THE REAL POWER OF ROMANIA

We went to Sibiu this weekend.

The trip was primarily to meet members of Sibiu Ballet Company, who would like to do something to help support the Special Needs Centre that we work at, or even to do a performance to raise some money for them. They are really lovely people and we had a great time with them.

While we were there though we also had a little time to relax.

When we have had city breaks in the past, relaxation during the day happened by finding cafes frequented by the locals, not the tourist ones, and sitting in them and just to watch the world go by.

That's exactly what we did in Sibiu. We found a cafe overlooking the beautiful main town square, went in and sat down at a table in the window. We drank great coffee, chatted, and watched the world go by as people went about their business in the square in front of us.

As usual we talked about the people we could see and speculated occasionally about what they might be doing or where they might be going.

After a few minutes a pair of street sweepers came into view, a middle-aged woman and an older man. They were both dressed in dark coloured waterproof jackets and trousers with high visibility bands around the arms and legs. The woman was brushing hard at the cobbles, really having to make an effort to get the dirt and cigarette butts out form the cracks between them. All she had to work with was a Besom Broom, you know like the famous 'witches broomstick', which seemed to make the work twice as hard as it needed to be, but she just kept on going without resting, really working the broom into the cracks between the cobbles.

Road sweepers throughout Romania use these brooms, but most are sweeping tarmac or smooth paving, not ancient cobbles.

As I watched I thought about the road sweeping machines that they use in other 'better developed' cities in the world and wished that this poor lady could have one. Then I realised though, that if the city of Sibiu did have one, she would probably be out of a job and it would be the man she was 'working' with  who would probably be driving the machine around the square and making a nuisance of himself among the many pedestrians.

Piata Mare, Sibiu

His task this day seemed at first to be one of just leaning on a floor brush next to a wheelie bin, and watching as the woman swept and swept at the rough paving, occasionally making a comment or pointing at something she had missed. He stood watching her for about ten minutes, then suddenly he leaped into action. He took a shovel from his wheelie bin, swept the pile of dog-ends and litter that the lady had made up into the shovel and then almost ceremonially emptied the shovel into the wheelie bin before tapping it on the side and then throwing it and the brush inside. He then strode off, at pace, pushing the wheelie bin towards the other side of the square.

I craned my neck around to look out of the corner of the window and I could see that another lady was on the other side of the square brushing just as vigorously at the cobbles over there. Once the man arrived next to her, he took his brush from the bin, leaned on it and stood watching her, just as he had been doing when I first saw him.

Another lady, completely different place, same hard
work, similar broom.

I looked back at the first woman and she was still working her broom furiously, making neat piles of rubbish, and I suspected that she might be trying to get far enough ahead of her task so that the man didn't have any time just to stand and watch whenever he returned.

As she brushed I saw a young man walk past her and then casually discard a cigarette end onto the paving where she had already brushed, not even glancing at the woman, or caring that she was working so hard.

It was then that it struck me that this really is a never-ending task for these ladies, and a task that would never be finished.

As a story I think this is also indicative of Romanian life generally. there are so many fit and healthy old ladies in our village, in their 80's and 90's they always greet us with a cheeky grin, a happy hello, and often a risque comment too! They are so full of life. The women are on their own, they are all widows, there are no men of similar ages.

It was Ali who pointed it out, and stressed that it is no surprise. After all it is usually the women who do all of the hard physical work, spending all day bent over, planting or picking or weeding in the fields, and then return home at the end of a long hard day to cook, wash, clean and raise their children.

They live a life that has kept them a lot fitter.

The men tend to supervise, just as the male road sweeper was doing.

Either that or they spend their time in local bars smoking, drinking coffee, beer or Tuica 'doing business,' or just talking about what needs to be done at any particular time of year. They might even discuss the big issues of the day, and of course, all will have an answer to them that no-one else has thought of.

Even the younger women who work long hours in bars, cafes or offices in the City have to return home to do the cooking, cleaning, etc., so modern day life hasn't changed things greatly.

So it's no wonder that it is the ladies who have the longevity, they have been kept fit all their lives by the amount of work they have to do, whilst the men live  a far less healthy existence.

It is the women of Romania who are the power houses, who break their backs to try and ensure that their children, and their men, are fed, clean and presentable, and women have lived this lifestyle here for hundreds if not thousands of years.

The same is true in other less-developed parts of the world too, and I know that I am generalising and that this isn't true of all men and women, but from my observations of everyday Romanian life, it is the way the great majority of women live.

