Food that shouldn't taste this good

Sometimes a situation leads to something becoming so much greater, more pleasurable than it actually is. To clarify with an example: when you have spent a few hours tramping up a cold wet mountain, the piece of melted chocolate that has solidified in an odd shape with all the weird white streaks that previously melted chocolate has will be the most delicious piece of chocolate you have ever eaten. Swiss chocolates have nothing on this squashed bit of Dairy Milk.

I had an example of this the other day. I had to go to Zvornik, a town right on the border about an hour's drive from Tuzla. This isn't normally a problem; I go to Zvornik quite a lot. It is a bit like hopping on the M4 to for a couple of exits, except it is more like the B4324. It's quite a pretty route, and just before you get to Zvornik you go through a range of forested hills and then you emerge, blinking, to see the Drina river flowing gently north and the Drina Valley stretching out before you.

This week it has been snowing, as is quite normal in February here. Everyone is equipped to deal with the snow so all the cars have winter tyres and carry snow chains by law, and pretty much everyone has a couple of rugs and emergency bits of food kept around their car somewhere. Just in case. Last year we forgot about our secret stash under the passenger seat and discovered it half way through the summer when the temperatures were 40C plus and all the chocolate had melted.

On this particular evening we had been to Zvornik and were on our way home.  It had already been a long afternoon, much coffee had been drunk which was making me a little more jittery than desirable. I was looking forward to getting home for some supper and a cosy glass of wine in front of an episode of The Wire, but it had started snowing again. The road hadn't really been gritted and it was very slippery. We could barely see out of the windscreen and were having to drive at about 15 mph. We were in the hills and it was very dark. Occasionally a car would flash past, a bus even came thundering around the corner at one point, but everyone was taking it pretty carefully and there were very few cars around. It's difficult to see the lines on the road at the best of times, but covered with snow it was impossible. Couldn't see the edge of the road either. We were moving so slowly that it wasn't really scary, more an acceptance that this journey home was going to be a long, dark, snowy slog. We carried on edging our way through the mountains, right up to the point we lost our grip on the road and the car set off on a gentle pirouette and turned a graceful 360.

We were lucky, nothing was on the road and we didn't come off it. We were going so slowly that we were not physically in danger but it would have been a real disaster if we'd slipped off the road and not been able to get on it again. We edged off again, taking it really carefully. But the combination of far too much coffee earlier and a lunch time that was now a distant memory and I was starting to feel a bit faint and in dire need of some food. A search of the car proved fruitful. I had been given a few days before some zeljanica (spinach pie) made by a friend's mother, complete with feta cheese. I'd eaten them hot, they had been wonderful, but that was a couple of days earlier. Now they were freezing cold. But they were without a doubt the most wonderful, delicious, satisfying meal I'd ever eaten. A small piece of me flew to heaven for a little while as we pulled over and sat munching on our stale spinach pie.

We set off again. It took us approaching 3 hours to get home. But I will never forget how wonderful it was to be sitting on the side of the road eating good, although not quite how it should have been served, food.

How about you? What food that shouldn't be good somehow became a deliciously memorable meal because of the situation you were in?

Bangers and Festivals

Woke up this morning to an cavalcade of bangs and crashes and the realisation that there were a lot of people out on the streets at a relatively early stage of the day. This being Bosnia and all, I was out of bed pretty sharpish, before remembering that today is Kurbam Bajram, the Bosnian Muslim festival of Eid Al Adha. Muslim tradition asks for an animal to be sacrificed and the meat shared between friends, neighbours with a certain amount donated to the poor. So, having been to the mosque and setting off a lot of bangers in the street everyone was heading home to cook epic amounts of meat and will be spending the next couple of days visiting their family and neighbours to share said meat. This Bajram goes on for four days, so there's a whole lot of meat to be eaten, even by Bosnian standards. Then, much like Halloween, many Bosnian children are allowed to come and knock on doors to ask for money or sweets to help their celebrations.

