My current work project ends Monday and Max is going to be here for two weeks, so I’m “free” as of Tuesday to go exploring! So I wanted to go to town today to buy just enough groceries to get me through the weekend.
Unfortunately, I was up later this morning than I would have liked, but I finally left at 9:15, hoping I’d get lifts because I really had to get to work not too late!
Well, about halfway to the main road, I got picked up by a man who had picked me up a few weeks ago. He dropped me off at the start of the market at about 9:40. I did a walk through and was rather disappointed by the slim pickings today, especially the tomatoes. Most were of the cooking variety, with few big juicy ones to slice into sandwiches and those that were there were obviously a bit old. I guess the season for the “good” tomatoes has passed? I did find a few that would do me for the weekend and I did much better on the onions than I did last week. The only new fruit was grapes, but I really didn’t think I’d get those home unsmooshed!
Done with the market part of the day, I picked up a “kufte” (кюфте). This is what I got that first time that I thought was kebapche. But when I ordered kebapche last week, I got more of a hot dog type thing that, while yummy, wasn’t quite as flavourful. Kufte is shaped like a patty (so think kufte=”hamburger” and kebapche=”hot dog”) and has onions and more cumin in it. The lady held up an enormous piece of a bread and a small one. I asked for the latter and that gave me a much better meat/bread ratio than I had the last two weeks. Next week, I’m ramping up my game and will ask for cabbage and pepper sauce on it. Just need to practice saying “lutenitsa” (лютеница)! 🙂
I then popped into the supermarket for some sandwich stuff, bread, and sausage to cook up with a tiny cabbage I’d picked up at the market. There really isn’t much in that little store! When I have a car sometime in the next two weeks, I’m going to do another run to Kaufland. Since today was actually not that hot (it was positively cool this morning after it rained all night), I picked up a small package of frozen ground pork and a bag of mixed frozen veg (amusingly, their “Mexican” mix, with green beans, red peppers, carrot, and peas). I’ve found it hard to get green veggies here (I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen a broccoli, not even in Sofia!), so I’ll be glad to have that for variety. I couldn’t believe I came out of there for only 12BGN (9CAD).
The other food store has better produce and variety than does the supermarket, so I decided to pop in to see if they might have decent looking grapefruit. I finished the night before last the ones I’d bought at Kaufland and couldn’t get over what a treat they were! Well, the little food store had some and they looked really good! Grapefruit here is the same price as in Canada; like at Kaufland, I paid 1CAD each. These are the ruby red ones, not white, so that price seems fair to me. No point comparing with Mexico since this is an imported fruit here!
I headed out of town and had no sooner crested the big hill that the man who had given me a lift in pulled up behind me and gave me a “Well, you might as well get in!” look. He was loaded down with a lot of stuff and I wish I could have had the words to ask where he picked up his big bag of oranges! He lives here in the village and knows Max, so he was going to drive me all the way up to the house, but I told him that the guesthouse was fine because it’s hard to turn around up here (Max actually reverses down to the main street!). I thanked him profusely, of course.
By 11:00, the dogs had been petted, the groceries put away, and the coffee was perking. I wasn’t even gone two hours!
Now work. Then, I can have fun planning my next two weeks!