Party for Sveti Trifun, Salo, Tractor Wars & Lots of Laughter

I love socialising with our Bulgarian friends, it's always lots of fun, lots of laugh's & even though we speak malko Bulgaski, lots of funny conversations! Feb 14th was Sveti Trifun & the evening is party time at Yovo & Pavlinka's.

We never know when we are invited to theirs for evenings or even breakfast & lunches how many will be there or what to take. I have gone round thinking its just me & opened the door to 20 odd people or a full blown celebration party in the garden! The last few times I have taken Cake but even though they love it, there is always so much food its surplus to requirements, & just serves to massage my ego. So I decided not to bake a cake this time & took 2ltr's of our Red Wine. Good job too there was so much food even when we left the table was still laden after 6 hours of ten people eating! The food was great with a couple of traditional foods you will never see on my table, I just can't  eat some of the Bulgarian foods......
As normal we started with pickled coliflower & peppers then cheese bahnitza which was very nice.

Nadia, Ivancho & Anton

Then Nadia & Ivancho had brought along homemade seeded bread, cured raw pork, cured raw pork fat both called Salo,  a gorgous crab salad, vegetable coleslaw & offal puddingy stuff. needless to say I got Nigel to try the salted raw fat slices, that's what husbands are for :) Nigel said it wasn't terrible but not nice either, so like a wimp I didn't try it! It is literally the thick fat from the back of the pig, not for me!!! I did however try the cured pork Salo & the offal thing, hmmm again not terrible but not something I can see the point of eating as the consistency of the offal thing was not to my taste & quite frankly I couldn't say either had much taste at all. I think I was eating it wrong as surely you must need something with it to compliment & bring out the flavour? I got Nige to taste the cured pork meat but he is not keen on offal so we both dipped out on one tasting each lol! The crab salad was amazing & I ate more than everyone else yet still there was loads left over. The soup as I thought was Cock & was delicious I actually had no bones in mine & it was hot too :D Next was the baked Cock rice, this too was very nice but I did end up with a big bone in this, still it was given to Bobby along with one piece of bread for his tea :(

Plamen & Yovo

Plamen then turned up with the tractor man (can't remember his name) along with his own bbq pork & homemade sausage. The bbq pork was amazing ohhhhhh I could just eat more now mmmmm! Off course he also brought the regulatory boiled eggs!

Plamen & his eggs Tractor man pouring his Rakia

Svetlana had made her normal cake & this was served with three chocy biscuits but I was more interested in the bbq pork & crab salad :)

Pavlinka, Svetlana & Anton. I love this family they are really lovely people!!!

The thing I love about Bulgarian ways of eating is it goes on all night, food is never taken away from the table just added to it. I love just picking at bits through the evening & as it went on for over 6 hours it is nice to nibble something scrummy at intervals, helps the Rakia go down well too! I managed the whole evening on a half  whiskey tumbler of Rakia & a full long gass of wine. These I mixed with water for Rakia & lemonade with the wine through out the evening so I was well happy but not too drunk.

Tractor man bought a barrel of his precious Rakia, not a bottle a whole barrel. I also managed to just take a sip of this :) They were well tanked up when they arrived & as Ivancho also was pretty well oiled too it wasn't long before we had tractor wars break out!!!! So the conversation got on to us waiting for him to plough our back field. He missed it by a week & now the ground is too hard obviously as its winter & we get snow & frost. We know we have to wait till March, not a problem but for some reason it kicked off a huge argument. We then had Ivancho, who it seems also has a tractor, winding up Tractor man & Plamen got the hump & joined in supporting his mate. Much raised voices & banging of table ensued along with lots of laughter & more imbibing of Rakia. Over the next few hours we had love hate & friendship interwoven with Tractor wars, Raboter wars (Work) & Leva wars (Bulgarian currency). I think the gist was, Ivancho was a wind up merchant & was boasting how much money he had made this year ploughing gardens etc! This I found hillarious & was extreemly amusing as both Plamen & Tractor man were possitively worried about how I was handling this situation & were it seems arguing over me!!!!!!! anyway we then had much dancing along with much ado about nothing & when Ivancho & Nadia eventually left there was much hugging & Priatteli (Friends) going on :D

Svetlana & Tractor man dancing to the phone radio :)

I just love the Bulgarians!!! At one point Plamen went so red in the face I thought his blood preasure must have exploded then the next second he was singing & dancing to the radio on his phone LOLOLOLOL A very funny evening I would not trade for anything, LOVE them!!!!!!! Poor Pavlinka the evening was meant to finish at 10.30pm as she has school to teach today, we left gone 12.30 & Plamen & tractor man were still there as well as his barrel of Rakia ;D