I remember one time, when I was a kid, my mum
opened a tin of new potatoes (hey, it was the 80s) and there was a big piece of
wire in with the potatoes. It was a scandal! I think we got a letter of apology
and a £5 food voucher from the company. (Innocent times, jumpers for goalposts,
etc.) Another time I found a strange little insect in my chicken sandwich on
the Isle of Wight ferry. I *think* we got a replacement sandwich for that, but memory
is a tricky thing and I could equally have been told by my family to stop being
awkward and eat the bloody thing. Anyhow, those two incidences are the only bad
food experiences I can really remember from life in the UK.
Then we came to Bulgaria and found shit in our
food all the time. Like moths’ eggs in the brand new bag of flour (multiple times, honestly, from
different shops). Or that time I tipped a packet of pasta into a pan of boiling
water and hundreds of fucking weevils floated to the surface. Or that time I bought
a bag of mushrooms and by the time I got home they were crawling with tiny
worms. Bleurgh.
So last weekend we decide to make a curry
feast. I tip some coriander seeds and cardamom pods into a pan to dry toast
them, wander off, la la la, come back 30 seconds later and there are bugs –
ACTUAL FUCKING BUGS – crawling all over the contents of the pan. So we check our
jar of coriander seeds, having only topped up the jar with a fresh packet of
seeds the day before, and sure enough there are bugs living in and eating the coriander.
We had to chuck the whole lot away and spend ages checking every other spice we’d
bought from that shop (one of the spice shops in the Women’s
Market area, where we regularly buy our spices).
Within an hour of chucking away our bug-filled
spices, I opened a (not cheap) bottle of wine and thought, ‘huh, weird, this
smells like wet sponge.’ Yep, the wine was off too. By this point, it really felt
like the universe was trying to tell us something – namely, that we should stop
trying to have a boozy curry day and, I don’t know, eat celery and go for a run
or something.
(On the subject of bad drinks, we once had
this weird experience with really watery beer. We’d bought a bottle of Shumensko
from the garage and when we got home and poured it into our glasses, it was
oddly pale. Took a sip and it was easily 50% water. The bottle seal looked
fine, so we’ve no idea why it was like that. IS NOTHING SACRED?! TRUST NO ONE.)
Why, Bulgaria, why? Why do you put up with
this shit? I guess I should say at this point that fresh produce from the
market is generally excellent, and the big supermarkets seem to be okay. Our bad
food experiences usually stem from stuff bought at smaller shops. I’ve no idea
why that is. Aren’t they generally sourcing from the same sorts of suppliers?
Do smaller shops get the rejects that no one else wants? I JUST WANT BUG-FREE
FOOD. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?
Anyway, back to the curry day and we struggled
on making our curry feast, minus the coriander and unexpected protein. Rob even
made some poppadoms, which we enjoyed with homemade mango chutney. (In
your face, universe, we refuse to eat celery and go for a run. Your cruel games
only make us stronger.) And it was all delicious. The end.
In other news, we had our first snow of the
winter earlier this week. Quite a good showing for November…
Also, the kittens have discovered the useful
basket on the kitchen counter where we keep our phones, small change etc. It’s
unbearably cute.