Bajram is one of those festivals, like Easter, that moves about a bit during the year and it always seems to take people by surprise. At least this year I had some forewarning about the closure of the boys nursery. So, with two energetic little lads requiring some attention from their mother and bags to be packed for our weekend away in Zagreb (it has a cinema!), I've opted for the short cut and dug about in the Brits In Bosnia backlog to find the post I wrote last year at this time. Now if I can just stop the boys getting hold of any bangers...

"One of things that I always forget about Bosnia is that with a significant proportion of the population belonging to 3 different religions, it seems that there is always a holiday to celebrate. Right now the Muslims are celebrating Kurbam Bajram (also known as Eid Al Adha which is the Festival of Sacrifice, in commemoration of the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God.). This being Bosnia it involves a lot of eating and drinking and a fair amount of partying with many children knocking on our door for small gifts.

I'm gearing up for Christmas at the moment, along with most of the Bosnian Croats who are predominantly Catholic. Right now this appears to involve writing a lot of Christmas cards, wondering where we will get a tree and wishing I had got my act together earlier regarding buying Christmas presents. Tuzla has a significant Croat population and Christmas is a big affair. The town is covered in Christmas lights which, if I am not mistaken, are exactly the same as the ones decorating the lampposts back home.

Then there is the Orthodox Christmas, celebrated by the Serbs, on January 7th. I have to confess to knowing very little about this one, but talk to me after Jan 7th and I hope to know a little more.

Here in Tuzla, which has always prided itself on its multi-ethnic outlook and inclusiveness, the citizens appear to have taken the decision to celebrate everything, irrespective of their personal religion. When Bajram falls in December this time of year gets pretty busy, particularly as there is also a Bosnian National Day holiday at the end of November as well. Throw in a New Year (which everyone celebrates with enthusiasm) and you really do have a festive season. Now, if only I could know when the holidays were before I turn up to find a closed nursery I'd be truly jolly."

A different approach for fussy eaters?

Following on from last weeks post and the comments on fussy eaters (you have to love them or you would end up flinging their rejected macaroni cheese across the room), I've been doing some thinking.

Adam is, indeed, a very fussy eater. When we were in the process of moving to Bosnia I worried about this a lot. Not only would he only eat a very limited range of food, we were moving somewhere where most of that range of food was unavailable. What, I thought, am I going to do without fish fingers, sausages or baked beans? That boy is going to fade away, and there's not much of him at the best of times.

Of course, as it turned out we found other things he would eat and he actually is eating a wider range of foods here than he ever would in the UK. I took a disciplined approach of 'if you eat it, great, if you don't, well fine, but you're not getting anything different for supper' which combined with an absolutely no snacks at all during the afternoon seemed to work. He's better now than he was and I think he will continue to improve.

But in Bosnia I noticed something. They don't seem to have very many fussy eaters here. Almost every child I have come across has eaten a full range of fruit and veg with enthusiasm. They also eat chocolate and sweets with enthusiasm, but (and this is the key here) I've also seen the kids say 'no thanks' to offers of chocolate.

Now, my two, with limited access to chocolate and such delicious banned substances, have never, ever, been known to say no to chocolate. In fact, Adam has on one occasion managed to get his little hands on so much of the stuff that he made himself sick. He gorges on it, absolutely gorges and has no ability to stop eating it.

This has got me thinking. Is it possible that we've got our approach to food all wrong? By banning or limiting some foods do they become all the more enticing and desirable? If we were to allow the kids more access to chocolate and the bad stuff, would they work out for themselves how much was enough? Would giving them this responsibility lead to a more responsible attitude towards food?

I'm not sure I'm prepared to try out this theory. Adam would eat nothing but cake and chocolate for weeks and I would fret fret fret. But, the Bosnian kids here all eat their fruit and veg and all tuck into their food with gusto. I've not seen any really fussy eaters, and given how much the nursery staff fret about Adam's lack of lunch consumption, I don't think they are used to it either. You don't tend to see fat Bosnian kids either, they live active lives running around burning off that calorie intake.