It's the woman who are the real power.

Steve

www.volunteerromania.co.uk

HERE WE GO INTO 2013

So now 2013 is finally here, what will it bring for us and what do we have planned?
Well our first and most important task is to try and tell everyone out there who will listen about the work we do with orphaned, disadvantaged and special needs children through Volunteer Romania.
It is the real reason we are here after all.
So follow us on Twitter @Vol_Romania or on Facebook and help us by letting more people know!
We had some wonderful people join us on the programme last year and it would be great to have many many more wonderful people join us this year. Meeting, and making friends with new people from all over the world when they come and visit is a real pleasure, and the money they provide by coming allows us to do lots of wonderful things with the children and we are planning many many new things for the years to come.
All of our volunteers and visitors  live with us at our home when they are here, so the second major task is to make sure that our house is ready for them when they arrive.ough after a 
It's a slightly bigger job this year though after having a couple of disasters over winter.
The first was finding that we had two burst pipes under the concrete floor. That meant digging them up to find the exact points of the leaks. It only took three holes though, so we were lucky. However, in doing so we also found a leak in our main water supply pipe too.
Eventually, after some searching, digging, and a lot of DIY plumbing the leaks have been repaired, and those areas have been left for now to dry out before we cover them back up again. They are well hidden away though, so they don't stop anyone living here very comfortably.
It was after fixing the leaks and getting our central heating up and running again that our second little disaster occurred. After filling the system and re-pressurising it, our old central heating pump finally gave up the ghost and stopped working!
So, at the moment, and until we have the funds to replace it with a new pump, we have no central heating.
Thank goodness that, so far at least, it has been a relatively mild winter.
We have a wood-fired stove in our kitchen though, and that does a good job of warming us as well as getting a little warmth into the whole house.
The open fire in the lounge also helps, although it isn't all that efficient, so we only light it when we really need it and when we are willing to put up with the odd puff of smoke coming back into the house (as our last two volunteers of last year discovered at the beginning of December!)
If the worst comes to the worst we also have the dogs to cuddle up to, and they seem to have no problem keeping warm!
There are a few other jobs we would like to do before new visitors arrive, just to make everyone that little bit more comfortable than they already are, but we will have to see how, time, weather and money go before we can decide on which ones.

Thank you to orkneyflowers.blogspot.ro for this fantastic example
of what we have in mind. Ours will be about twice the size of this,
but you can see that it is a wonderful example of true recycling and
doesn't look bad at all!

We do have some great plans for projects when the good weather starts to arrive though. 



The first is to build a greenhouse!
We know exactly where it will go, in the old pig sty along the back of our garage wall where it will get sun all day long. We also know exactly how we are going to build it, as a lean-to re-using the old wooden windows from our house in a simple timber frame.


The greenhouse will help us to start the crops for our kitchen garden earlier, and make an even better job of growing food for ourselves than we did last year, and we didn't do badly at all!

This is the sort of facility we want to provide for our hens, but ours 
will have to be much bigger. Our hens will have to be permanent
residents because of our dogs and other pests we have around here. 
Thank you to keepingchickenswithduke.com 

The other job is to build an enclosed run and a hen house so that we can keep chickens!
It is another job that is all fully planned out in my head, and will take us that little step closer to self-sufficiency. We eat a lot of eggs, so it will be easy to recoup the costs of doing it once our hens start laying. 
Along with ensuring that we have our woodshed fully enclosed before next winter and at the same time provide a nice cool enclosure for the dogs it means that we are going to be busy.
It is all so worthwhile though.
Each one of these tasks not only brings the house closer to our ideal, it also make sour lives a little easier, and a little warmer!
I have also noticed that our visitors seem to appreciate the things that we do when we explain them, and it is wonderful to see them so relaxed and smiling when they are here.
I'm really looking forward to getting on with things.
Don't forget though that we can't do it without our volunteers, so take a look at the website at www.volunteerromania.co.uk and even if you aren't interested in coming to Romania yourself, you can still help enormously by sharing it with friends and family, after all, it might just be the life-changing experience one of them is looking for!

