That Natural Beauty

For a while now I have been thinking of trying out dying my Easter eggs with natural dyes, but for the last couple of years I have been too lazy or too pressed for time to do it. I had heard that the process is more time consuming and strenuous, so I was a little hesitant, but then again, I knew it would be a nice change to use something that nature has given us instead of those artificial store-bought powder colorants. Get back to basics, so to speak.

So this year was the year! I bought some purple cabbage, turmeric and onion peels (I had to buy the onions or scout supermarkets that had more peels left over in the onion bins - now that was not weird at all :) let me tell you), and I set out to make my eggs. I did a lot of research online, and I discovered that there are many methods to choose from, but in the end I made the purple cabbage and onion peel colorant in advance, boiling the ingredients for about 40 minutes, and then storing them in the fridge. Then on the next day I boiled some of the eggs in the colorant water, then left them to cool while still in there.

The color from the onion peels was rich, but not as red as I had seen on some websites. Mine was more of a rusty red-orange, which was still rich and deep, but not the Easter red that I was imagining. For the Easter red, I used a bit of store-bought colorant on a few eggs. The blue from the purple cabbage, however, was a thing of true beauty. Such a wonderful, gentle watercolor-y shade, the blue eggs are definitely my favorite. The Rusted Ladle has a great blog post about blue eggs and ways to make a marbled or speckled egg for the Easter table, and that was a huge inspiration. I left a couple of the eggs to soak in the colorant overnight in the hopes of getting a deep blue color, like some websites suggested, but the color didn't deepen as much as they were showing. Basically, when you use natural dyes, the results are not always predictable, but they are fun and the colors are light and airy, painterly and wonderful.

As for the yellow, I made the turmeric solution while boiling some of the eggs and then added the eggs to the colorant later. If you use white eggs, you will get a gorgeous yellow color like buttery spring sunlight. Very, very nice. For green, you can soak the eggs in the yellow solution and then in the blue one or vice versa. The greens are also surprisingly nature-like, fresh like springtime.

All in all, I would say that the experiment was a success. I would still like to research more ways to make a more vibrant red, but the other colors were lovely, and my egg plate looked like a watercolor Easter rainbow.



More resources: http://www.marthastewart.com/267850/dyeing-eggs-naturally

And for an extra tasty finish - my homemade Easter bread (this year it turned out extra delicious) and my solution to store-bought Easter bread leftovers - Easter croque monsieur (pan baked Easter bread, glued together with melted chocolate and garnished with fresh strawberries and powdered sugar). Enjoy the photos because the real thing disappeared very quickly :)

  

Easter Impressions

I am enjoying the Spring weather this year, even the rainy days. There is something very soothing and rejuvenating about the green grass growing an inch overnight, about the clouds rolling in front of the mountain outside my window, to be chased away by the sun in the afternoon, about the smell of wet earth and the sound of birds chirping. It reminds us that we are alive.

This year I am very very happy with my Easter eggs - normally I can sort of get nice colors in the end, but only after an exhausting afternoon of cursing the egg dyes that refuse to color the eggs, the blue that turns muddy or the yellow, which dyes my hands, but nothing else. This year there were a few dyes that I wasn't so happy about, but all in all, egg painting was surprisingly easy and mishap-free, and it took me only about an hour. Yey!

This Easter was also special because I have now been to Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, an exotic and very engaging company team building that featured also a tour of Tel Aviv and some beach time at the Dead Sea. I brought back the 33 candles that you are supposed to light from the holy fire in the church and then extinguish, so this year I lit one of these special candles in my house, wishing for love, health and harmony in my home. I need it.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Saturday Trip to the Flower Market

If you are an early riser even on weekends, one of the best places to be on a Saturday morning in Sofia is the flower market Dimitar Petkov. This Saturday was relatively cool, but the sun was shining, so it was a delight to be out and about shopping for veggies and flowers at the market. This past Sunday was Palm Sunday here in Bulgaria, so there were a lot of people buying flowers for their homes or for friends and family that have been named after plants and celebrate their name days on Palm Sunday.

I was actually too busy to take photos, but I snapped a few here and there, and I also have some of the flowers that I arranged in the vases at home. I also got some herbs to plant, but I will go back sometime in the next few weeks to buy more, once the weather warms. Last year was very rainy and my basil died relatively quickly, probably thinking that fall was coming, but this year I'm hoping that there will be enough sun for it to survive longer.

