Buying meat in Bulgaria

I have to say that I have been pleasantly surprised with the food here in Bulgaria. We are especially enjoying that restaurants are a lot less expensive than in the states and serve good food. We have been able to find most of the things we enjoy and I was quite happy when I found out you can buy meat in neat little saran wrapped packages, just like in the states. That said, buying meat, like most things in Bulgaria is a process. Part of the process is my own fault. I don’t yet trust the meat from our closest grocer as I have not been able to find eggs there that are not yet past the date on the package and the milk is always within a week of expiring (unless of course you buy the radiated milk that has a shelf life of something like 3 years and isn’t refrigerated.)

There are two options when buying meat. I much prefer the first, when I get the chance I go to one of the bigger grocers with a fellow missionary who has a car. The second involves a bit more work. I first gather change- as you have to have it as a deposit on the shopping cart, my bags- (you have to buy them at the grocer, so best to gather your own) and the back pack to bring home my goods. I then walk the 6 blocks to our major bus stop. Then it’s 15 minutes on the bus to the grocery. Once at the store, it’s back to the frozen meat section. I walk quickly past the whole, frozen, saran wrapped pig (snout to hooves), and the section of mystery meats that look like tongues and such. My first few trips then involved a phone call to Marc as I had forgotten to look up the word for cow and pig. Even after the phone call I accidentally ended up with 4 packages of ground pork rather than beef because I didn’t look carefully enough and confused the word for meat for the word for cow. It’s amazing how the simple, everyday things can become less simple and everyday when you read in the wrong language! We have yet to tackle types of beef steaks, and are sticking solely to chicken breasts, pork chops and ground beef and pork. We are learning to enjoy the processes though and hope you enjoy an entertaining story of our treks in Bulgaria!

As they say in Bulgaria- Весичко хубаво, all the best!

Lisa

(Picture not actually from Bulgaria - but we've seen close to the same meat- just w/o sunglasses!)