Jane Mulberry

Kate Downham wrote: I have succeeded in making a gluten free bread that is egg-free and actually tastes good - I gave some to celiac friends and they loved it, and even my husband who would not normally try gluten free bread thinks it actually tastes good! I have a couple of other ideas for GF breads that I might try too.

Fab! I can eat gluten with no problem, but I'd buy the book for that recipe alone!

I would love to see some gluten free recipes if it's at all possible. Hubby is gluten, egg, and soy intolerant and finding sourdough recipes that he can eat is a bit of a challenge. So many gluten free breads use eggs.

We've ordered from them many times, and have had mixed experiences, mostly to do with books being in far worse condition than stated, and currently a delivery delay. The expected delivery date keeps being pushed back on a book hubby ordered ten days ago -- today he received an email saying it would be yet another week, for a book that had a three day expected delivery time!

Because their book grading seems inaccurate, I'd suggest only paying the price you'd be willing to pay for an acceptable copy, even if the book is listed as very good. That way you can only be pleasantly surprised if it really IS in the stated condition! Too many times we've paid them more than we could have bought elsewhere because we wanted a copy in better condition, only to receive battered books or ex-library books.

But they do have a huge range of books, and the prices are generally good too.

Fab progress, Rebekah!

Absolutely don't pay that kind of money to a "self-publishing school"! I've been successfully publishing my own books for over ten years, made enough money from the books to buy our retirement home and renovate it, and spent next to nothing learning how to do it. There's so much information on how to do this available at no cost, and the process is much simpler now than it used to be with lots more options. It's very possible to create and publish a beautiful book with minimal spend.

1. Write the book;
2. Type it up using proper formatting- this is a good guide: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200645680  Yes, it's Amazon, but the basic formatting works the same for ebooks no matter where you publish and good formatting in the manuscript right from the start will make it way easier to format your paperback. There's also plenty of other good information about self-publishing ebooks and paperbacks on their Kindle Direct Publishing site. Draft2Digital is another useful site  with good info -- it's one a lot of authors use to publish ebooks if they don't want to be exclusive to Amazon. The instructions given are usually for Word, but if you don't have access to Word, Google Docs or one of the other free word processors will work fine and cost you nothing;
3. Run a spelling and grammar check;
4. Get people you trust to read it, ideally people who aren't close friends or family members but who do read this sort of book. You need people honest enough to point out typos, what parts of the book worked well for them, what maybe didn't work so well;
5.  Consider what changes you might want to make based on the feedback. Always keep backup copies of the previous versions in case you change your mind!
6. Get the book edited. This can be a big expense, but I know plenty of authors who haven't paid for editing, who swap edits with author friends;
7. Think about where you want to publish and sell the book. Ebooks are a big market, so don't ignore that! Read up on the different options for where to publish ebooks, paperbacks, and even audiobooks;
8. Cover design - people will say you can't do your own, and for some people with absolutely zero design sense that's true. But most people do have some feeling for design and can do a decent job of a cover. An important issue is to be sure to only use fonts and images that can be used commercially;
9. Think about how you want to communicate with your readers - social media, newsletter, website? None of these need to cost a lot of money. You can start setting this up before you publish the book;
10. Go ahead and publish the book on your chosen sites following their guidelines.

Pray a lot and enjoy the adventure!

Tony, how did this end up working out on your final project? I'm thinking of using something similar for infill in an outdoor kitchen build.

Our UK town has a decent train service to London, it takes less than an hour to get to the city with trains every thirty minutes 5.30am to midnight, but nothing overnight. It's about a fifteen minute walk to the train station. The main problem there is there's no step-free access - it's not easy for anyone mobility impaired or a parent with a baby in a pushchair to access. The bus service is a twenty minute walk away and the key issue there is that it's trying to be both an in-town and a between-town service, which means a trip to the main regional town that would be less than thirty minutes by car takes ninety by bus as it wends a circuitous route through back streets of our town, the next small town, and all the villages en route, plus diversions to villages that are nowhere near en route. It's also expensive. There's allegedly a taxi service, but it's almost impossible to get a taxi to come out, and there are never any at the taxi rank at the train station, either. There are a few decent private hire car services which need to be booked well in advance and are useful for trips to the airport or hospital if we're feeling extravagant or just can't face travelling by public transport. Thirty minutes to the airport by car, but by public transport the trip takes at least two and a half hours and requires a walk, a train, a walk, and then a different all-round-the-houses 90 minutes bus ride!  The trip to the "local" hospital is the same. We need to go tomorrow to have lab draws, as despite living in a town of 20,000 people, it's not currently possible to have a routine blood sample taken at the GP surgery, and will need to leave the house at 11 am to be sure of getting to the hospital by our 1.30pm appointment! We do have a car, but I'm no longer able to drive due to a health problem that affects my speed and distance perception. Hubby has become a nervous driver who stresses out about driving in our own town and can't cope with driving anywhere else now. So we're quite reliant on public transport to get us anywhere we can't walk to.

