This post is a follow up from our first butchery attempts. We learned loads in that first year, and we’ve tried to learn from our mistakes, got better with our recipes and tried a few new things. The first thing we’ve done differently this year has been the timing. Last year it was still really warm in November when we…
Category: Cooking

Gonna eat a lot of peaches
This post is for Michael, you know who you are! Well, we’ve moved to the country, and this year we’re sure going to eat a lot of peaches! We spent a very pleasant day yesterday with our friend, Ivan, preserving his year’s peach harvest, making 42 large jars of peaches in a thin syrup, ready for winter. It started off…

Baking ( not as easy as it sounds )
Yes we can go to the nearest big supermarkets 30 miles away to get most of the ingredients you need for baking but we choose not to, we like to use what we’ve grown or can get locally at the market. Winter is my baking season, it’s just too hot in the Summer months and the cooking pechka is on…

What to make with a whole pig
We butchered our first pig on Monday. It was a monumental task, and we learned loads during the whole process. This is our attempt to document what we set out to achieve, how that went and what we learned from it, so we can remember for the next time as it will be a whole year before we have to…

Making Sauerkraut
One of the things I’ve fancied having a go at making is sauerkraut. All that lacto-fermentation stuff sounds really interesting, so now, when the market in Popovo is laden with humongous cabbages, seems like a good time to try it out. I found a decent sounding recipe, and bought a cabbage. Because it was my first go, I only wanted…

Making sausages
I’d just starting to plaster the ceiling when Galia one of our neighbours came round with an offer I couldn’t refuse. Did I want to learn how to make sausages? So I downed tools and grabbed the phrase book, this was going to be a challenge. I usually rely on Joe to do the talking and I’ve rarely had to…

Surplus apples
One of the problems we’ve found has been dealing with the huge amount of fruit that ripens all at the same time. We’ve got so many apples, it’s been hard knowing what to do with them all. We’ve got loads peeled and frozen, ready for pies and crumbles in the winter, some that are in really good condition are being…