And life Moves On

Well finally the grip has diminished to just feeling under the norm. A bit tired, a bit listless & a bit headachy on occasion. Not bad. I reckon its all this sun we are having. Yes the sun has come back home, & ohhh what a wonderful relief it is to have it back in play. I know its proven to lift mental health & in turn our spirits & boy its soooo obvious! I put feeling better down to the turn in the weather. It was so cold & depressing before, no sign of sun for over a week. The frost didn't go & was there all day, every day for a week. When the sun came out it was like it was raining, you could hear the frost falling to the ground & feel it. I stood hanging washing on the line & was befuddled by the experience, doesn't take a lot really :-D
The sound of chainsaws have taken the place of the woodpecker, the trundle of the wood delivery has replaced the sound of bird song & the smell of the village is now of wood burners, which is nice actually.
Nigel is spending every day cutting up the beams & wood pile & storing it all in the barn. Its lovely & dry, mainly, but a bit damp on the outside, so it will dry out nicely in the barn.

This is about half of the wood chopped, plenty more where this came from!

The pile is growing day by day & its great to see it all as it gives a good indication to how long we will be nice & warm. No really I love to see it all stacked up Its a bit like my mum & her store cupboard I would guess, it's our winter store & we can tell as we go along if we need to buy any more. We have so much kindling (we use tree branches) wood, its amazing how until you live here you just cant understand the storage space needed for the winter heating alone. We have some stone built pig houses & use one of them to store the kindling in to keep it nice & dry & seasoned.

Look at that sky, no that is not now, these are the stone houses that now two dog bedrooms & kindling store.

There is nothing worse than a fire that won't light on a winter morning & the kindling is a big part of that. We have over the spring/summer been saving every scrap of paper & cardboard, also for lighting the fire. These we store in wicker baskets, in the cellar during the summer. It sounds like a right palava but it really isn't. Do you remember when you were young, did you have an open  fire? Thankfully we did so we had some memory of what to do!
We have really needed the fire lately. The weather was quite nasty. It looked like the sky had fallen in & the hard frost we awoke to did not diminish as the day wore on. We had a week of this It was like a not so wonderful, winter wonderland.

Everything stayed white for a week

 I wonder at the storage space needed for people with livestock! It's easy to see why there are so many buildings & barn space. We have no livestock, as its an expensive & very time consuming past time, but I know many expats who do & wow good for them but its not for me.  I am just too naturally lazy to be getting up at some God awful time in winter snow to feed them & clean out animal houses. Lugging about hay, straw feeds etc is not my forte so I think it's brilliant that people do but I am far too old to start now! I do many times wish we had discovered this 15 yrs ago, then maybe we would have been pig, lamb, duck & turkey farmers but the timing is well off for us. We will continue to grow what we can & learn what we can, but we will never be as our Bulgarian friends!
 The surrounding countryside is really beautiful again. All the crop areas have been ploughed & flattened (I don't know the correct way of saying this) & all around the rich brown earth is a rich green, flanked by trees that are now barren of leaves giving us free views of the hills, rocks & mountains along with the trees that are in differing stages of loss, giving us red, gold, yellows & browns. When the sun is shining through the trees the gold's shine & the reds glow its truly gorgeous. There are still many green trees too, we have lots of pine trees here, all sorts too, they keep the greenery in Bulgaria in the depths of winter when all else looks dead. I love them & class ourselves as very fortunate to have a huge one in the front of our property. We also have a completely different one at another of our properties round the corner so I get to collect lots of pine cones. Walking round the village there are many & driving through the country lanes we pass forests of them in many different stages of growth. I really want to go get a real tree for Christmas but two things stop me. Firstly, I am not sure if it is illegal to do this, I hear mixed messages about it. Some say its ok others say prison! Second I love them growing in their natural environment, if we did cut one down & adorn it for a couple of weeks it will then just be fire wood!

So I guess we will drag out our fake tree for however long it takes us to be able to afford the adornments for our own very large & majestic pine which one day will light up our home, I can't wait but I wonder what the neighbours will say ?
The weather has warmed up a lot with long sunny days again, well as long as a November day can be. The dogs are out most of the day sunbathing & playing chase, instead of in front of the fire. They all pile in at tea time.
I have been cooking up the pears this last week, upside down cake & still practicing with the pastry :-)
Sausage rolls for Christmas are a must as far as I am concerned so I need to find the perfect wrapping for them. I have managed to find sausage meat & a mix that I liked now I am onto the next experiment to get the right roll. I realise this is very English of me, but some things are difficult to let go off :-) These may be a thing I don't eat all year but are a must for a Christmas fuzzy memory.