I am however interested to know whether anyone is bucking the 'ban the goodies push the veggies' trend out there and has tried giving their child a more free rein on having whatever they want to eat? Did it actually lead to a child with a healthy attitude towards food, who was able to say no to chocolate if they didn't really fancy it, and who tried out other healthier food? Or is the reason there aren't too many fussy Bosnian children because they are simply not given the opportunity to be difficult over food? Comments welcome!

New recipes and fussy eaters

Reader, I have a confession. Well, a typically middle class Mummy confession. Adam, my eldest, my four year old, is a fussy eater. Not just a little bit fussy either, he is a full on, will not eat, meal times can be a misery fussy eater. He's been this way since he was about 8 months following a particularly nasty stomach virus. Obviously he will eat chocolate, crisps and anything bad for him. I am actually thinking of renting him out as a quick way of working out whether food is good or bad for you, on the basis that if he will eat it with enthusiasm and without coaxing, it is without a doubt the worst type of processed, sugar/salt filled food available.

We don't stop trying though. Every night I cook something vaguely healthy and try to get him to eat it. Some nights we manage ok. Others turn into a bit of a showdown. Sometimes I can deal with it, sometimes I can't (as Charlotte Moerman of the Buggy Blogs writes in her book Instructions Not Included writes 'hell after all hath no fury than a mummy whose laboriously made fish pie has been rejected').

As a fully paid up member of the middle class mummy society, this inability to get my son to crunch down on a raw carrot for snacks or to eschew crisps for a bit of filled gem lettuce leaves often feels as a downright failure. Of more concern though is the thought that his younger brother will watch this little behaviour trick and take it on board for himself. Currently Luke eats most things, but I can already see that he has learnt from Adam, and the vegetables are getting more difficult to get down him by the day.

In short then, I'm desperate for ideas, for any help in how to get healthier food into Adam. So when Ebury Books asked me if I'd like to review some Annabel Karmel recipe books, of course I jumped at the chance.

Now, I'm no stranger to Ms. Karmel. Of the three recipe books we bought out with us to Bosnia, 2 were hers. So sending me more of her books is a bit like preaching to the converted. But, any new recipes, anything that might become acceptable to my little fusspot, are very desirable. First they sent me the latest Annabel Karmel New Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner. This is the fourth edition and I have a previous edition with me, so I was able to complete a fairly exhaustive compare and contrast. At least, of the chapter 5 which was the only part of the book relavant to me now with 2 toddlers in the household. Much as I wish to Blog with Integrity and conduct a thorough and exhaustive review, going back to pureeing food was never going to happen. Anyway, I can confirm that the new edition looks pretty good, has colour pictures and a couple of pretty pastel pages, but the core of the book, the recipes and the information that comes with it is pretty similar.


Luckily for me they rapidly realised their mistake and proceeded to send me the Complete Family Meal Planner which was far more appropriate. So for the last month I have been testing out a range of different recipes. As I mentioned before, I've got a few of her books, so wasn't surprised to see many of the recipes were repeated here. She has a few themes which she uses often. A meal based around meat or chicken with soy sauce, honey, garlic and lemon (or a variety of) are commonly found in the book, definitely delicious and sadly not acceptable by my little fusspot. On the other hand her Hidden Tomato Vegetable Sauce is the only way to get Adam to ingest any form of vegetables at all, as long as I don't get over excited and try to hide too many vegetables in it. That mistake took me about 6 months to recover from, so for anyone else thinking of trying to sneak a few extra veggies in that way, think twice. Her Bang Bang chicken is the only dish that I can confidently say will lead to a clean plate. The Chicken and Apple Ball recipe was a surprising success too.

I have two gripes with the recipes though. The first is her assertion that fussy children will eat food if it is presented well. So, there are such incidents as the Teddy Bear Rissoles with olive and peas for eyes and carrots for the ears. Now, in this household, for food to touch anything that is red, orange or even (heaven forbid!) green apparently means that the entire plate is rendered unfit for human consumption. There is no way that I would ever be able to persuade him otherwise. I know that Ms. Karmel is supposed to have had a fussy eater as a child, but in my experience this tactic takes up a lot of time and will lead to certain misery at the meal times.

