If only life in Bulgaria weren't so dependent on whether or not I have readily avaliable cereal. If I have no cereal I'm left with two options, I could make myself French toast or pancakes, or I could grab something on the way to wherever I'm going. I could also eat yogurt, but that never does the job early in the morning, for whatever reason. So it's usually a good thing when I can pour myself a bowl of cereal and be out the door in ten minutes. French toast leaves me satisfied, but takes far too long, and banitza off the street is always iffy.
Fortunately, my family keeps me in good stead with the cereal and, in a pinch, corn flakes and Muslix are available (but kind of relatively expensive) here. Therefore, I try to start every full day with a good bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats or its ilk. That leaves me okay until 2 or 3 in the afternoon when I'm starved enough to want to buy a sandwich from one of Silistra's vendors. If I'm home, I'll make my own sandwich, often from fried eggs or grilled cheese--the old warhorses from the days in Alaska.
If it's a tutoring day, I'll usually have a snack of cookies at my tutors' in addition to the three or four cups of coffee she has me drink by custom. Then I'll go home and, later, have dinner based on how I feel any given day. Spaghetti and rice are regulars, as is bread pizza. If I have some kind of desert, I'll usually eat that around ten-ish. But nothing beats finishing the day with, well, a good bowl of cereal.
It's cyclical you see...heh.
Of course, all this changes if I eat out somewhere with someone. When I eat out I'll usually always play it safe with food unless we're at a pizza place or I really trust the Bulgarian place's cooking. This means it's usually Shopska or Ovcharska salads to start and grilled chicken for the main course. You can never go wrong with pileshka purzhola. Kavarma is usually dependable, and despite my initial fears, chicken hearts are not all that bad for someone craving reddish meat. As a side, french fries with sirene (a white cheese), is always good, although fries po celski can be great depending on the restaurant.
So why do bring all this up? Well, truth be told, I'm kind of hungry and really ought to be running along. Less food related talk to come later in the week.
Posted by Rob at September 13, 2004 01:49 PMThere are theories - quite plausible, too - that a person's taste in food is determined not only by his childhood bringing-up, but by what his ancestors have eaten over the centuries. Basically, minor biological mutations might take place in the digestive tract to suit a people's environment and what food they can actually *find* (or is it an ethnos, a subrace, or some kind of geographical ethnical group, not a people?) This could explain why Bulgarians are used to eating e.g. milk and cheese with proportions of salt and fat that would make others collapse in an allergic reaction or something.
Of course, what one has eaten as a child and how one's organism is built is also quite important, but still, those theories sound quite convincing to me.
Posted by: Peter Pentchev at September 16, 2004 02:11 AMDon't get me started on boza. I could rip on boza for a good long time if you start knocking cereal...by the way, isn't it fun how these little national conflicts happen? I'll bet whole clan wars were fought in the early days over what makes a proper breakfast. I just know that those who drew cave pictures of buffalo were hated by the people who drew cave pictures of bears, buffalo-eating freaks that they were.
As for banitza, I have nothing against homemade, I just don't have anybody to make it for me. If I could have homemade banitza every day I'd be fine. As mentioned, it's the leather, cheesless crap a person buys off the street that I have a problem with. It's good in short doses, especially in winter, but I could never have it, say, three days in a row. So most of the time, it's cereal for me.
Posted by: Rob at September 14, 2004 06:48 PMIt only shows one has no choice but to keep on eating their childhood foods. You're - what, one year already - in BG, and still have to eat cereal for breakfast. I will have been 10 years in the US this winter, but haven't started, nor do I think I ever will, eating it. And I really feel offended that you would prefer cereal to banitsa - how could you? It's not even a contest - banitsa with boza is the breakfast of gods, while cereal with milk - of slaves ;-)) (Hope you like the pun, no offence intended ;)
Cheers,