Chilly, Wintry & Sunny Days, Grippe

Photography by John Dennahy 15/11/11

What glorious weather we have had. It's cold 1.5c up to 6c during the day, although in the sunshine its been 20c! Nights are -7c variable. Beautiful, beautiful sunshine, meaning along with the wearing of hats, gloves, warm footwear & coats we are also wearing sunglasses! Before I left England I had replaced my glasses with reactalites, mainly due to the cloud cover then a spot of sun where the glasses were on & off like a yoyo, drove me nuts! Boy was I pleased when we moved here in the wintry month of January where sunglasses were the most worn item. We had a fantastic winter that first year & my glasses were never taken off! I managed to persuade Nigel to do the same when we went back for a family wedding & its stood us in good stead. Trouble is I need new ones now & our plain lens glasses don't get worn! As with most wearing of glasses the more I wear them the more I rely on them :-( When we lived in UK I only wore them to read or work on the computer but since being here they don't get taken off & now I need them to see properly. I have had vary focal's (not sure on that spelling!), for many years but rarely wore them for watching TV or just living, now I wear them I need them, doesn't this mean glasses are bad for you?

The B&W photo's on this blog are taken by a friend of mine, who says they are just snaps, lol, never! He has a fantastic eye for this countryside, comes from his love of it & a natural talent too. I think he has captured the morning riverside beautifully.

Photography by John Dennahy 15/11/11

See why I say I am so pleased to be living here, it is truly gorgeous at all times of the year, in all seasons. Love, Love, Love Bulgaria! I am sure if you have only been to the Black Sea tourist hotels then you will not have had the pleasure. If you want to experience the real Bulgaria then venture to the center to Veliko Turnovo or the mountain regions, you will have such a different outlook. I love the journey to Sofia from here as the views are amazing, I prefer it in a bus though, as I stress in the car :-) The mountains are viewed almost all the way they just get bigger & in spring we may be traveling with windows wide open as it is so hot & the mountains will still have snow & not just a little. Then the gorges, the greenery, ahhh truly breathtaking. Reminds me of my first trip to Switzerland its inspiring to say the least. I feel privileged to be living here & thank God most days.

Photography by John Dennahy 15/11/11

Its been a bit of a worrying time in the Newman family. I finished the last blog with welcoming baby William to the world. Poor little love had a poorly start! He thankfully is doing very well now. William was born with Rhesus disease & an infection. He was in special care for a bit & the antibiotics did their thing quickly. After undergoing lots of tests they found he has RD, but it looks like it may be mild as long as he is kept away from bugs & feeds well he should need no treatment. The next three months will be a bit worrying for mum & dad as it tends to develop in this time frame but he is being monitored closely by the community midwife & at the first signs he will get treatment. This will entail a blood transfusion & photosynthesis treatment.

Well I still have what Villagers here call the grip, this can be anything from a bad cold to full on flu. I have been grippe for getting on for 3 weeks now, It's somewhere between a bad virus & mild flu. Today is the first time I have felt like I may actually be getting better, fingers crossed.

It's doing the rounds here & it seems to be a bugger to get rid of! Nigel is one of those people who IF he gets ill it lasts for a day but he was poorly for a few with this, now however he is back to being Ok just with a slight cough. When I get a virus I can have it for months in varying degrees, due, I think, to having had ME for 9 yrs. I have been out of that for many years now but it still can affect my immune system :-( Not that bad here as we are hibernating most of the time over the next few months. The other problem is the sheer cold here. I had Pneumonia & pleurisy 3 yrs before we moved here & it took a very long time to get over. I thought giving up smoking would help me but actually it has made it more obvious! Its not being out of breath its being unable to fill my lungs, so even walking down the stairs (outside) & walking round the back into the house can render me gulping for breath on a very cold air day. So hibernation is the name of the game on very cold days anyway. What that actually means is I won't be doing a lot of walking around. Just to finish on the weather talk we were having beautiful weather but the last two days have been frosty all day temps not rising above -1.5c & the sky seems to have fallen down too, nasty, nasty weather. Inside however we are lovely & toasty warm between 23 & 28c,  so its summer clothes still indoors with wrap ups to go for a wee, (we have an outside staircase leading to a first floor main bathroom & a downstairs cloakroom which is just outside the door, nevertheless it's outside the door!