The second moan is that I find her dishes can be unnecessarily complicated. Not to cook, for even someone with my meagre culinary skills can manage them pretty easily, but in the food. In our experience we have found that the best way to get the fusspots to eat something is to keep it as simple as possible. So, for example, rather than fill burgers with breadcrumbs, onions, chopped red peppers and parsley, we are far better off going to the butchers, getting the best quality meat possible, getting the butcher to mince it, make it into a patty and cook it with nothing else added at all.

But I'm whinging. I've already said that I'd be lost without her books. Anyone with children who doesn't have one of her books on their shelf should. On the other hand, if you already have one (or two or even, like me, 5) then you probably won't gain too much from these additional ones.

Right what's for dinner?

Dear So and So Bosnian Version: Part iii

My biweekly opportunity to rant and get pithy with things that have annoyed/delighted me over the past couple of days. I encourage everyone to have a go at writing a Dear So and So post, it is surprisingly therapeutic.

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Dear Bosnian Taxi Drivers,

Just steady there with the stopping in the middle of the road to pick up and let down passengers. Usual etiquette suggests that you should wait until it is safe, indicate and then pull over. Or at least let the drivers behind you know that you are about to come to an abrupt halt.

Yours, with depleting brake pads and increasing Bosnian swear word vocabulary,
Fraught Mummy

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Dear Bosnian billboard advertisers,

I have a question. You know your advert, the one where there is a picture of a woman wearing nothing but a thong and with her hands in some very fetching yellow marigold rubber gloves placed delicately on her very perfect backside? You know the one? In the background there are a few men in suits, hard helmets, chewing on pens and looking thoughtful? Can you explain to me how this advert in any way promotes safety in the workplace?

Yours, in curiosity,
FM x

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Dear ice cream sellers on the Korzo,

You remember how last year there was a bit of a cold snap at the beginning of September? But then the month continued to be warm and sunny and perfect ice cream weather? Do you remember how you also stopped making ice cream at the very first sign of cold and then for the rest of the month we wanted ice-cream so badly but noone was selling it. The forecast for next week is a bit chilly, but then it looks as if it will heat up again. Please please please don't stop making ice cream until it really is too cold for it.

Yours, in appreciation of your amazing ice creams and wondering how we will get through the winter without it,
FM

PS - if you ever wanted to try making that blood orange ice-cream again, I'll buy a box of it!

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Dear Nursery,

Thanks for the offer of giving English lessons to the boys. I think they'll be ok without them.

Yours,
FM

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Dear Bosnian bathroom designers,

I know that Bosnians aren't that short (in fact there a lot of very tall Bosnians). So why are all your baths so tiny?

Yours, in desperation for a long hot soak without my knees around my ears,
FM

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Dear Bosnian Grannys,

Telling my children off in the supermarket is not acceptable, particularly when they were actually being pretty well behaved. I know you mean well, telling them to listen to their mother and to hold my hand is exactly what I have been telling them for, well, years. But if you shout at them in Bosnian it doesn't really help much.

Yours, only just holding my tongue in check,
FM

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Dear Boys,

Do you have a volume control? Could you use it? Particularly in the supermarket or when there are people around who are likely to tell me off.

Your only slightly deaf mother x

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Dear Bosnian Traffic Light Designers,

When I get a specific green light to turn right, I'm not expecting to come across a stream of pedestrians crossing the road who also have a green light. It always takes me, and quite a few other drivers, by surprise. Do you not think it might be better to let one group of road users have priority at a time?

Yours, in bewilderment,
FM

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Dear neighbours,

You've been ever so generous with the produce of your fruits trees. We've gorged on your cherries, raspberries, apples, peaches and plums. I can see the pear trees are looking pretty good and I'm feeling hopeful.

Yours in anticipation,
FM

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Dear Mum and Mum-in-law,

We can't wait to see you when you come out. A week on the Croatian coast near Dubrovnik is a very exciting prospect. The boys are so excited to spend some time with their Grannies. Please come bearing tea bags. We're nearly out and whilst everyone says that the 'crni caj' is the same thing, it just isn't and I can't function without my tea.