Our tiny Bulgarian village is blessed with a mini-bus service three times a day Monday to Friday, it's less than twenty minutes to get to the nearest town, which has almost everything we need, and from there we can take frequent buses to the regional city and on to the big city. We've figured out the timetable for the village buses at last at missing them a few times! The route on Tuesday and Thursday is different to the other days, and the mid-afternoon bus leaves 20 minutes earlier than the scheduled time those days because it turns around at our village rather than continuing on to the next village out! There's no official taxi service, and my Bulgarian isn't good enough yet to phone for one to come out from town. But asking in the village cafe will usually result in someone willing to drive to town for a reasonable price. Thinking about aging in place once we move there, we chose a house that's close to the village centre, only a couple of minutes walk to the bus stop, the village shop, and the cafe. Provided the bus service continues, it will be easier to manage there without a car than it is in the UK!

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:It bothers me that it was grandfathered in without a study. I couldn't hurt to go back and review how it came to be used in so many products, especially that we have so many more allergies and respiratory / inflammation problems in the gut than we used to.
I guess it would be interesting to figure out how much of this Aspergilla Niger is left in the Manufactured Citric Acid.

That study Pete linked to is interesting and concerning reading! As well as the bulk citric acid for cleaning, I've used food-grade citric acid instead of lemon juice when canning. I will need to look carefully at how it's sourced and how pure it is.

Kayleigh Uden wrote:
I need to visit the kmetsvo, or even just try and chat to our village mayor about our plans. It is our intention to build on the same footprint as the old house we have. Whenever I have asked for information online, there have always been mixed answers and opinions so I definitely think I need to get some courage (and my Bulgarian translate app) and visit them in person.

You have an excellent channel, I've watched some of the videos in the past!

Yes, no matter what the question, in Bulgaria there will be multiple answers.

On building, one person says as long as the new building doesn't go over the original footprint or if you keep the original house and build a secondary dwelling on the property, there's no problem. Others say no, even replacing roof beams on the existing house needs a permit!  On the D visa to get residency, the official line is strict rules to qualify and masses of paperwork even to renew an existing residency, yet I still hear of post-Brexit Brits rocking up to their local immigration office with nothing more than their UK passport and the notary deeds and being given residency.

There's also the risk of being told locally, "Don't worry, do what you want with your building" and then someone else coming along and saying it has to be demolished. Or for us with residency, selling up in the UK and moving when someone bent the rules slightly and gave us what we thought was legal documentation without meeting all the requirements, then getting refused renewal and deported a year later.

The problem is, officially if you do apply for a building permit, they have to follow the EU line. I imagine cob or adobe being traditional could be okay.  Straw bale shouldn't be too much of a problem. There are definitely a few strawbale buildings in Bulgaria, though possibly not officially permitted but secondary dwellings on the property. Earthship might be pushing boundaries. I wonder if any of the members here in other EU countries have experience with Earthship style building. Or is there an EU alternative building group you could ask?  There's one on Facebook, but I don't think there are many Bulgarian members. Still, if you can find a precedent of approval being granted somewhere else in the EU, it would help your case a lot.  This book might be a bit out of date as it's 10 years old now, but it could be useful -- or contacting those involved might get you some useful guidance: https://www.lowcarbon.co.uk/publications/earthships-in-europe  None in Bg, but if they were approved under EU building regs it should help show precedents.

It's the best thing I've found for removing limescale in the flush toilet.

Hi Kayleigh! I don't know much about building permits, as we bought a property with an old house already on it. Though this isn't official, I've been told that one can often get away with building something else low-key on the land if there's a house already on the cadastral map for the property,

As you may have already found out, it seems in Bulgaria there are two sets of rules, the official what-the-EU-says rules and the local rules that actually get enforced. Have you had an informal chat with someone at the kmetsvo to find out what might be okay, even if it's not quite a match with the EU rules?  Our village seems very relaxed about these things!

We're counting down the days till I qualify for my D visa and we can move!