In the dining room

Walnuts, for a special Russian salad

Our dining room in Kalotina is one of my favourite rooms in the house (or anywhere else). All around the walls are pictures, mementoes and souvenirs of our various wanderings and foreign peregrinations: Romania, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kenya and China. The dining table and the chairs are from England and we brought them with us in the van we hired and drove to Bulgaria, a few months after we bought the house.

Originally the dining room was just going to be a rather dark and gloomy store room when Penka and her husband originally built the house, but we had part of a wall knocked down to connect the dining room to the kitchen. We also had a new window put in, giving us a view of the garden. These things made the dining room a much brighter and more interesting room.

Beetroot and walnut salad
The best thing about the dining room is, of course, my dear wife’s cooking. Here are a few photos of some recent highlights. 

The chicken pâté was delicious and creamy. My dear Irisha usually has some dark, solid and chewy Russian bread, but really some hot toast is best for the chicken pâté. 

Super soup, with chicken, rice, carrots and boiled eggs
The soup was most substantial, with rice, lots of chicken meat, carrots, good bullion and boiled eggs. As for the special salad, what can I say? The combination of beetroot, garlic, mayonnaise and walnuts was very good and quite unusual.

Chicken liver pate
I know that my Chinese friends love to put lots of foodie photos on Facebook and Wechat, so I hope that they will enjoy this blog.  









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