Steve
Volunteer Romania

A ROMANIAN VILLAGE ENGLISH CHRISTMAS

The sounds of the single bell tolling and the drum beating emanate from the beautiful small painted church on the hillside, echoing down through the valley and all of the way around the village.
Those simple sounds announce that it is Sunday, December 2nd, the start of Advent, and it is the first day of a traditional Romanian Orthodox Christmas. For those who still follow the old traditions, and there are many in the village who do, it marks the start of the Advent Fast, which means that no animal products are eaten until the Fast is broken, on the evening of Christmas Eve. No meat, no fish, no poultry, no milk, no eggs, which can't be easy in a society whose basic diet is entirely made up of these items, and who's favourite vegetable is Pork!
The bell and drums will sound each day during Advent, just as they do on every important day in the religious calendar, and they will count each day away as the four weeks progress.
On December 6th, St Nicholas Day, decorations go up, small token gifts are given to those children who have been 'good' throughout the year, and small decorated sticks are given to those who have not been so good. The tradition of the sticks is that those 'not so good' children are symbolically beaten with them to remind them that they still have three weeks left to be good, and maybe still redeem themselves enough to have presents delivered by Mos Craciun (Father Christmas) early on Christmas morning.
The evening of Christmas Eve then is when the traditional Christmas family meal is eaten here in Romania, even for the many who no longer follow the tradition of fasting for four weeks beforehand.
These weeks are also when the ceremony of 'preparing the pig' takes place. It isn't called that at all, but it is the way Romanians talk about it, and even those who live in the City refer to this special family occasion with fondness. Unfortunately that also means that this is the time when we hear the sounds of pigs being slaughtered around the village. It's not nice, but it is over very quickly, and it does help us to understand the reality of things, particularly for those of us who have been used to buying meat in shrink-wrapped plastic from supermarkets and have therefore been able to shut out this essential, but ignored part of the process of getting it there. It's part of 'living a 'real' life', which is often how we describe our lives here. Once the animal is gone it is used to make sausages, it is smoked, parts are minced to make Mici, the skin and fat are dried to make Slănină (which is basically just pig fat eaten as part of the basic diet), and great lumps of meat are smoked and reserved for that ever so important Christmas Eve family meal, and the whole family gather together after the pig is killed to help to prepare each item.
It is wonderful to see and to be a small part of it, as Christmas comes slowly here, and the build up to it is such a busy time. We have been invited a few times to join in, but as yet we haven't been able to, for lots of reasons, but one day we will, and I know we will enjoy it.
It will be no worse than going to a barbecue in The Lebanon, which I have also done, when the first thing that happened was the delivery of two live sheep on the back of a pick-up truck.......first, select your sheep, .......second. slaughter it, ..........like I said, it's real life, and it was a great and very very tasty barbecue.
We try our hardest to live our daily lives as our Romanian friends and neighbour's do throughout the year, only occasionally reverting to type and cooking in a traditional English manner (in other words...curry!). The only exception to this being tea, which we just can't give up. We simply can't get good English tea here, so when we do receive the odd packet from our visitors or friends it is a real treat.
However, Christmas is different. Christmas is something that we want to do in the way we have known it for so many years, but it isn't simply a matter of going to the supermarket to buy all we need as we would have done when we lived in England. There are so many more things that we simply can't get here, and it is at this time of year that you realise it most.
So, just like our neighbour's are doing, we have been preparing for it for weeks. We may not have been doing the same things, but in our own way we have been just as busy as they have, and we have gathered everything we need to make our little Christmas perfectly English, but there is so much of it that we have to make for ourselves.
Our first essential is to have logs cut and ready for the fires to keep us warm, all done, and it is very 'unRomanian' of us to be this ready as we often hear the sound of logs being chopped around the village on Christmas day itself.
