Questionable Jalfrezi

Mummy bought me two amazing cook books for my birthday, one was for soup and one was for curry.  The kind of delightful recipes that excite me as they have beautiful pictures which if I am honest is how I choose things.  The ingredients are fairly standard which I always ponder over as if they are hard to locate I’ll probably never bother.  With the curries I had a scan through and there were a lot of common ingredients so I ordered a few bits.  Most other things are stuff I would already have like onion, garlic, ginger and chilli’s.

The book does look fantastic and I am looking forward to trying out some of the meat dishes.

My first recipe nice and easy Chicken Jalfrezi.  I had the in laws round and I was going to go for my Thai green curry cause I’ve got that nailed and having had some in Thailand I’d say it’s pretty fuckin good Thai curry, I’d go as far as to say it tasted the same, as does my Tom Yum soup.

  

My Jalfrezi however was not so special.  I’m not sure what it resembled but Indian curry it did not.  It was a tasty dish and no one complained but to me it was bland and lacked oommph.  I did add extra chilli’s and chilli powder and even resorted to ghost pepper sauce.

 

It was also chicken thighs which I wasn’t sure about as most common curries are normally chicken breast.  Some dishes are much better with thighs but I didn’t think this one was one of them.

I didn’t think to get a picture and I didn’t really make my usual effort in presentation.  Normally when I do a Thai curry I put the rice in a bowl so it comes out in a lovely formed lump and put the curry in a side bowl. 

So it wasn’t a disaster but I won’t be cooking the Jalfrezi again from my new curry book.   

         

Bulgaria

The plan came about at some point last summer.  I remember going for a pint with my Dad and putting it to him that me and the fella wanted to move to Bulgaria.  He didn’t like the idea much and made jokes about me having a shot gun and wearing a sheep for a coat. 

Bulgaria is a poor country yes but this is what attracts us.  The house prices start at £2,000, the food and beer is cheap and you can still smoke in the pub.  Sounds frickin awesome to me.

I am not even sure how this whole thing started it seems that long ago since we started all this talk.

My bf is a contractor and he gets paid silly amounts of money and we believe that in just a year we could save up enough money to buy a house out there, do it up and live there for at least two years without any further income.

House prices start at anything from £2,000.  The kind of house we are looking for would be around £5-10K with 2 acres of land as the idea is we grow all of our own food and become self sufficient.  We have looked at plenty of houses online and for this price you basically get a shell and a plot of land.  We could get the house done up for around £10-15K – (I will come to how I know this at a later time).

Bills are maybe a third, even a quarter of what we pay in England so we figure we can live off £300 a month but ideally would like more than that for holidays and treats etc.

Our must haves for our Bulgarian build are that it has plenty of land preferably near a stream, within a short drive of a village for shops and pubs and near a main town for anything more pressing we need.  We want it to be within an hour or two of the coast.  Two to three bedrooms and need to have tv and internet.    

The weather has proper seasons so in summer it’s very hot and in winter it’s very cold.  So we could easily spend some of our time on the beach.  Originally we looked at the coast being Bourgas as the nearby towns like Haskovo, Yambol and Elhovo are close by to Sunny Beach which I have visited in the past and I know is like any other holiday resort where I can have a good blow out and party.

We are now looking at areas in Kardjali and have found that the Greek coast is only an hour’s drive from here and will probably be much more beautiful than Sunny beach.         

It’s a massive thing to even contemplate doing but we feel we can really do it. We have been together long enough to want to make the move and we spend every single moment together as it is as we work together. 

I am a little uncomfortable with it being all his money but I would do it if it was the other way around.  Plus he gets to take me with him so it will be much better for him anyway J

We have been discussing this now for nearly a year there is so much to talk about. 

The main thing that I remain positive about is that we have absolutely nothing to lose.

We are both on temporary contracts so we are NOT giving up our jobs.  We are renting so we don’t have the hassle of selling a house.  We have no children.  The amount of money it costs to do this we are happy to take the risk and lose the money if something goes wrong or we don’t like it.  It doesn’t take my bf long to make £10K and I’ve lost plenty more than that in my previous properties/lives. 

So whatever happens we can always get on a plane come home and get another rented house and another temporary job anytime we want. 

