May! Our goats Yo (grey and white) and Yammy (white with horns) are due to kid either side of Easter; Yo is definitely with kid but Yammy's keeping us guessing (one day big belly, next day small).

We're overflowing with eggs at the moment, both chicken and turkey eggs. Today's count was ten, and judging by the size of a couple of them we may have double yolkers. I'm happily trawling through the recipe collection for ways to use these, yum yum.

Over winter I bought a selection of seeds to continue adding plants that I love to the garden, amongst which were two packets of sweet violet (Viola odorata): one wild, one a cultivar. It remains to be seen how much luck I'll have with these, but I was delighted to discover a generous patch of violets - and how gorgeous they smell too - down by the washing line yesterday.

Now that I've awoken from hibernation (!) I'll be back more often to share the goings on here.
P.S. this post is dedicated to Ro, thanks for the prod!

Happy Swiss National Day

All right, I'm a day late now as the Swiss National Holiday is on August 1st every year, but I was busy celebrating yesterday.

In honour of the day I made two Swiss recipes: Schaffhausen onion quiche (bottom) and Lenzburger apple pie (top), yummy.

Both recipes came from the wonderful little booklet "Baking with Swiss farm women" published by the LID agricultural information center of Switzerland. It features 27 savoury and sweet recipes, one from every Swiss canton, and I thoroughly intend to make them all one day. I got my copy free from the following url:
http://www.agriculture.ch/en/shop/
so if you're interested I recommend you head over there.

I must say that I was surprised at how well the two lots of pastry turned out! It was another 30ºC+ day and I was HOT, so needless to say that the butter and working area weren't nice and cool as is befitting for pastry making. The result was still lovely, flaky and crisp so I must have had a bit of luck there. 

My only changes were to use thick yoghurt and smetana (сметана, like thick, creamy, almost clotted yoghurt), in place of cream as it's very difficult to find here and I added a bit of fresh dill to the onion quiche. I used ground almonds instead of ground hazelnuts for the apple pie and sprinkled some on top in place of slivered almonds too. These were divided into nine pieces and we then went visiting to our nearest neighbours so they could enjoy the day as well. So far the reactions seem to be good :O)

After our tour of the neighbours, there was just enough time to get my Bern (my grandma's canton) and Swiss flag lanterns up in the garden and enjoy looking at those with a cup of hot chocolate as the light faded, until the mossies forced us back indoors.

Some new arrivals

In early June two storks (and I swear three at times) started taking an interest in the telegraph and electricity poles in front of our house and along our 'street' (in reality a grass track which is the access route for the six properties along it). I was rather surprised because most of the storks flew by weeks and weeks ago having returned from further south; one neighbour says from Egypt specifically. I think this was a young pair as it was so late to start nest building, and subsequent watching seems to have proved this!

They certainly took their time getting started, having finally selected the electricity pole in front of our derelict house in the garden. Enjoyably, we can see the pole, nest and storks from out upstairs landing, or chardak, чардак. For days all I saw was one stork, all alone, standing on the pole. Rarely, the other stork would return and the pair would clack beaks and spend a few hours picking up occasional sticks. Having got to the dozen or two dozen stick stage, it would unfortunately rain and all the sticks would fall off, amateurs! Repeat of the above, about four times over.

 On the fifth attempt the sticks must have got past critical mass and a proper nest, that resisted subsequent rain, started to grow, hooray. Both storks were around from now on - one wonders if the other stork had it's eye on a different location and there was a bit of a stand off for a while before building commenced here! - and whilst working in the garden a big, black shadow often went over head, fetching and carrying material. (Worth clicking on this one to see it a bit larger!)

Both storks have been helpfully tidying up the garden by picking up tree and scrub cuttings from past week's work outdoors. They are a striking sight wading through the grass and testing their sticks with a shake of the beak! Not quite as majestic as when they are stood on the nest or flying, but impressive nonetheless.

As you can see, the nest is a decent size now, and Mrs Stork has taken to sitting down for a few hours at a time. Hopefully the eggs will be soon to appear and Mrs Stork will sit tight. I am slightly concerned that after all this effort and rebuilding it might still all come to nothing... whenever rain is approaching or the wind gets up both birds disappear until better weather returns. Please let the eggs stay warm enough and develop. I'll keep you posted :O)