Only a few weeks to go now,
FM xx

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Dear Bosnian Football Team,

You're playing Armenia tomorrow. You have such a great opportunity to qualify for the World Cup in 2010. Go get 'em! Hajmo Bosno Bosno Bosno!

Yours, waving my blue and yellow flag enthusiastically,
FM

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Haven't had enough Dear So and So? There are a few others posting them too: Head on over to

Home Mum of 2 (or 3 if you count their Dad)

Muddling Along Mummy

London City Mum

Very Bored Housewife

Have a go yourself. And if you do, make sure to go to Kat's at 3 Bedroom Bungalow and sign up so that other fans of the genre can come and have a read too.

Allotment Jealousy

Our fledgling allotment in the corner of the garden is coming along pretty well. There are some tomato plants that definitely look as if they are going to yield some tomatoes. The carrots are growing. The rosemary, basil and parsley are going great guns. Even the peppers (or was it chillies, I can't remember) are getting bigger. The boys and I spend quite a lot of time pootling about down there, pulling up things that we hope are weeds and spraying water over the plants and, usually, each other. Adam is getting quite into it, proudly showing everyone which plants are the tomato ones and where the tomatoes are growing. The onions didn't make it, but I think that has more to do with our dog, Jess (who is on a strict diet at the moment) looking for food than them not actually growing.

But we have noticed, pleased as I am with our little patch, that it is nothing compared to our neighbours. They have great squares of vegetables with walkways between the beds. Their plants are neatly lined out in lines and not a weed to be seen. They have apple, cherry and plum trees. Their strawberries looked amazing, and their raspberries were pretty good too. I spend quite a lot of time standing by their fence looking at their garden in awe. Their beds are probably measured out to perfection and the odd millimetre difference would be noticed.

It's not all jealousy though. The cherries and raspberries overhang our garden and are ours, all ours. The great British tradition of scrumping* is developing strongly in this corner of a foreign field.

*for American readers. I just looked up the definition of scrumping and discovered that it means something else entirely over where y'all live. To avoid confusion and thinking that I'm up to something entirely inappropriate, the British meaning of scrumping is the art of stealing fruit (usually apples) from orchards and gardens that don't belong to you.

The really important things to bring back from home

I'm still unpacking. It takes forever and is one of my least favourite activities. But, as I try and create some form of order in the chaos it has struck me that what I have actually bought home from the UK is nothing like what I expected to bring home. Utterly food obsessed, I thought my bags would be stuffed full of things like marmite, mango chutney, popadoms, pine nuts, chocolate hobnobs and PG Tips and all those other things that we can't get hold of out here.

But when push came to shove, and I realised that we didn't have enough space to bring back everything that I thought we would it was the important stuff that stayed in.

- marmite and teabags. Obviously. But these were really the only foodstuffs that made the cull.
- childrens suncream. Althought the weather here is currently dreadful and we can only look at the English summer going on and weep, it will get hot here. Last year we couldn't find any childrens suncream that wasn't very thick and gloopy so I bought some back.
- new clothes. The clothes in Bosnia are surprisingly expensive, especially children's ones. It is far cheaper to buy them in the UK and bring them back, particularly when the second hand shops around my parents house are so great . I may have also snuck a few new clothes for me in when Dave wasn't looking.
- Calpol and Calprufen. We have enough to sink a small battleship. You can get similar in Bosnia, but I feel it is safer to stick with what I know. I know how many times I can give it to them, how much, that it is safe to alternate the two and that if it doesn't bring their temperatures down that we need to go to the doctors. When their temperatures soar, I don't want to be worrying that I haven't quite got it right on the medicinal front.
- a few English language books.
- a few box set DVDs. We really don't watch the local TV that often. We have no idea what is on, or when it will be on. So, we prefer to watch an episode of a show that we know we like, although what we will do when we finish The Sopranos I have no idea.
- many many many childrens DVDs. I can't take the childrens tv here, Cartoon Network is dreadful and even Adam says that the cartoons aren't very good. This way CBeebies still works its magic and I can take comfort in the fact that it is vaguely educational.

