Blog
Gratitude (I’m not a robot)
Seems a lot of people back home are grateful that there’s now a roadmap for bringing the UK out of lockdown. I’m not really one for strong ‘feelings’ (she says, in air quotes, like feelings are something marketers made up to sell ice cream), so I’ve always felt,...
A lovely, sticky ginger cake for you (vegan, but you’d never know it)
As someone who’s constantly obsessed with my next meal, I’m still surprised how much I’ve focused in on food during this whole pandemic thing. Which is partly why I’m enjoying Instagram so much. (If you aren’t yet following me, I’m @auntie_bulgaria. I share lots of...
Indoor gardening, or welcome to Gardening Bore 2021
Hello and welcome to Gardening Bore 2021, hosted by me, your favourite gardening bore. For anyone who’s new to the Auntie Bulgaria blog, Gardening Bore is an annual traditional in which I: Throw myself enthusiastically into sowing veg and flower seeds in spring....
The (secret) joy of Bulgarian power cuts
We’ve had a couple of lengthy power cuts in the last week. We seem to go through phases where we have no power cuts for months, then we’ll have days or even weeks of frequent disruption. Long-time readers will know my frustration with this. There are the...
Homemade liqueurs. Birthday snow
The snow has finally returned to Bulgaria. Which is handy because I was getting really cheesed off with all that brownness. Brown trees. Brown muddy lanes. Brown garden. Brown paw prints all over the kitchen floor. Brown village river (it’s been raining a lot,...
Very important things I learnt in 2020
I just don’t want to write about COVID-19 and the misery of UK lockdown. For one thing, we’re only semi-locked down here in Bulgaria and life, at least in the village, continues pretty much as normal. So I can’t even begin to relate to the struggle back home, and I...
Dusting off some memories (and house porn pics)
The other day I realised it was exactly 10 years since we bought our house. One of the joys of redesigning the Auntie Bulgaria website was revisiting some of our old adventures. Things that laid deep and dusty in my memory. The whole Bulgarian house-buying...
How to make mekitsi
The first time we ate mekitsi, we were in the Rodopi mountains, staying in a small family hotel. Every morning the cook would bring out a plate piled with three or four large mekitsi at a time. There would be a brief but dignified scrum among the few guests...
Autumn highlights
Yes, it’s no longer autumn. In fact, it’s very snowy and festive here in Bulgaria. But because I took a two-month break from blogging while the site was being redesigned (which actually only took the designer a matter of days. The rest was me fannying around), I...
10 years of writing Auntie Bulgaria
Looky here. Instead of giving myself something made of tin – the traditional 10-year anniversary gift – I gave myself a new website instead. (What the hell kind of anniversary gift is tin anyway? What tinny item could possibly articulate, ‘I love you, babe. Thanks...
A change of scenery (and some news)
Back in bleak old January, we booked a little something to look forward to for August – a week in a small guesthouse in Sinemorets. By March, when we went into lockdown, we were already resigning ourselves to the fact that we probably wouldn’t go. By June,...
Let’s see…
Hello! Yes, I’m still here and haven’t been carried away by COVID, yet. I know I’ve been neglecting the blog in favour of work and gardening (mostly work). But it’s not like there are lots of exciting new life experiences to write about. Every week consists of us...