Since today we woke up to a bit of a snowstorm, I thought I'd post my flower snapshots with the hope of chasing away the last cold days and ushering in warmer weather for Easter this weekend. It was a bit depressing to have to dig out my warm fluffy jacket again when it's already April.

A Photo Walk Around Koprivshtica

We've had quite a lot of holidays this month, but since I was quite busy at work, I hadn't actually realized how long of a break we would be having until it was almost upon us. This meant no travel plans, which sucked a little bit, especially when it seems that everyone you know is suddenly going somewhere new and exciting. Oh, well. There's nobody to blame but myself and the Prague trip that some friends and I were thinking of doing but never actually booked. I actually had to work a bit during these holidays, so I guess it was great for my clients that I was here in Sofia, although I would have been happier strolling around Prague's Old Town or, say, enjoying the sights in Sorrento.

Still, some friends of ours called us with the idea of heading to the picturesque town of Koprivshtica for its annual reenactment of the famous April Uprising from 1876 that happened there against the Ottomans, who ruled the area at the time. The town is quite lovely with its Revival architecture, and it has a special place in every Bulgarian's heart because of both its historical significance and the fact that it was the home and birthplace of several important Bulgarian writers and poets. My personal favorite is Dimcho Debelyanov, and I found some translations of his poems here (my favorites are "To Return to your father’s house" and "Remember, remember the quiet yard…", although of course they sound the best when they are read in Bulgarian).

 

The weather here has been iffy all month, and while I like that everything is lush and green, I do not enjoy the constant London-like cloud cover and having to carry an umbrella everywhere. We knew that there was a risk of getting to Koprivshtica and having to run from museum-house to museum-house in the rain, but we decided to hope for the best. We got in early and had a couple of hours of nice weather, walking around the old cobblestone streets and visiting some of the historical places. However, we weren't so lucky as to enjoy a whole day without any rain, and of course it started pouring right at the beginning of the April Uprising reenactment, meaning everyone, especially the volunteers, got completely drenched and all restaurants in the area got fully packed in something like a second.

One of the guys in our party, though, was able to book us a table at a local mehana, so after enjoying some good food and waiting out the rain, we had another couple of hours of nice weather that we used to the fullest to check out all the sights and even buy local sweets and crafty items like my new favorite crooked rustic walnut chopping board. The trip was actually very nice, and apart from the rain, I enjoyed all of it and the opportunity to get out of the city. Strolling along the streets and admiring the beautiful colorful houses was a great change of scenery and, of course, a photographer's dream :).

 

 

 

The locals were also making a huge pot of something between a jam and the English mincemeat, boiling dried apricots, nuts and raisins and selling them fresh from the fire in jars. The dried apricots looked so colorful in their plate that I couldn't resist snapping a picture.

 

And how about this hand-painted sign saying "Cafe-Sweet Shop Delight"? Isn't that just lovely!

Palm Sunday in Sofia: In Pictures

Last weekend was Palm Sunday, which is known here in Bulgaria as "Flower Day" or Цветница. Everyone that bears the name of a flower, tree, shrub and so on has a name day, which probably amounts to half of the population, so it is usually a day of many celebrations. More than a few of my friends celebrate their name days on Palm Sunday, as well as my close friend Lilly.

 
This year it was a day of celebration for me as well, as I had gotten some good news during that week, and I had finally received my MBA diploma. After so much work, long days and weekends spent in front of the computer, I was more than eager to graduate, and I had been expecting the official document for some time now. Getting it felt like the closure of a chapter in my life, and it felt great, like a tangible accomplishment. Therefore, I decided to celebrate my degree with my parents and Pavel with a nice brunch at Cactus, one of our favorite restaurants downtown. After that, we went to light a candle in a nearby church and took a long walk, ducking into various quirky stores along the way. The streets were full of people, and flower sellers were camped outside the churches with tulips, lilac and the traditional willow branches.

We browsed around a very interesting bookstore / novelty shop on Shishman Str. called Elephant, which has painted murals on the outside and an inside full of banners, flags, books, mugs, pins, and various other curious objects, and we bought fresh-from-the-oven loaves of full-grain hand-made bread from a recently opened bakery nearby. During the past few years, Shishman Street has gradually turned from just one more shopping street to an artsy, boutique-y, organic bakery and trendy bar sort of street, where you are sure to meet a friend no matter what time of day or night. I few years ago there was a Sofia Breathes day on that street, which I wrote about here.

It has been quite a while since I had had such a leisurely day outside, and I enjoyed myself a lot by soaking up the springtime city atmosphere. All in all, it was a wonderful day, and one I hope to repeat soon.