If the aisles of grocery stores like Billa or Hit can tell us anything about Bulgarian's preference for cooking oil they surely tell us this: sunflower oil, sunflower oil, sunflower oil.

Interestingly, I don't think that I'd ever cooked with sunflower oil before moving to Bulgaria. Canola oil, peanut oil and olive oil, of course, I'd cooked with these. But sunflower oil was new to me.

Looking at sunflower oil it reminded me of canola in color and smell. Even before I'd looked up sunflower oil on the internet, I felt pretty confident that I could sub sunflower oil into any dishes that I would normally use canola oil for and be a happy camper. Then I looked it up just to double check. Yep, these two oils are similar in their uses, mild flavor and smoking point.

In other words, you can bake things like muffins and quick bread with sunflower oil. You can whip a dressing with this oil easy-peasy.