Our tree is up in our lounge, decorated and looking beautiful. Unfortunately we couldn't afford to buy a real one this year, nor did we have time to go into the forest and fell one, so it's our old artificial tree, but it looks beautiful all the same.
We actually made  a pretty good job of our traditional Christmas last year, without really  trying, but this year we determined ourselves to do it better, much much better.
We have our turkey, in the freezer and waiting for the day, we have potatoes, which we will cook in pork fat to be perfect, golden brown and crispy on the day. We have Carrots and Parsnips, as well as Brussels Sprouts, sadly not home-grown, but next year they will be. 
We can make our own gravy, we can make our own Yorkshire Puddings if we want them (and the other 'alf does make a particularly nice job of them!).
We have a still-in-date unopened jar of Cranberry Sauce and we have a few Christmas Crackers that we saved from last year, so we can wear the silly hats, enjoy the little tokens, read and laugh at the silly jokes and the not-so-wise sayings from within as we eat.
So what else could we possibly want?
It's when you ask yourself that question that you realise that it isn't actually the 'big' items that make the perfect Christmas at all, it's the small additions that just finish things off and make them perfect.
Like stuffing!
How could you eat a Christmas Turkey without stuffing? It just wouldn't be right would it?
And chipolatas to be wrapped in bacon? Where would Christmas be without those?
So we''ll just pop out to the shops and get some Paxo shall we? Oops! No!
Now I am sure that there will be many reading this (at least I hope someone else reads it!) who are good cooks and who will say 'Hey making your own stuffing isn't difficult!', and I am sure you are right, but when you have never done it before it is a daunting prospect. 
Just as it was for me when we created our own cottage garden this year to grow our own produce for the first time. Having never, ever, had any interest in gardening whatsoever in my life, it seemed miraculous to me when this rough patch of ground that we had painstakingly fenced off from our dogs and prepared produced, Spring Onions, Lettuce, Potatoes, Red and White Onions, Garlic and Tomatoes in abundance! I have really caught the bug now and I am so looking forward to Spring arriving early so that we can get on with it again, and I am determined to build a Greenhouse from old windows too!
We managed to make stuffing well last year but had trouble getting the ingredients as fine as we would have liked them to be, as a result we had chunky Sage and Onion stuffing. It was very nice but this year we will do better....why?.....well we  bought a meat grinding machine!!!
Having this marvellous tool in the kitchen has opened our eyes to a whole world of new possibilities. It has a sausage pipe, so the first, obviously, was good old-fashioned English Bangers. 
Hooray! sausages WITHOUT garlic!!!
There they are ready and waiting in the freezer. We got a bit carried away though, we have about 100 of them, of all types, plain pork, pork and herb, pork and leek, etc., and as the other 'alf, (she who must be obeyed in all things) isn't really that fond of sausages it means that John and I have an ample supply to keep us going for a while! We have now found good bacon too, unadulterated with garlic, so Pigs in Blankets, Angels on Horseback, whatever you want to call them are simply no problem this year.
Our stuffing's will be finely minced as well, so who needs Paxo anyway?
There will be three on the menu, Sage and Onion, of course, Chestnut, and a sausage meat stuffing.
We have a Christmas Pudding too, two actually, thanks to a good friend. No cream, but we can make custard OK.
We also have six PG Tips tea bags stashed away, so we have good tea on the day too. These are what remain of a box that a volunteer bought with her at the beginning of December, having heard about our plight. We have been fortunate enough over the last few years to host many wonderful volunteers and guests here, but this lady is very very special. The week she stayed with us was a wonderful one, re-awakening us to the real reasons we are here in Romania. We have all become great, lifelong friends, and one day I will write more about her, but at the moment she is too greatly missed, and I know that if I write as we truly feel then there will only be more tears, as there were on the day she left, and have been occasionally when we have spoken since. Suffice it to say that when she arrived, she bought the beginning of our Christmas with her.
