Stories with recipes

Bulgarian vegetarian flavours

In my thoughts I sometimes go back to my childhood days with my grandparents and cousins in a picturesque mountain village called Martinovo with sheep, goats, vegetable gardens, orchards, meadows, Ogosta river and wild forests. My heart fills with happiness reflecting on the summer and winter vacations full of flavours, time outdoors and in the nature, and also some hard work in the fields. We often had vegetarian dishes for lunch and dinner and occasionally red meat, I would say rarely, sometimes chicken & hen soup and stews. Abundance of garden grown vegetables rich in taste and flavours and local vegetable varieties, lots of legumes and naturally ripe fruit. Amazing. My love for veggies and fruit dates back to those times, similar for the seasonal products that follow the rhythm of nature and our body. My grandparents until their 70s were taking care of their beloved goats and sheep, each one with a joyful name. We were cherishing their generosity of fresh milk and homemade fresh cheese and yoghurt prepared by my grandmother every day. I also remember my reservations towards the dairy products, the flavours were either too intense for my taste or my nose was too sensitive for those gifts of nature loved by everyone except me😊When I tell this story I make a bridge to the philosophy of the Mediterranean diet and see lots of similarities except for the olive oil not indigenous to Bulgaria.

 

Spring with the scent of winter

It’s 1st April and feels like Nature is playing with us ~ spring winter spring winter spring winter repetitively whispering to us. Calm and tender, windy and adamant messages reminding us humans that living in contrasts and extremes is perhaps not the way, at least the sustainable and caring one for the years to come. In the last two weeks, the time of the social isolation we have experienced both radiating sun with first optimistic flowering blossoms and some cloudy skies with falling playful snow. Two paralel realities going hand in hand persistently in this astronomical spring of 2020. Beauty that only Nature could create and nurture along with a sublime theatre of disorder where we people have a major role to play. What a splendour to observe and experience all those revelations and transformations and flow with them. As if we have a genuine teacher to guide us in our own human transformations to a new and more meaningful reality of life. It’s simultaneously frightening and inspiring. And if spring and winter could naturally co-exist and grow together to a beautiful blossom why not for us humans to do the same as well. A fantastic possibility to grow and expand. With a smile and a conscious play like Nature is wisely showing us the way.