So alas, no room for the mango chutney. I'm still not sure if leaving it behind was a mistake.

supermarket short-circuit

I'd been putting it off for a while, but last week bravely took the decision to venture (with the boys) into a supermarket. Not just any supermarket, but a Tesco Extra supermarket*. Tesco Extra is a new feature to my life. I hadn't appreciated quite just how large they are. Nor how many things that you haven't come to buy you have to pass until you get to what you want to buy.

Aisles and aisles of children's toys later (and having frisked the children to make sure they had put everything that they had picked off the shelves back onto the shelves) we were hunting down some cheese. We had found the appropriate aisle easily enough and everyone was looking for the cheese. We had even found the cheddar cheese fairly easily, although I was getting a bit dazed by the vastness of the cheese section. The problems started as I tried to find some plain old medium cheddar cheese in a normal sized packet. Super healthy living never seen an ounce of fat cheese, no problem. Vegan cheese, check. Organic cheese, check. Vegan organic cheese no problem. Super matured cheese, yup. Cheese with bits of fruit in, I could have bought you that. In fact, I was more likely to be able to buy oak casket matured, cranberry infused, maple syrup drizzled cheese that could dance a waltz and remember your mother in laws birthday than I was to find a normal size block of medium cheddar cheese.

I couldn't take it. The longer it took to find the cheese the more stressed I got and I could feel the circuits in my brain fusing. I simply couldn't cope with the array of choice available to me. Rather than being liberating, the ability to choose exactly what I wanted, I found it stressful. If there is an ability to choose exactly what you want then you need to work out what exactly that is. And then you have to find it. I think I'll be sticking to the smaller supermarkets for a bit.

*the urge to write 'not just any supermarket but an M&S supermarket' was almost uncontrollable. I'm still humming the jingle.

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Totally forgot to mention earlier because I have the brain the size of a pea with holes in - the latest Best of British Mummy Bloggers Carnival is ready to go and has been for a while now... Those fancying more tales of nappies, poo and feeding times at the zoo with children should head on over to Being a Mummy for entertainment.

food, glorious food

When I was in Bosnia thinking about coming back to the UK, I spent most of my time thinking about what I was going to eat. In general the food in Bosnia is good and usually uses fresh locally sourced ingredients. The cuisine consists of predominantly stews, pies and pizza, with fantastically good ice cream making an appearance in the summer.

But, being British, I'm used to a much wider range of choice. Our history has meant that alongside our own domestic cuisine, we are able to commonly eat Italian, French, Spanish, Chinese, Indian and Thai food, with Jamaican, Ethiopian, Vietnamese and any other country you care to name also available if you look a little harder. In Bosnia, I found myself missing the variety of tastes and flavours.

Since I got back I haven't stopped eating. Combined with a couple of weddings and an inability to say no to a good glass of champagne, it doesn't feel as if I have stopped drinking either. The end result, I'm feeling very bloated and like I have been celebrating Christmas at the wrong time of year. I'll be rolling back to Bosnia many kilos heavier and in need of a diet.

A green and pleasant land

We're back. The journey wasn't as bad as I feared, there was no vomiting, I had help from the magical calm and serene granny who arrived in Budapest as scheduled and we made it back to England without any major mishaps.

Since then there has been a feasting of sights, tastes and events. I have never seen the boys eat so much. Weetabix (I'd forgotten about Weetabix!), sausages, blueberries and Innocent Smoothies all disappearing at speeds unheard of. I've been indulging in my secret vice of really good white wines which send shivers of pleasure down my spine. The local white wine we drink in Bosnia, Krstic, is fine, really it is, but it isn't good. And if you are going to drink white wine I always think it best to make it good white wine.

We took the boys to a playground this afternoon. It was pouring with rain but that didn't dampen the spirits. The boys couldn't believe their luck - a playground without nails sticking out of the equipment, trains that ran past every couple of minutes, planes in the sky. All this excitement at once. I normally have to ration it out to keep the afternoons filled up.