We also have some new but already very good friends and family sending us parcels full of goodies to help our Christmas along, and we are looking forward to their arrival with some excitement. They will have the things that we can't really make in them, including more tea bags,   English biscuits (Ginger Nuts and Custard Creams.....what else?), a few little surprises too I should think, and a bottle of Glenfiddich from a very very generous friend.
Having all those sausages, and having found good bacon, also means that next years weekend treats of a homemade Full English Breakfast are no problem! (And here I was earlier, talking boastfully about trying to live life like a local! Oh well, the occasional treat can't hurt can it?)
Christmas Day then is sorted. We have all of the food we need to make our perfect meal, local wine is excellent and very cheap, and we can also top it up with Ţuică
We'll be in English Christmas heaven for the day, and there's bound to be a daft English, Australian, or American movie on Romanian TV that we can sit and watch as it all goes down in the evening.
Last year, for some reason we don't know, we all woke up at 3.30 a.m. on Christmas Day, just like over-excited children. Having nothing else to do we switched the television on to find a film called 'Malcolm' beginning. It's a fairly odd but amusing Australian movie about some unlikely people who commit a robbery, and it was perfect for that day and time. If we could we would have made it part of all our traditional Christmas's from then on.
However, we then have Boxing Day don't we? It is as an essential part of the traditional English Christmas as the day is itself, and it is the day that provides my favourite meal of cold meats, mashed potatoes, and pickles.
So this is an easy day huh? It's just leftovers.
OK yes, we will have the cold turkey, we have a tin of Ham (only in a tin because this year we couldn't afford the complete leg of smoked Romanian ham that were on sale in the market, but maybe next year). Mashed potatoes are obviously no problem either, but pickles??
Now I have already written at length about pickles and the British love of them on Boxing Day in an earlier Blog, 'Creating The Perfect English Christmas',  and about the fact that to have them we have had to make them, throughout the year, so that they mature sufficiently in the jars to be perfect on the day. So we have chutney, pickled onions, simple pickled vegetables, and most important of all Piccalilli!!! Along with bread and butter it will be great.
Anything that is left over after these feasts will be used to make a pie and also some curry to keep us going into the New Year, or will be shared with our dogs, which is the best way by far to recycle.
So, our Christmas is sorted, and has already started, in  a very very Anglo/Romanian manner, and all of the hard preparation will be worth it, I know.
In the 7 days we have remaining before the big day we have been invited to spend time with many of our friends at their houses in the village. 
December the 21st will also be a special day as we have agreed with a number of friends on Twitter to have a Christmas sing-a-long at 12 midday GMT. We will all be singing along to Slade's 'Merry Christmas Everybody' and then posting links to the videos on  twitter for all to see. As long as the Mayans aren't correct and it isn't the end of the world that day, it should be great fun, and it is a fantastic thing to be able to do with people from all over the world. If you fancy joining in after reading this, just get in touch on Twitter using @HolidayinRomani, it really is  a case of 'the more the merrier'.
We have also been 'told' to be at the village bar on Christmas Eve afternoon by the boss there, Gica, to join in with the singing of traditional carols, (and probably singing a few English ones in return), the drinking of hot Tuica, and lots of general merriment. It is a very very good job though that we have ourselves as prepared as we are already, because I know that spending that afternoon at the bar is very likely to render us incapable of doing anything worthwhile during that evening.
Christmas is so much more of a special occasion when it has to be prepared for and planned in this way, and with all the hard work and effort it entails. Also when it will be spent with genuine friends and neighbour's who do actually care about us and our welfare. Although I know we will greatly miss our parents, brothers, sisters, grown up children and grand-children and British friends on the day, I also know that our British Christmas could not be any more special than it will be here, in a tiny village in the heart of Transylvania, Romania. 
It would be fantastic if one day, somehow, someway, we could get them all over here so that they can experience this special time in this very special place for themselves, but we will talk to them all on the day anyway so that we can feel that little bit closer.

