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| There are about 37 other bottles lined up in our hallway waiting for shelving space. It's a sight to warm the cockles. |
I’ve been remiss in updating you all on the cider progress. Bad Auntie Bulgaria. Bad.
We finally got around to bottling the cider around about the
last week of October. It had stopped fizzing by then but Rob had read online that
if you add a spoonful of sugar to each bottle it makes it fizzy. Sometimes the
internet lies, though, doesn’t it? Instead of a fizz, we’ve ended up with more
of a slight tongue tingle. But that’s alright. It’s the taste that matters.
So how does it taste? Goooood. It has pretty much the same
crisp, dry taste as last year’s batch. At around 5% or so, it’s not as strong
as last year’s, which is not necessarily a bad thing – after all, last year’s
batch (which was about 8%) frequently stopped us sleeping when we overdid it, because
it was just too headachy-strong. Delicious, but dynamite. Besides, even 5% is
enough to take the edge off, well, 2016.*
Having said that, this year’s batch does seem to be getting
stronger by the day. The last bottle we drank seemed more powerful than when we
first bottled it. It’s probably that spoonful of sugar turning to alcohol. Who
knows, in a few more weeks, it could be as strong as last year’s and we’ll have
to start *shudder* drinking responsibly again.
Absence makes the
heart grow fonder and all that
The cider’s main downside is that it’s currently 2,500 km
away from my liver. Yes, I’m in rainy, rainy Britain – with its unreliable
trains and incessant vapers – for a pre-Chrismas visit. I miss my cider and my
woodburner and my cats. And Rob, of course. He stayed at home with the cider,
the woodburner and the cats. At least he sends me regular cat photos to
entertain me.
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| Barney (right) and Pepper (left) share a rare tender moment. Usually their only interaction is him pouncing on her from behind and her hissing at him. |
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| Cat owner bliss. Cat bliss. Fridge covered in cat hairs. Hygienic. |
Crap I’ve bought while in the UK
Some friends of ours have started importing British food
into Bulgaria, which means I need never lug another suitcase of sweaty cheddar and
illegal volumes of teabags ever again. So, I had a mercifully light, and
somewhat random, expat shopping list this trip: one jar of stem ginger, a box
of decaf Yorkshire Tea and a Christmas ham. (Well hello, Christmas, you sexy
bastard, how did you get here so quickly?) That leaves plenty of room for the
seven bowls I’ve bought while in the UK. Yes, you read that right: SEVEN bowls.
And I’ve still got another six days here so that figure could rise. What’s that
you say? No, no I don’t have a pottery problem. Honest, it’s totally under
control.