Since my last blog, I have done a bit of preserving & chutney making, & decanting of the Slivovitza & Visinata, which I have to say has taken it out of me lol. We are on the verge of bottling our 2 barrels of wine & then we will be making the Rakia (Brandy). Trouble is having space to store it in the cellar & bottles to put it in! All I want to do is get some baking & stuff done but I haven't even had the energy to finish this blog! I have started getting the Christmas stuff sorted. I have bought a duck for boxing day (never cooked one before eeekkk) & have ordered individual special cakes from a friend of mine here. The Visinata & Slivovitz has been filtered 3 times but still needs more filtering, still we are almost sorted on that.

A few of the decanted bottles lol

The plastic bottles are 2 & 3ltr bottles of wine that need decanting to make way for the next 2 barrels

I am trying out different ways of making sausage rolls.

First try at Bulgarian sausage rolls :-)

I'm very fussy & like homemade ones at Christmas but Nige prefers shop bought so I am trying to come up with something that we will both like! I'm also working out what else I am going to cook I like to plan in advance for Christmas & it can be difficult here.

Just when I thought I had seen the last of fresh picked peppers a bag full was sent home with Nigel from Pavlinka, along with two carriers of pears! O Boshe, lol, I love it but I have no space in my freezers for cakes so I now have to can them. I must kick myself to get working in the kitchen, I just haven't got the energy. Every day I say today I will do .... then every evening I say tomorrow I will do..... So tomorrow I will make sausage rolls, a pear upside down cake, yellow pepper bread, yadi yadi yah, we will see! 

So life here is rather chilly (in more ways than one, but that is not for this blog) at the moment. It's been rather quiet here as our friends are ALL in the UK at the moment :-(  We are looking forward to seeing Sue & Arthur soon as they are returning from their trip where they went for the birth of their new grandson & very excited on the imminent permanent move to live here of Dave & Irene. Soooo exciting, I love it when people start their adventure here. I can still remember our move & all the feelings & excitement as well as all the newness of the chopping of wood, storing of food & yes we got caught out with the snow lol. Stuck at midnight in the middle of nowhere in the Luton box van (terrible in snow), while Nigel tussled with the snow chains by torchlight. The chains which had never even been taken out of the box & instructions which had never been read. I remember laughing as Nigel threw his dummy out of the pram ;-D I guess I wasn't any help ;-/ It was bitter cold & snowing, pitch black & we were surrounded by forest & wildlife lol. I held my breath as we limped all the way home but at least they got us moving again, I for one was very relieved to get home that morning. When its dark here its very, very dark we don't have all the light pollution. On a clear night the sky is amazing as we are also directly under the milky way, fascinating. I can see dave & Irene will be doing lots of sitting on their roof terrace even in the midst of winter!  It was just one of our experiences in the snow!   

Thank you everyone that left lovely comments It lifts my spirits to hear from people who read these rambles...... Thank you  Dave & Cath Cascarino, I hope you both have a wonderful adventure when you move out here, you will love it for sure, it's magical!

Kay & Chris Anne, thank you both, I love writing them especially when I have something to say lol. Chris Anne, when will you be back? 

Chilli Time Soon, Storms, Hottest Days so far & Stalker Beware!

Well the chilli's are growing well & we have lots of fruit on the plants. I was also given a chilli plant in a clay pot by our local potter, lovely gesture, when you buy things she gives a gift :-) Well this was back in May & I never thought to ask what type. As it has grown it has proved to be a lovely decorative plant & I love it but

what is it & just how hot will it be? I was hoping it would be a nice mild chilli that I could munch on in a salad but the shape of it sort of alerted me to the probability of it being a hottie.

Well I think I may have identified it through the thousands, well that may be an exaggeration, of chilli varieties out there. The plant & shape & colour certainly looks the same! It is, I think, called Abbraccio & its origins are from Italy. It will look beautiful soon with lots of different colours all at the same time. At the moment it is at the first stage.....

I have decided to try them fresh in a mince dish, just to see then also to dry them in a ristra & grind them or I quite fancy making a chilli sauce so I can add to different dishes as & when, perhaps I can sweeten it up?
My friends Claire & Peter Kidd gave me a bag load of their chilli's too so my first Ristra's hanging outside the kitchen drying out :-)

They also gave me two lovely Marrows A bag of spuds & a bag of my favourite white plums, yum, Thanks guys xxxx We all grow similar stuff & I love to preserve. Friends & neighbours pass around surplus produce & I pass around jars of preserves I have made with it :-)
I went to pick our first Marrows, as Nigel told me there were some beaut's ready, but when I went down to pick one for a frittata found they were butternut squash & not ready yet :-( I have lost my marrow's!!!!!
I guess when we clear the weeds (well over due) we will find them :-) Good news is the tomatoes are now ripening & we are picking them every day.