What could make Christmas more perfect then than this? Well everyone's dream is to have a white Christmas isn't it? Sorry to boast, but we already have that too! About 8 inches of snow lying and more to come!














So may I wish all of those of you who read this as good a Christmas as we will have, particularly those of you who will be away from family as we are.


Craciun Fericit!!!


Steve, Alison, and John


For more information about why three Brits should be crazy enough to be here in this tiny village in a remote part of Romania (Transylvania) please have a look at our websites www.volunteerromania.co.uk and www.holiday-romania.co.uk or just read some of the earlier Blogs!

CREATING THE PERFECT ENGLISH CHRISTMAS IN ROMANIA 1

We have set about creating the perfect English Christmas for ourselves.
Living in Romania, it isn't always easy to find those 'little' things that you can miss when you are having a special occasion like Christmas lunch.
There is actually very little that we really do miss from the UK on a day to day basis, but definitely good tea bags top that list! (see http://steveromaniablog.blogspot.ro/2012/11/tea-so-close-to-british-expats-heart.html for my ravings on that subject!).
We did look online at some online Expat supermarkets, but by the time everything is shipped to us it works out to be so expensive! Certainly more than we can afford at the moment.
However, Christmas is a special time and we are all used to the way we have celebrated it for so many years with our families back in the UK, and naturally, we would like to do our best to create it.
Last year, without even really trying, we did a pretty good job of it, even if it was only by buying the very last and tiniest Turkey you have ever seen from our local supermarket, because our kitten ate the big one we bought!
So, this year we have decided to prepare for it.
In my family, Christmas dinner consists of turkey, roast potatoes, brussels sprouts, chipolata sausages for pigs in blankets, cabbage or peas, Yorkshire pudding, gravy, sage and onion stuffing, chestnut stuffing, and Cranberry sauce.....I think that's it!
Turkey, we have arranged to buy one freshly killed from a neighbour, but this is Romania, and it may not arrive two days before Christmas as has been arranged, so we have bought a 4kg frozen one, just in case! Not enormous I know, but it's enough for us, and will give us some left overs for the dogs, who we mustn't forget! After all it is their Christmas too!
That's tucked away sleeping in in the freezer in readiness to come out and defrost a couple of days before the big day. If the fresh one does arrive, that will be plucked, cleaned, trimmed and frozen to wait for Easter.
Potatoes, obviously no problem, but substitute pig fat instead of duck or goose fat which we can't get.
Brussels Sprouts, peas, cabbage...got them or can get them when we need them.
Yorkshire pudding...the other 'alf makes a beautiful light Yorkshire pudding from scratch so no problem.
We also have a safe brand new jar of Cranberry sauce which we saved from last year, still 'in date' and stored in a nice cool place in readiness.
That leaves chipolatas (English style mini sausages) for the pigs in blankets. Bacon we can get, even if it is a bit thin (so two rashers around each to make sure), but the sausages, ah now there is another problem. Last year we used Bavarian Beer sausages. They are very nice eaten cold with a beer or three, but they aren't quite English Christmas lunch fare. So, this year we have the meat grinder, sausage attachment, pork shoulder, sage and onion, as well as Leek for a little variety, to make the perfect 'English' sausages.
Sage and onion and chestnut stuffing is also not a problem. We made stuffing last year but without a mincer it was a little coarse. This year though we have the right tools for the job so I am confident that we will make an even better job of our stuffings this time.
We even have a Christmas pudding in the pantry which was a 'spare' from last year. We can also make a really good custard from scratch if we want to, but also by buying a local pudding mix and making it a little thinner than instructed. I know it sounds odd, but it works well.
Cream, we can't get, but we won't miss it, and as for brandy butter, well I've never really been a fan anyway.
So that's Christmas Day sorted out without too much hassle (as long as I can actually make the sausages that is! I will report back later on that endeavour)
So, now for Boxing Day. The Boxing Day meal has always been my favourite Christmas meal, since I was a child. In  my family it means the cold turkey left over from the day before, with some slices of good ham, served with mashed potatoes and cold pickles with bread and butter.
Meat, potatoes, bread, butter........all no problem, but pickles, ah pickles, there is another question.
I know that in so many parts of the world 'pickles' just means large green pickled Dills , but English pickles come in so many varieties and with so many different subtle flavours. These are the highlight of the proper English Boxing Day meal, and we can't buy them here in Romania. So? We're going to make them! From scratch!
We have already made some very good chutneys, which are just waiting in their jars to be opened when we need them, but we still need pickled onions, and of course Picalilli!
No Boxing Day meal is complete without the colour, flavour and crispiness of a good Picalilli!
For the uninitiated reader, Picalilli is a preserve with a variety of almost raw fresh vegetables pickled in a mixture of mustard and vinegar.
May not sound good, but believe me it tastes delicious!
So that has been today's task. Making Picalilli so that it has exactly four weeks to mature in the jars before we open at Christmas, and have some for afterwards too.
First, find your recipe.

I love the worldwide interweb.......here's the recipe, thank you to The Cottage Smallholder http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/christmas-piccalilli-recipe-5658/

OK so that's it is it? You find a recipe, follow it, and tell us how wonderful you are? 
Well yes, I am wonderful, and I also know that my best feature is my modesty, but it is never just a simple matter of 'following the recipe' here in Romania. You have to adapt to use the ingredients that you can get instead of the ones that you can't.

Recipe ingredients;

50g of calabrese florets (broccoli)
250g of green tomatoes (or hard red ones) chopped
300g of cucumbers sliced lengthwise and then sliced into half centimetre half moons
250g of French beans topped and tailed and chopped in half (if you are making this in summer – use your own fresh runner beans)
225g of courgettes chopped
1500g of cauliflower florets
320g of carrots chopped
1 head of celery (destring and slice)
2 red Romano peppers (deseed and chop into 3 cm lengths)
300g of small pickling or baby onions or shallots (skinned and cut in half if they are chunky
100g of salt

Of these we had to use slightly soft large red tomatoes, so they weren't blanched, only chopped and added to the final hot mixture before bottling.
No courgettes either so we used a 'local' alternative called 'Dovleci', (but they are still small white marrows)

The vegetables, all chopped, and soaked in salt water
overnight

No fresh Runner Beans, so we added in frozen Green Beans.
The vegetables were all chopped, (which only took and hour and a half, this is not a 'quick' job!) and then left overnight in salted water.