As Luke swung higher and higher on the toddler swing (he hasn't been in one of those for a very long time) he was so excited.

- Mummy? (as the rain dripped off the end of his nose)

- yes darling?

- my habin a lubly time

- Me too Lukey. Me too.

Spring has sprung

At last. At long last. Spring has arrived, and it has arrived with a vengeance. The weekend was beautiful, blossom on the trees, all sorts of flowers out and a general sense that the winter with its snow and mud is behind us.

We took the opportunity to see whether the lakes near Tuzla were open yet. Deliberately not taking any swimming stuff (however much the boys beg, it is too cold to go swimming just yet) we set off and joy of joys, they are. People were cooking barbecues and picnicking, playing volleyball, fishing and generally moving into summertime mode. It was lovely.

Inspired we came back, bought a barbecue and spent the evening cooking our own burgers and kebabs in the garden, enjoying the evening light and not having to put on a jacket. Throw in a few beers, the odd glass of cold white wine and some good friends and races with small children around the garden and suddenly Bosnia doesn't seem a bad place to be at all.

Even with all the above, there is one development that has really caught my imagination. I've noticed over the past couple of weeks that all the Bosnians have been very busy in their gardens. Not tending to flowers (although there are some roses and other splashes of colour appearing in front of everyone's house) but planting their vegetables. There has been a flurry of digging, weeding and planting going on in almost every garden and most the open spaces around. Well, when in Bosnia.... we now have our own allotment in the corner of the garden. More accurately we now have our own dug up bit of earth and the bottom of the garden, but I have onions, carrots, peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes to plant. I know nothing about growing green stuff, being an urban girl born and bred. But, I'm very excited about having a go, and, armed with their own trowels and permission to go get really dirty, so are the boys. You never know, if they grow the vegetables themselves they may even get inspired to eat them.

A Fat Dog

Two trips to the vets later and it looks as if we have managed to stop the Lyme Disease in its tracks. We caught it early and Jessie is now bouncing around, has yellow pee and all is on the mend.

However, the vet did stick Jess on the scales and we have discovered that she now weighs 6kg more than she did in August when we arrived. A whole 6kg (that is approaching 14 lbs for the less metric minded amongst you). This is a whole lot of weight on a dog.

We knew that she was getting fatter, and were not surprised. In the UK she would usually get 2 hours of walking every day. Here she gets just one; the walks are not as energetic and she seldom meets a dog who wants to play which is the best from of doggie exercise out there. We had been restricting her food accordingly, giving her very few scraps or little extra doggie treats.

To our great surprise she carried on getting fatter. We really restricted her food, the recommended amount for a dog was 400g a day, Jessie has been getting 260g. But still the weight was piling on.

The trip to the vet clinched it for us so we went out and truly investigated what she was up to when she was sniffing around in the garden. And the results surprised us.

Jessie has developed her own network of friends. Many of them buy food for her and toss it into the garden for her 'second breakfast', 'post lunch snack', 'post post lunch snack' etc. One woman was buying her a LOAF of bread every day - I couldn't help feeling that really her 1km per day could be a lot better spent than feeding our overfed mutt, but each to their own. Our neighbours have been throwing scraps out of their window for her, which includes a small mountain of potatoes, extra meat and the odd vegetable. Jess isn't fussy, she hoovered up the lot.

I talked to everyone I could. I explained that the vet had told us off because she was fat, fat retrievers are much more likely to get arthritis and could they please, please stop feeding our dog. She would love them just as much as she did before, honest. She might even stop barking at the neighbours window to get them to give her food.

On the whole most people agreed. One neighbour though looked pained. And asked if he could just carry on feeding her one thing. And he held up an enormous jar of boiled sweets bought just for her.

No wonder she is on the podgy side. The diet is on.

A British Ex-pat DISASTER

A great catastrophe has occurred, that only a British ex-pat can truly understand. It is making me wonder if we should go home. Life as I know it can not really continue. It has been an oversight of such catastrophic proportions that I can't believe I didn't see it coming. I'm in deep mourning and feeling pretty jittery.

