Category: Food

The Far East – 23 August 2021

Posted on by Zogman

The weather seemed to be set fair so we drove out into it.

Pointed the Blue Micra in the general direction of Edinburgh and stopped driving at Cramond which was our destination for the day. The day started under a disappointing milky white sky, but as we travelled east the clouds lifted and thinned so that by the time we were parking at Cramond there was definite form to the clouds which were breaking to allow the sun through. We went for a walk.

We walked along the esplanade, again in the general direction of Edinburgh. There wasn’t much choice here, with the Forth estuary to the north, the way we’d come to the south and the River Almond cutting off our walk to the west. If we’d been there earlier we could have walked over the causeway to Cramond Island, but it looked as if the tide was on the turn, so that would have been a dangerous and wet direction to take. Maybe another day.

On the walk we found a community wildflower garden. It was carefully cordoned off and two ladies were carrying metre square grids to help them in taking serious measurements or counts of something scientific. We just liked the colour combinations of the red poppies, blue cornflower and something like a big daisy, but bright yellow. They almost made PoD, but as it happened they only played a supporting role. PoD went to a Small Copper butterfly on a fading cone flower.

I’d hoped we’d get a coffee in the wee café, but Scamp had remembered that it’s only open at weekends, so we walked on. We passed my favourite trees. I don’t know what they are. I must ask someone who knows, but they look so elegant. Tall straight trunks with little bunches of leaves at the top looking like a bad haircut. That’s when Scamp noticed someone hadn’t poop scooped and she’d walked through it. For once I played the good Samaritan and offered to take her shoe down to the sea and wash it clean. Of course, in the process I managed to confirm that the tide was indeed coming in. In to my trainers, that is! That was far enough we decided and walked back to the ice cream van that’s always parked at the roundabout that marks the west end of the esplanade. Two cones by the sea. What’s not to like?

We walked up the path beside the river as far as the falls at the old ruined mill. Again I’d been hoping that a wee cafe that used to be there would be open, but it was under reconstruction, so no coffee today. There’s a great old tree next to the path. It sits on a steep slope and over the years the rain washing down that slope has removed most of the soil from its roots and they are now exposed to the air and covered in colourful fungi. Unfortunately it now has a white “X” painted on its trunk, so it may not have much longer to be climbed on by decades of children.

Back home I made a sort of salmon and pea tagliatelle which was less than successful. Maybe it’s worth another try.

Tomorrow looks like another dry day. Scamp has a hair appointment in the morning, but the afternoon might be free.

Dancing and a walk in the rain – 21 August 2021

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Off on our usual Saturday run to Johnstone. Then a walk in the rain at home.

The drive to Johnstone, or to be more exact, Bridge of Weir was fairly uneventful. Just a steady stream of west bound traffic and a steady drizzle of rain that occasionally got heavier and then threatened to dry up before changing its mind again and getting heavier. It was just constant and after a while I got so I didn’t really notice it.

Today’s class started with the Tina Tango which I’m rapidly coming to grips with. Not so, the Foxtrot which was next. It sort of reminded me of the Hedgehog’s song by Incredible String Band “You know all the words and you’ve sung all the notes, but you’ve never quite learned the song”. We knew all the figures and the steps, but we never quite fitted them together to flow as they should. Jane helped a lot smoothing the transitions between figures, but it still wasn’t right. Part of the problem is learning all the figures for the dance and practising it in the living room. The room is really too small to dance the whole piece in a straight line. We have to dance three or four figures, then turn round and dance the next three or four on the way back.
After the Foxtrot we danced the Sweetheart Cha Cha which is my nemesis. I’m going to get a tee shirt with “I HATE CHA CHA” printed on it. I just don’t seem to be able to understand the reason why you MUST start on beat 2. It makes no sense. The less said about the Sweetheart, the better.
Next was what they called The Zoom Waltz, ie the waltz we learned in the zoom class. It took me a while to work out what it was, but after that light bulb moment, it started to become clear again and we managed a couple of circuits of the floor with the minimal amount of fuss and stopping.
We finished with the Mayfair Quickstep which is a fairly easy dance that reminds me of the Military Two Step we learned at school.
After all that, our brains were full and we needed to lie down in a darkened room. Unfortunately we had to drive home first. The road was even busier than last week and the drive home took over an hour.

After lunch Scamp suggested we go for a walk … in the rain, because the rain hadn’t really gone off since we left the house in the morning and showed no signs of going off now. We dressed for the weather and walked down to Broadwood Loch, round the loch and then round past the exercise machines. I took the Sony 6000 and one lens in my pocket and got a few photos as we walked round. Three photos made the cut for PoD and the final decision was in favour of the dandelion in the rain, although I liked a mono shot of some grass stems and an old fence we passed. You can view it better on Flickr.

Tonight we discussed today’s progress at ballroom class and finally settled on Vegetable Lasagne by Charlie Bingham followed by a cheapo Sticky Toffee Pudding from Aldi. The lasagne was excellent. The pudding was too, but it’s making its presence felt now and doesn’t seem so good second time around if you get my meaning.

Tomorrow we have no real plans, although the weather fairies say the weather is to be better, or at least less rain. We may go out somewhere.

Curry – 20 August 2021

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Today we were travelling to Hamilton for a curry

Traffic was horrendous on the M74 because of roadworks, but a short diversion took away some of the pain.