This morning the real task started. 

Those same vegetables after blanching for two minutes
and draining

The vegetables had to be drained and rinsed and then blanched for two minutes in boiling water, before being immediately rinsed in cold water to stop them going soft. As I had to do this in very small batches in a sieve it seemed to take ages but when I had finished, all of the fresh vegetables in the strainer looked delicious.



Next the pickling mixture. The recipe asks for;

375g of light soft brown sugar
1.5 litres of cider vinegar
80g of mustard powder
1 tsp of celery salt
2 teaspoons of mustard seeds
3 tablespoons of turmeric powder
120g of plain flour

The initial 'dry' paste mix

We had the forethought to bring many Indian spices with us when we moved here from England, as we do love our Curries made from scratch, so Turmeric we have.
Last year, all we could get was mustard powder, this year we couldn't see any! So, thinks, what can we use?

The final 'smooth' paste mix before adding to the
vinegar and sugar mix

There, amongst, the many different mustards they had on the shelves was a special offer on French Whole Grain Mustard in jars, as well as a special offer on good old fashioned strong English Mustard during a special 'English Food' promotion at another supermarket. That'll do! We decided and bought two jars of each (We like English Mustard anyway in ham sandwiches)
Celery salt? Huh! Ask a Romanian shopkeeper if they have Celery Salt....
"You mean salt?......made from celery?.......Mad English people.....go away!!!) 
OK, we can do without, we decided retreating sheepishly.

Starting to add the vegetables to the
pickling mixture

So here we go with the pickling mixture.
In went the flour, mustard seeds, turmeric, a teaspoon of ordinary salt, followed by the contents of one jar of whole-grain mustard. The mustard that comes in the jars is already a paste so it was easy to start mixing the ingredients in to a dry paste, by adding the second jar this became a nice smooth paste and two dinner spoons full of English mustard finished it perfectly, as well as adding a little 'tartness' to the flavour, without the need for adding vinegar. 

The finished mix of all of the vegetables and the pickling
mixture, hot and ready for bottling

When  I gradually mixed it with the hot vinegar and sugar mixture, it went in so smoothly, no lumps at all, a bit of a dream for an amateur like me.
I then had a wonderfully smooth pickling mixture to add the vegetables to, and as I did so, Picalilli appeared, almost as if it was by magic.
The jars and lids went into the dishwasher for that last clean and final sterilisation and then we spooned the hot mixture into the jars, but not before tasting it!
We have it!
Great Picalilli!

 I know that it will be perfect in four weeks and will be just right with our cold meats, mash and pickles.
We finished by sitting all of the the jars in our jam maker/preserver in a bath of hot water to give them that final finish and also to ensure that the lids seal as they cool slowly.
As you can see from the variety of shapes and sizes we also believe in recycling!
Can't wait to open the first one on Boxing Day.

If I can make Picalilli.....anyone can!

Now for pickled onions!!!

First step towards our perfect expat Christmas!

Steve

www.holiday-romania.co.uk
www.volunteerromania.eu

A GREAT CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEA FROM VOLUNTEER ROMANIA!

Volunteer Romania have now added Gift Vouchers on their site!
Such a fantastic idea for a present from a caring person to give to a someone who also cares!

Voucher prices range from £10 to £1000 and can be redeemed (only by the named recipient) in return for the cost of participation (in part or in full) in this great programme working with orphaned, under-privileged and special needs children in here in Romania.

A really special  and thoughtful gift.

See them here http://www.volunteerromania.eu/New---Gift-Vouchers.php

Steve

www.volunteerromania.co.uk
www.holiday-romania.co.uk

CHANGING ROMANIA, A REAL DILEMMA

When we drive along the main roads now there are obvious signs of how quickly Romania is changing and moving into the 21st Century.
Not just with the roads themselves, or the new motorways, or the number of cars, or the new building developments that are occurring everywhere, but also with what is happening on the land on either side of those roads.
Farming methods are changing, and they are changing perhaps more rapidly than anything else in this beautiful country.
For me, and many like me, who love this country for it's beauty and it's tradition, it is a real dilemma.

