{"id":12,"date":"2018-01-23T18:51:11","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T18:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atthesofra.wordpress.com\/?p=3"},"modified":"2018-01-23T18:51:11","modified_gmt":"2018-01-23T18:51:11","slug":"the-journey-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atthesofra.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/23\/the-journey-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Sofra!"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>\u0414\u043e\u0431\u0440\u0435 \u0434\u043e\u0448\u043b\u0438! (<em>Welcome!<\/em>)<\/h2>\n<p>Welcome to the first post of my new blog, <em>At the Sofra (<\/em>At the Table). My goal with this blog is to give you a Bulgarian recipe or two each week with instructions on how to make it, along with a bit of Bulgarian culture and language.<br \/>\nI\u2019ve called the blog \u201cAt the Sofra\u201d for a few reasons. I put the question of a blog name to my Facebook friends for help. There were a lot of great suggestions, and a couple of people suggested <em>\u041d\u0430 \u0421\u043e\u0444\u0440\u0430\u0442\u0430<\/em> (\u2018At the Table\u2019). I liked that for a few reasons. First, I didn\u2019t want my own name in the title (e.g., Traci\u2019s Bulgarian Kitchen), because the recipes I plan to present won\u2019t come just from my kitchen, but also from the kitchens of Bulgarian friends and neighbors. Second, a <em>sofra<\/em> is a table, but a specific kind of table\u2014a low, round table, as shown in the photo at the top of the blog. It\u2019s often a large tray that can be moved after the meal, perfect for a room where people might eat and sleep. The word is one of hundreds of Turkish words that entered Bulgarian during five centuries of Ottoman rule, and this period is reflected in the cuisine as well. Bulgarians, of course, no longer eat on this sort of table, and now the word refers to a table with a meal on it, bringing to mind Bulgarian warmth, hospitality, and traditional dishes that often share ingredients and flavors with neighboring cuisines, but with a specifically Bulgarian interpretation. A goal of my blog is to bring you to the\u00a0<em>sofra<\/em> too.<br \/>\nI considered leaving the whole title in Bulgarian\u2014<em>Na Sofrata<\/em>\u2014but changed my mind when a couple of Americans told me it made them think of <em>Nosferatu<\/em>, the 1922 German Dracula film (which couldn\u2019t use the name <em>Dracula <\/em>for legal reasons). Maybe there was something still fitting in this name since Stoker\u2019s Dracula <em>did<\/em> sail to England from the port of Varna, but I introduced some English into the title to avoid confusion (on more than one level). And this, too, is reflective of the blog itself\u2014I\u2019ll write in English, but I\u2019ll spice it up with plenty of Bulgarian.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s enough of an introduction. I hope you enjoy the first recipe, coming up!<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-27\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/atthesofra.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/banitsa_slice.jpg?resize=846%2C729&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"banitsa_slice\" width=\"846\" height=\"729\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/atthesofra.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/banitsa_slice.jpg?w=846&amp;ssl=1 846w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/atthesofra.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/banitsa_slice.jpg?resize=300%2C259&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/atthesofra.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/banitsa_slice.jpg?resize=768%2C662&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 846px) 100vw, 846px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u0414\u043e\u0431\u0440\u0435 \u0434\u043e\u0448\u043b\u0438! (Welcome!) Welcome to the first post of my new blog, At the Sofra (At the Table). My goal with this blog is to give you a Bulgarian recipe or two each week with instructions on how to make it, along with a bit of Bulgarian culture and language. I\u2019ve called the blog \u201cAt&#8230; <\/p>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/atthesofra.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/23\/the-journey-begins\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atthesofra.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atthesofra.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atthesofra.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atthesofra.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atthesofra.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atthesofra.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atthesofra.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atthesofra.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atthesofra.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}