Friday, September 26, 2008

Cooking in Bulgaria

I just finished typing up our Bulgarian journal. Here's a blog post I made in Bulgaria but never posted...

At the Bombadils, we had the opportunity to "return" some of the wonderful hospitality we’d received by preparing dinner for the family. That was easier imagined than done. Finding all the ingredients for our meal was the first challenge: shopping in a foreign store is no joke! Thanks to our trusty translator, George, though, we got some of what we needed, and lots of what we didn't need.

Then came the challenge of preparing the "substitutes", "innovations", and "make-dos". Fixing up whole shrimp was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We've created a handy guide for your own future endevours:


The Lou-ru Guide to Preparing Shrimp

1. Decapitate the creature by twisting its head off. Mind you don't let the green and orange gushy stuff (is it poop? is it brains?) spray in your face. Also, be careful to avoid looking into those pouting, pleading eyes –Precious Moments couldn't have made them better.
2. While grasping your shrimp, wrench its hairy legs from it. Retrieve the legs from the floor and the shrimp from the top of the refrigerator. Pull out those red and pussy veins.
3. Gently slide your manicured fingernail beneath the shell, and while maintaining a death-grip on its tail, slide the shell off. Retrieve the shrimp from the floor. Rinse thoroughly.


A bowl of carnage, 2 seriously queasy stomachs and an hour later, you'll find a handful of nicely cleaned shrimp such as you could purchase in Canada for about $2.00.

The Final Menu:
  • Coconut shrimp avec le salsa kiwi
  • Pizza (chicken, hotdog :S, mozzerella, feta, pepper, olives, shrooms, hot peppers)
  • Fruit salad & special Bulgarian cream


2 comments:

Lizzi said...

Wooooww sounds like fun! How did they like it?

Ruth said...

They really did :) Surprisingly Paully, the 3 year old, finished off the shrimp. There was a big mound of tails by him at the end... And some of our other guests still plan to set up a Pizzeria mixing Italian, Bulgarian and Canadian cuisine :)