Festive fare for hard times? Bottle it

ORESHAK, Bulgaria (Reuters) - In a dimly lit cellar festooned with cobwebs, Sando and Lilyana keep enough home-made food provisions to survive whatever may befall their mountain village, be it recession or cold.

The 7.6 million people of the Balkan country, where food bills consume 40 percent of wages, produced some 208 million jars of various provisions or an average of 100 jars per household in 2008, data by independent pollster Mediana shows.

"Nothing compares to home-made food," said Lilyana Trencheva, 60, opening a bottle of tomato juice and a jar of gherkins for reporters to sample.

"We only buy cheese, oil, sugar, bread and Coca Cola from the shop," said her husband Sando, 60, cracking open a dusty bottle of home-made plum rakia brandy.

Winter provisioning -- known in Bulgarian as "zimnina," derived from the word for winter "zima" -- is a centuries-old tradition entwining necessity, family bonding and a national passion that reigns over culinary tastes.

The practice helped people in eastern Europe survive decades of communist austerity, years of post-communist economic crises and hyperinflation in the 1990s.

For many Bulgarians, whose average monthly wages of 300 euros ($430) and pensions of 80 euros are the lowest in the European Union, it remains a lifeline particularly as recession puts an end to 12 years of growth.

"When you slaughter two pigs, stuff a barrel with pickled cabbage, make compotes, rakia and wine, you do survive," said Georgi Georgiev, 52, who sells vegetables at Sofia''s biggest street market.

ECONOMY OF THE JAR

Winter provisioning had its peak under communism, when food shortages and shopping queues were common. Bulgarians invented a special electric pepper roaster, widely used on city balconies as families teamed up to stew huge quantities of a popular pepper-tomato spread, called "lyutenitsa," on open fires.

"Preparing provisions for the winter was of key importance for the socialist economy," said Nikolai Vukov of the Institute of Folklore at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.