More photos from Chiprovtsi! We visited @chiprovsko.pivo, a craft brewery whose owner and head brewer is just 19 years old! He started brewing beer in his parentsā basement at 16 and now employs his whole family in the operation, which produces about 10,000 bottles of beer a month. Theyāre working on building out a beer garden and brewery tour with a grant from @us4bg. Chiprovtsi is also famous for its rugs, and the townās museum had a lovely exhibit that explained how local plants (like nettles and wild strawberries) were traditionally used to dye the wool. The yearly rug festival is coming up during the last week of April, and itās sure to be equal parts colorful and flavorful!šŗ
I had the joy of learning to make Torlashka banitsa with @pendara.bg and friends from @gastronomyatbu in Chiprovtsi this weekend! The dough is rolled into thin circles and then griddled on a wood stove until golden brown, bubbly, and crisp. Once the phyllo is dry, it can be stored without refrigeration. When itās time to make the banitsa, the phyllo is rehydrated with water and then layered with a mixture of egg, cheese, yogurt, oil, and baking soda. The flavor of the flour is enhanced as it browns on the stovetop and the phyllo has a dense yet fluffy texture. Our hosts served the banitsa with homemade blueberry jam and rakia, of course. š Very tasty and lots of fun to make!
Spent a warm day in early spring tasting wine with Bendida winery at their tasting station in Kapana!š·Bendida is named after the Thracian goddess of the moon, fertility, and family. While Dionysus, the Thracian god of wine (who was stolen by the Greeks, btw) gets plenty of recognition, Bendida was also central to Thracian wine culture because these ancient enologists based their harvests on the cycles of the moon. Today, Bendida is women-run. The head winemaker continues to make small batches of āritual wineā every September, when she and a group of women from the village of Brestovitsa gather under the full moon to stomp grapes, which are then wild-fermented in amphora. This rosĆ©, made from the Bulgarian varietal Rubin, is one of the best wines Iāve tasted here. I highly recommend sheduling a tasting if youāre ever in the area!
My heart has been breaking over the last few weeks as Iāve watched farm after farm post about their PFAS tests and product recalls. Many of them are young farmers, about my age, who likely went into debt to buy land and equipment, who dreamed of producing healthy food for their community and their kids, only to find out now that their water is contaminated with poisonous chemicals to the tune of 400x above the legal limit. Iāve posted the John Oliver rundown of PFAS in my bio (thanks @mistybrookfarmme for sharing!), but the situation in Maine is a bit different from whatās covered there.
Dandelion Greens 