Blog
Two packets of Bourbons and a packet of Hobnobs: The food journey of a Brit in Bulgaria
We talk a lot about how immigrant food has shaped British food for the better. We talk less about what happens – food-wise – when Brits move abroad. Which food traditions do we leave behind? Which remain rituals for life? I used to mock people who lived in expat...
How to survive January
How’s January treating you so far? I was livid – actually livid – to see that other parts of Bulgaria had a lovely sprinkling of snow in the past week, while our area is still a sea of brown. Brown trees, brown fields, brown roofs. So although we always ease into...
Worried about winter
Early January. Even though 95% of your body is under the duvet, you can tell it’s going to be cold when you get out. Cold wooden floors, maybe a thin film of ice on the single-pane windows. What little you can see through the window is bleached, the grey and white...
What to feed the vegan or vegetarian at your table this Christmas
If you’re anything like me, you start thinking about Christmas food in, oh I don’t know, September. By November you’re bookmarking more recipes than you could ever cook or bake in the one-week period that is Christmas. And by now, a week or so before C-Day, you’re...
It snowed without me
Greetings from the UK where I have been mostly screeching about the price of everything and wondering why there are so many people everywhere. So, you know, my standard UK experience. It doesn’t even feel that Christmassy here, and that’s my main reason for coming...
Lessons from the garden 2022
I’ve not been very Gardening Bore this year, have I? (On here, at least. I regularly bombard Instagram with pictures of tomatoes and courgettes.) Anyway, for those of you who come here for the garden porn, I apologise. Let’s give you a little fix to tide you over...
Putting on a show
How splendid has this autumn been in Bulgaria? The colour of the leaves has been stunning, and because the days are so warm (verging on hot, really), they’ve stayed glued to the trees for much longer than usual. A few years ago, we had a really hard frost pretty...
How we make cider
I say ‘we’ but this is mostly an annual Rob endeavour. I help out with the picking and chopping of apples, then I entirely check out of the process until it’s time to drink the stuff. Writing this post therefore meant shaking the details out of Rob’s head via a...
You know it’s autumn when…
Yes, yes, the leaves are turning interesting shades of gold and rust. The entire internet (okay, middle-aged women on Instagram, which for me IS the entire internet) has become obsessed with ‘spooky season’. There’s pumpkin shit everywhere. And we all know what...
Sightseeing (somewhere other than Sofia)
We love it when people come to stay because it forces us to behave like tourists and venture out on day trips. Seems like whenever we have the time, energy and money for a fun day out, we default to a day in Sofia. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Sofia. We live in the...
September and that New Year feel
Don’t know about you, but September has always given me New Year vibes. It doesn’t just stem from childhood and starting a new school year, with new teachers, fresh exercise books, new shoes, etc. It’s more than that. It’s in the air. It’s the shortening days and...
The curse of the inflatable pool
I jinxed the summer by buying a big, dumb inflatable pool. That’s what I did. We had all these plans for August. We had our Sinemorets trip with family, then we were looking forward to a week of quiet time just the two of us, then we had more visitors coming from...