We have four varieties this year Huge beefsteak tomatoes (my fav's), plum, heart & medium. Hopefully we have covered all the bases hahaha. Normally I just grow the beefsteak but this year we have 100 plants, nothing compared to Yovo's 1,000! The runner beans are coming along nicely as are the aubergines, love this time of year :-)

I have been really busy preserving jams & chutneys, baking a friends birthday cake & breads, I love it but at this time of year with the high temps its grueling! I am starting to pickle the gherkins today & more jam to make with the last of our plums & the ones from Claire & Pete.
Not long now till my daughter Claire her partner Tom & my granddaughter Hope arrive for a holiday with us, I can't wait, it's been far too long & I am soooo looking forward to it :-D Lots of house & garden work to do as they are not used to the dusty conditions here so we must try & give them a good impression & a nice outside space  :-)
Phew the weather here is still boiling hot even with the storms we have been having. I was so relieved on Sunday when we had rain I stood in it reveling in the coolness after such a hot day food shopping. This then turned into a huge storm & we got home to find no storm (yet) but also no electric! To say I was not amused is definitely an understatement as we left in the morning with no water! I was sitting in the garden on the phone to my mum when the storm was right above us & I must have deafened her with my scream as the almighty crack of thunder shook :-) Reggie scrunched up into a corner & Mini was running round the living room :-) I told mum I had to ring back while I cowered inside just till it moved off, then I sat back outside to watch the show. The sky was alight & we had fork lightening, sheet lightening coming in all directions & I saw fork lightening going up in all directions too, amazing!!!!!
Well it cooled down for a day then just heated up again. We are all knackered from the heat & mugginess of it all but I don't want to change it, I am just thankful to be living in a beautiful country that gets wall to wall sunshine for most of the very long hot summer. Too many years in UK with no sunshine & months of rain & flooding during the so called summer, let alone the rest of the seasons!
We have been socialising rather a lot lately which is rather nice, its a great time of year for that. There is a group of us & we have all been having BBQ's.

We all have pool's so its great to cool off when we start to over heat while enjoying good food & company, very different to anything we have ever done in UK :-D

Tomorrow its our Russian friends birthday party. Looking forward to it as its going to be massive. I have baked her a birthday cake & we are off to find her a gift. Galia is a very beautiful & stylish lady who is/was a fashion designer, she loves beautiful things & I hope to find something lovely for her :-)
   On the downside I have a stalker! A bitter & twisted woman who follows me around facebook under assumed names pretending to be different people & adding me as a friend! I have caught her out minimum 4 times & now have to vet everyone on my friends lists who are newish & decide if they could be another made up person! Not only on my personal page but on other groups too. I am a reactionist & tend to respond to nasty comments but this seems to backfire & I may have just come across as a trouble maker when in fact I just stood up for a particular group or a friend. So I am going to try my hardest to keep my fingers quiet & get rid of anyone who is an imposter.
Oh I have to say the biggest downside to living here is the people who love to spread lies & innuendo's amongst people. It has been a real eye opener to me, I did wonder if I was strange, but others have suffered this phenomena too. Isn't it sad, we all move here to get away from the rat race, nasty people & yearn for a quiet life & make a living at what we are good at, then have to put up with this rubbish! Well I am no chicken & will not put up with people who want to spend their life sniping, lying & spying on others just because their lives are not what they want & they are bored out of their brains!!!! To those people I would say Get a life!
Right enough of my soap box back to real life ;-)
   Yesterday we went to a get together with other ex pats. We met some really nice people, always good to meet new people, & enjoyed a very full day with friends. On the way back from the market I spotted this very fine looking specimen of insect, anyone know what it is? Oh & is it harmful?

It was very beautiful & also very aggressive! Pete got a stick & moved it onto the grassy area, as it was on the pathway, & it went mental as all the weeds were anoying it. It twisted itself front & back trying to get at whatever was touching it! It has a horn on the front was quite plump & large but what a beautiful thing I am very pleased we got to see it!

Comparison by the side of a large size mans shoe ;-)

A friend (in England) has just told me it is a Deaths Head Hawk Moth caterpillar, Thank you Rachel x