Autumn is my favourite time of year – specifically
that dreamy early September period when the evenings are cold enough for a
sweater but the days are hot enough for shorts and flip flops, and the leaves
are *just* starting to turn. And the food! Oh my, I love squirrelling away food
for winter while we’re still eating tomatoes warm from the sun and checking the
chilli plants for ripe fruit every day. It really makes you enjoy the last of
the hot weather, you know, when you’ve got half a mind on the winter ahead.
As well as our epic pesto batch, we’ve got a
freezer full of passata, plums, blackberries, beetroots and courgettes. (Our
courgettes are still coming, by the way. We’ve harvested quite a few this week.
They will never die.) I’ve made a batch
of tomato chutney, even though we’re still working our way through 2015’s spicy
chutney. Plus some jams and tomato ketchup. Next up on the preserving list is
quince jelly, from the one quince tree in our garden. And there’s still a
tomato and herb jelly recipe I’ve been meaning to try, which sounds gross but
the book assures me it adds extra depth to tomato soups, pasta sauces, etc.
Also, *pins chufty badge to chest* we made our
first attempt at canning. It was just a few jars of peaches in syrup from the
neighbour’s harvest, but it seemed to go well. We might even buy a big batch of
peaches from the market to make more jars (our own peach tree is still too
young to offer up any fruit). So if I disappear from the blog sometime this
winter, it’s safe to assume we’ve died of botulism. Either that or we’ve been
swallowed by a sink hole – you never know.
But, so far, the very best thing about
September has been our trip to the Rhodope Mountains (Родопите in Bulgarian)
earlier in the month. God, it’s gorgeous down there. Stunning, wild scenery. Diverse
walking trails with not a soul on them. Dramatic gorges. Rivers. Woodland. I
know I’m just listing stuff, but I don’t care. Cool caves. Amazing food. There
was even a village folk festival thrown in for good measure. We can’t wait to
go back and explore further.
Are you ready for the holiday slideshow? Sitting
comfortably? Good. Pass the mini gherkins, Margo…
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| Wild flowers and mountains. It must be gorgeous here in early summer. |
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| Quite a few villages have mosques. |
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| So many mountains. |
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| Eagle Eye platform. |
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| The platform from below. Yes, it's that tiny thing jutting waaaay out from the edge. |
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| Trigrad Gorge. |
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| Sun streaming into the Devil's Throat Cave as we climbed the 300-odd steps out of the cave. |
And now for the bear-related portion of the slideshow. Sadly, there are no photos of actual bears, so don’t get your hopes up too much. Tuna vol-au-vent?
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| Big ole bear paws. |
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| Bear hide. |
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| Runny bear poo. |
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| Bear scratches on the tree. |
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| More bear tracks. |
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| Solid bear poo. You're welcome. |
We did some mushroom hunting. Mmmm, mushrooms.
Even without the help of our guide, we guessed this chap wasn’t edible:
And now comes the random, über Bulgarian section
of the slideshow. You know, the kind of shizzle you only see on hols in
Bulgaria.
