A Meal to Remember
November. The last month of the autumn season welcoming the winter weather. This is the time when most people start feeling the Christmas spirit. But not me. Not yet anyway. Ever since I was a kid, we would be in my village during the first weekend of November when the whole family gathered together for my village festival. I loved going to that celebration since I had lots of fun with my cousins. Our parents always gave us money for cotton candy, caramel popcorn, and toys that were sold in the booths in the center of the village.
I was about six years old. It was the first time we had snow in the village during the festival. Me, my parents, my grandma (my mom’s mom) and my baby sister had just arrived at the village a day before the festival started so that we could prepare for our guests. I entered my grandma’s house (my dad’s mom) and I immediately felt it — the scent of the festival — my grandma’s baked cabbage. This is a traditional winter Bulgarian meal. It takes days to prepare it and my grandma had started earlier so it was ready for the family dinner the next day. There is always meat in it, but it depends on people’s preferences. My grandma always cooked it with turkey. Like most people who live in a village, my grandma had farm animals. She had hens and cocks, goats and of course turkeys. That is why I got used to eating baked cabbage with turkey.
After I said hi to my grandma and my uncle, I decided to go check how my friend was doing. Two years before that, my grandma’s goat Rumi gave birth to the sweetest kid ever. It was born during the winter, so my grandma made a home for it out of a cartoon box and placed it in the summer house at the backyard to keep the kid warm. When the kid was first born, I fed it with milk out of a baby bottle. I fell in love with it so much that I wanted to take it home in Varna and take care of it on the balcony. Of course, my parents didn’t allow this, so one of the reasons why I loved going to my village was to see my kid friend whose name I cannot recall. Unfortunately, I didn’t meet my friend. My uncle and my grandma told me the little goat had a cold because of the weather, and they brought it to a vet to cure it. I was disappointed, but I hoped it would get better and I would see it the next time I was in the village.
The day of the festival came. All of my relatives arrived and I couldn’t wait to go to the toy booths with my cousins. I got up early, made my contribution to the preparation of the festivities, and went to have fun with my relatives. We spent the whole day wandering around the village. We ate cotton candy, we bought toys that we didn’t really like but we had to buy something, so we took the first things that caught our eyes. When we got bored with the toys, we decided to build a snowman. We finished building it in the afternoon when the sun was about to set. Our parents came to pick us up because it was time for my grandma’s amazing dinner.
We came back to the house and decided to help our parents set up the table. My cousins and I were exhausted from playing all day but the smell of baked cabbage and turkey around the house lured us in very fast. I went into the kitchen to take silverware and napkins and I saw a pan with meat in it, but I didn’t pay much attention to it and just took whatever I needed and left. When my grandma cooks chicken, she always leaves parts of it like legs, head, liver, gizzard and so on for soup.
I went back to the kitchen but this time to take the plates. They were very close to that pan and my eyes skimmed through it really fast. Then I saw something weird. I had seen chicken heads and I had seen turkey heads. I knew the latter is bigger than the first, but the head in the pan was way too big to be a turkey’s head. And it had teeth. It was weird. If I was younger, I might have thought it was a dinosaur’s head, but I was six. I was a big girl. I turned around and saw my grandmas finishing up the salads. “Grandmas what is this?” I asked pointing at the head. “It’s a head,” responded one of my grandmas. “I see that but what head?” I asked still confused why they didn’t take me seriously. “It’s a turkey head. Remember?” responded the other grandma. ”We always cook a turkey with cabbage for the festival.” But I didn’t buy it. I might have been six years old, but I wasn’t stupid. My grandma cooks a turkey with cabbage for Christmas as well and for my birthday which is also in the winter. I had seen a turkey head. It is small, a little bit bigger than the chicken’s one, it has a beak and NO TEETH. “But grandma’s,” I started again, “turkeys don’t have teeth.” At that moment everyone started laughing. My grandmas went to the dining room and told everyone about our conversation. Everyone started laughing and I was clueless why they were doing that. My father always sees me as his little girl but at that time he told my mom: “She is a grown up. Let’s tell her.” My mom started fighting with my dad because she didn’t want to tell me whatever they were hiding from me.
They cooked my friend. I started crying.
Eventually, my parents took me to the bedroom and started telling me that the meat with the best quality was the goat meat. I had no idea why they were talking about this. However, I felt really bad for the goats. I remembered my kid friend who had a cold and was at the vet. And because I was a smart kid, I realized what they were trying to tell me. They cooked my friend. I started crying. I couldn’t believe that they lied to me. And that they cooked my friend. My parents tried to calm me down, but I was so mad at them that I left the room and then the house. I went to the yard and I saw my grandma’s cat Tommy. I started petting him, but I couldn’t stop crying. “Are they going to cook you too?” I asked him knowing that I wouldn’t get an answer. He just laid on the ground carefree, purring and enjoying me paying attention to him. “C’mon, Kamy!” I heard my grandma behind me. She probably wanted to check if I was mad at her as well. “Tommy is our friend. I would never cook him.” I started crying louder. “The goat was my friend as well, but you cooked it, didn’t you?” I yelled at my grandma and went back into the house.
I don’t remember all of the details around this, but I remember my goat. It was so cute when it was born. I didn’t have a sister back then and I really wanted one, so the goat came into my life and fulfilled my wish. I felt as if it was sent from heaven. I am 21 years old now. I realize that goat meat is supposedly one of the most delicious meat. But I couldn’t say from my own experience because I have never tried it.
Kameliya Stefanova is a 21-year old student from the American University in Bulgaria majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication. She chose to share this story since it altered her life and her food habits.