We have run out of Marmite.

(note to the non-British readers of the blog who don't have a clue what marmite is: it is a black tar like substance which we spread, thinly, on toast. No one outside of the UK can understand the obsession with it and most non-Brits think it is utterly disgusting. It does look pretty foul and doesn't really smell that great either. We adore it.)

In Praise of Smokis

I've just finished reading Rosie Whitehead's book Travels with my Frontline Family about bringing up a young family in the Balkans during the early 1990s whilst her husband covered the various wars in the region at that time. I have to say that I enjoyed it very much, and not just because I can read it and go That is so true! I found that too!

Obviously there are some enormous differences between our experiences. The region is not in major conflict. My husband is not in danger every day unless you count the walk to the office along icy roads. The early nineties did not have the Internet with email, access to Radio 4 and the cricket commentary or Amazon to deliver to your doorstep. It is now pretty much 20 years since communism fell in the region, and although things are still not quite like a capitalist market, they have moved on somewhat from their communism heritage.

But, of all the deep and profound things that she discussed in her book the one thing that really stood out for me was that her family was also obsessed with Smoki Flips. They are a sort of peanutty Wotsit type crisp and they are good in that really really good sort of way. Balkan children have grown up on them for generations and the Bosnians can't believe that we don't have them in England. Come to that, neither can I.

Taking the English out of England

Yesterday was a truely vile day - the type of day that you expect in England in February. Low low cloud. Drizzle that goes on and on and on. Only sounds being the sounds of cars driving through puddles. No light. Just dank, grey, depressing.

Being Brits we felt right at home and were the only ones to be seen out walking, wellies, coats and rain hats firmly on, wet dog at our side.

Back home we couldn't resist the traditional Sunday lunch. A full on roast beef, roast potatoes, yorkshire pud affair. All that was missing was Ski Sunday or Rugby Special on BBC2, and we'd have had a proper British Sunday.

money money money

As Bosnia is a cash based economy, and you must pay all bills, rent and pretty much everything by cash, the beginning of each month is usually spent taking large amounts of money out of the ATMs. It does, however, focus the mind on what we are spending our money on and allows us an easy comparison for costs in the UK and costs in Bosnia.

Life in Bosnia is cheap, but not as cheap as you might think. Unsurprisingly rent is much cheaper than in the UK. Our 3 bed terraced house in the UK is let for £1250 a month. Here we have a house with sitting room, playroom, kitchen, 2 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms and garden all for 900KM a month (about £400). This is not particularly cheap for Bosnia, some friends think that we could have had a better deal, but it isn't ridiculous silly internationals rates either. Telephone bills are much reduced now we have Skype which allows us to call the UK for 1p a minute. Utilities are about the same as in the UK, but you can't pay over the Internet so we wait for all the bills to come in before making a trip to the bank to pay the lot in cash all at once, crying as we count out each individual note. Despite stats citing the Bosnian average wage to be something in the region of 700KM (£325)per month, I couldn't find a reliable cleaner for less than 200KM (£80) a month for 6 hours a week, but she does do all our ironing, a novel experience for most of our clothes.

Day to day living is also not as cheap as you might think. Anything produced locally is good value, but anything that is imported costs about the same as it does in the UK, the high import duties taking their toll. Fresh food is definitely cheaper; with local shops on every corner selling the best and freshest produce, we tend to buy what we need when we need it, which also means much less waste.

The biggest difference is nursery fees. I have just paid the fees for the boys this morning, the monthly cost for one for up to 5 hours every day is 85KM (£40). At my old nursery that would have paid for one day. Admittedly their old nursery had a staff to child ratio of 2:8 as opposed to 2:20 which may have added to their costs.

Then there are the costs that we just didn't have in the UK. We now have a monthly budget for Jessie's vets bills which were covered by pet insurance before. We also need to have a comprehensive health cover plan which wasn't necessary in the UK (God bless the NHS). Storage costs for the stuff we left behind are astronomical. No, overall, I think that if cutting living costs was a primary motivator for our move we would have been disappointed.