We have done our research on buying property over there, read about the country, about the laws, seeked out others that have done this kind of thing, the first step to take was obviously to go out there ourselves.  If we didn’t like it then none of this would matter.         

We have now made it our dream to retire to Bulgaria.  Driving there by truck which I can tell you does not fill me with joy but hey it’s better than being at work and I’m sure it would be a life experience. Maybe a death experience also if you have ever seen the type of films I watch.   

We haven’t finalised where we will be whilst the house gets done up but we are thinking of getting a caravan to live in.   It will initially be a project for us to manage a build and then get stuck in ourselves doing all that we can.  So the first 3-6 months will be spent doing up the house. 

When we become settled my fella’s dream is to be out in the garden every day and mine is to write a book, many books as many as I can whilst we have this opportunity not to work. 

I have so many ideas – people think I would be bored but seriously I just think it’s a little ignorant if you can’t fill your time.  For starters I will want to write every day just as I would a real job so perhaps sitting at my laptop for 7 hours a day.  Evenings and weekends can be spent as they are here.  We both want to speak as fluent in Bulgarian as we can so we will dedicate a lot of time to doing that together.  I also like to draw so I would hope to take that up once I have the time.   One day a week I would like to spend catching up with my friends and family, doing emails, facebook, twitter and checking in on the world.  So reading the news, might sound dumb but I actually don’t read, listen or watch the news so I never know what is happening.  If I am going to be a writer I’d like to start building up some twitter followers but this takes time and effort I don’t currently have. 

I was going to say love but maybe that is too strong a word to work out so I’ll spend some time exercising, beating up my punch bag, jogging etc.   We both like to walk so we could spend a day a week having a nice walk or doing some geocaching.

I have other thoughts but I really think that will be enough to keep me going for a few years.

The bf is hoping to get some income from his business which has been going for 5 years now and we think he may be able to get contract work remotely (working via internet) one day a week he has already been offered stuff by friends.  One days wage a week is more than enough for us to live on. 

I have thought about leaving my friends and family behind but it is not like I cannot talk to them or see them on skype.  We would also have enough money to hopefully pop back to England now and again.  We have already mithered everyone we know to come out and visit us so we’ll probably have someone with us every other month. 

I spent two years away from family and friends in the past and I mean as in no contact at all and this being at the worst time of my life when I needed them the most so I reckon I can handle being without them when it’s hopefully the best time of my life and at least this time I’ll get to talk to them.  I do know my Dad is gonna freak and he has already said it is too far away for him to fly.  FYI he is just stubborn not old or ill. 

There are still obviously many questions we may not be able to answer until we go there.

But as I was saying first step after Thailand we booked our flights to a little unknown town in Bulgaria flying to Sofia and hiring a car.    

My bf had these two contacts on twitter and I think he just found a blog of a lady that had moved out there from England and made contact. 

My Dad could be right these places could be horrible, the people could be horrible, I wanted to go there, go in the shops, bars, supermarkets, see how the locals reacted to us.  I wanted to see the villages, see what was there, we need to get a feel for everything. 

January we started to learn Bulgarian.  What would you know a nice Bulgarian chap started working at our company so on Thursdays we do learning Bulgarian with him.  We also have the cd thing but we haven’t used that much. 

By February we could say all the basic words like hello, good bye, good evening, good night, thanks, please etc and some foods as well. 

I never wanted a normal life eg. to be stuck in a boring job, married with 2.4 kids.  I want to make something of myself, take risks and really live life.

Life is short and this is just an amazing opportunity for us both.  I really feel this is the correct path for us.  I’m blown away with the idea of being in control of my own life every day all the time.  Not getting up at a time when I am told because I have to be somewhere at a certain time every day, 5 times every week, every month somewhere I don’t even want to be even a little bit. 

I know everyone fuckin hates it but we have this chance to do something about it and we are going to run all the fuckin way into the Bulgarian hills with this shit.  People may think it’s a pipe dream that will never happen but so long as the bf and I are happy together than it will happen.  It is what we want and I know that he and I are people who DO stuff to get what we want.  We won’t wait around for the lottery to turn up or wait until the ‘right time’ comes.  NOW is the time and nothing is going to stop us.