A large part of the beauty of the country comes from it's unspoilt nature. For hundreds of years farming has always been done on a small scale. Even the farming co-operatives of communist times were relatively small, and consisted mainly of individual family plots that were worked in unison, not enormous fields.
Individual families have used small plots of land to grow what they needed for themselves to eat, and then to sell any surplus at the daily markets in the towns. This is the way it has been literally forever, and it has greatly affected the way the countryside looks, because it hasn't been spoiled. Largely it is the land that is available that has been worked, not land cleared for the purpose. So, there are small triangles bounded by trees, streams and roads that are cultivated, and narrow strips of land that are planted, clear areas between hills and mountains and hillsides themselves. Land is used for what it is most suitable for as well, it isn't changed to make it suitable for another need. 

We are surrounded by such families. Our neighbour's in our village largely live this way

People who farm like this also want 'progress', I know. They want to make their very busy working days easier, just as anyone would do, so when new innovation becomes available, and they have the money for it, they use it.
That is why there are large numbers of ancient small tractors used by these 'family' farmers, and they trudge and trundle out  to the fields morning and night, towing their trailers, or with homemade implements for ploughing, raking, clearing, or seeding, hanging precariously from the back.


However, there are also still a large number of families who rely on their horses to do the same, and horses towing carts can still be seen in their hundreds on the roads around the villages, as well as in the main towns. They are one of 'the' sites of Romania, and at this time of year, Autumn, the horses are looking fat and well fed in readiness for the coming winter. Once they arrive at the fields those same horses will be hitched up to whatever is needed that day, to plough, or clear or carry, or pick produce from the fields. 


Horses are utilized here in just the same way as they have been for thousands of years, as man's partner. producing vital food.

Farming is almost entirely organic too, as everything that is used comes from what you can make yourself. Fertilizer's for example come from the animals that are also kept to feed families with eggs, milk, cheese and meat. There is very little money for shop bought insecticides or fertilizers so every family uses their own home-made recipes when they need pest control.

But, those enormous fields are arriving, with their enormous tractors and farm implements, and their 'more modern' way of doing things, but also employing less people because of greater, more 'efficient' mechanisation.
This only adds to the dilemma of people like me, who love to see the countryside for what it is now,and to see the small scale traditional farming methods that are used. 
Why is it a dilemma? Because we know that producing sufficient food for all of the people on this small planet is becoming a more and more difficult thing to do. Also the knowledge that Romania is a very fertile country, with enormous plains between the mountains and going down towards the Danube, and that with large scale 21st Century intensive farming methods, Romania may just be able to feed the whole of Europe. To achieve it though, Romania has to pay the heavy price of possibly destroying much of what gives it it's beauty, and changing a way of life that has succeeded in this country for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

It is also true to say that a number of the young people of Romania don't want to live life in the way their families have done for so many years before. They are being lured by the 'riches' and 'glamour' of the West. This is a subject worthy of a book on it's own, not just a simple Blog like mine. 
However, there are also a significant number of younger people who remain, who are staying at their family homes, moving into the villages, and who are maintaining this way of life. Hopefully, they are enough.
'Progress' has to come, but surely we have learned from other places all over the world that progress mustn't come at the expense of what is already here and working. Surely we have to realize that 'traditional' isn't a bad word, particularly when that tradition works on a family by family basis, and those traditions have to be protected, they have to be encouraged to remain.
The rewards for 'progress' are potentially enormous, but the cost of seeing these traditions whither and die because of this 'progress' may be too high, and may just destroy the Romania that we know and love, and destroy a way of life that has existed for thousands of years.

There is one thing that I can watch and count that will tell me exactly what is happening, and this was shown to me by a good Romanian friend. It is the traditional haystack. These are simple affairs created by a long pole standing vertically, supported by smaller poles, tripod fashion. Grass and weeds that are cut from the fields by hand are then stacked carefully up around the poles to dry and mature, ready to be used as winter feed. Once stacked they form a distinctive, elegant shape, a shape that is recognisably 'Romania'. 















These traditional hay stacks are my measure, as they disappear, I will know that a way of life that has succeeded for so long is dying with them. 

They are already being replaced by the enormous, ugly, plastic wrapped rolls of hay and straw that we see in the West, which can only be moved by even more large machinery.
At the moment there are only a few of the enormous barren fields here, like those that are seen in the 'more developed' parts of the West, and they have only arrived over the last few years, but they are arriving, and they are arriving rapidly.
This is a country that needs to be seen as it is now, and the traditional way of life needs to be maintained, encouraged to thrive, if Romania is not to be lost forever.

Steve

www.holiday-romania.co.uk
www.volunteerromania.co.uk