As soon as we reached the M74, heading south, we knew it was going to be a long haul. Traffic was crawling nose to tail and the sign said the roadworks were five miles away. Thankfully most folk were avoiding the inside lane because it only led to services. We took that road on purpose, not because we were heading for the services, but because we could drive through them, then out the other side and as a result, skip a good twenty minutes of painful first gear 10mph max driving. We turned off and I took the wrong turning at Bothwell, but I found a way through it to Hamilton after I remembered part of the scenery from when I used to work in Cambuslang over 50 years ago!

We were heading for the Bombay Cottage restaurant and got parked outside without a problem. Scamp had a Cauliflower Shimla Bhaji and I had Chicken Rogan Josh. We also shared an enormous Naan. The food was just as we remembered it and almost worth the drive through that terrible traffic. There’s not much worth going to Hamilton, except for a curry at Bombay Cottage, so we just drove home, thankfully through much lighter traffic than that on the southbound carriageway. We stopped at the shops on the way home for the usual essentials: Milk and a bottle of gin, plus a Sticky Toffee Pudding which might be for tomorrows dessert.

Since I hadn’t had a chance to take any photos today I went for a walk in St Mo’s later in the afternoon. The rain was still holding off, but it was really dull. Nothing I took looked worthwhile in the viewfinder and that’s how it proved when I saw it on the computer screen. The rain had started when I was walking home, so I gave it enough time to dry up and went to see if there was anything worth a click of the shutter in the garden when it was dry. That’s where today’s PoD came from. It’s a fern that’s growing from the brickwork of the back step. I liked the curve of the leaf and the way the individual leaflets changed size as they neared the tip. It’s almost like a fractal. In fact there is a fractal called a Barnsley fern! You live and learn!

No plans for tomorrow apart from the obvious dance class.

An afternoon in the country – 17 August 2021

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The morning was work. The afternoon was photography.

Scamp was off to have coffee with Isobel in the morning and I was left to my own devices. First thing to do was to investigate the leaking shower cabinet. It turned out to be a leak in two corners. One tiny little drip and one a bit bigger. Both were being caused by mould growth in the sealant between the glass and the ceramic base of the shower. Half an hour of poking and prodding with a wee round pointed device whose original purpose was to score cardboard teased most of the gunge out and allowed me to start to dry the offending parts. Left them to dry out properly by themselves and started the second, and bigger, task.

The top of the chest of drawers in my room has not seen the light of day for about a year. Today I was set to remedy that. I had a big IKEA bag ready to hold the stuff that was going to the skips, that meant most of it. Some things I didn’t really want to chuck away, but I had to ask myself if I was ever likely to use it again and if I wasn’t, was I emotionally attached to it. If the answer to either of those questions was YES, then it got to stay for six months. If the answer to both question NO, then it was going to the skip, via the IKEA bag. Some things even got he heave after failing only one test. Sometimes you have to be ruthless. As the bag got fuller and fuller, the top of the chest of drawers magically appeared.

After Scamp came back and we had lunch, I took all the stuff in the car to the skips. Heavens, Jamie, you’re not going to believe this, but I even parted with a camera. A working camera! I won’t list all that went to landfill, but there was a a lot. With the boot of the car empty I could go to B&Q to get a tube of sealant for the shower, and have somewhere to put it. Next stop was Screwfix for a Hive plug socket. The number of times I’ve left the house and driven to the bottom of the road wondering if I’ve left the phone charger or some other piece of dodgy equipment switched on. Now I can check on my phone if it’s on and with a touch of the screen, turn it off. Hopefully it will be worth the money in peace of mind. Two things in the boot. Time for some photo opportunities.

Drove up to Fannyside Moor and found an old fencepost strapped to its new replacement with its great collection of mosses and lichen. It looked like a little garden, although one comment on Flickr likened it to a “micro rainforest”. I understand what he meant. It got PoD. Found a little wee ladybird with sixteen spots. Dark red wing covers and white spots. It’s a Cream-spot Ladybird (Calvia quattuordecimguttata) and it’s not very rare.

Back home, Scamp made Sea Bass with asparagus and home grown Potatoes. Absolutely brilliant. Later we had a quick practise of the final parts of the Foxtrot we’ve been learning. I say ’final’, but it’s likely the teachers will add another two or three little bits to the end of the routine.

No plans for tomorrow, although a trip out for ‘the messages’ is not out of the question.

Out early for a dance or five – 14 August 2021

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The new normal for a Saturday. Up and out by 10.15.

Drove to Johnstone, flying solo. I did have a radio operator, but didn’t have the backup of sat nav. You have to fly solo some time. You can’t always be relying on instruments to guide you, besides it was a fairly easy route to follow.

Started with a couple of sequence dances and finished with a line dance! Oh No! I’ll be buying a Stetson hat and a pair of cowboy boots soon! In between there were more additions to the Foxtrot to contend with and more detail in the Sweetheart Cha Cha. We managed it, but with a bit of difficulty for both of us.

Came home and had lunch then we lifted our second, and last “tattie bag” and got a fair amount to tatties for tomorrow’s dinner and a few more days besides. Then Scamp wanted to do some pruning and I went to the butchers to get sausages for tomorrow’s breakfast, stew for a steak pie and free range eggs. On the way home I stopped at St Mo’s and nabbed a little dragonfly, a Common Darter, for today’s PoD. Still shooting with the new A6000 which is so much lighter than the E7m2. Image quality is a bit lower than its big brother, but not so much that it is getting sent back. The kit lens is one of Sony’s failures, but I’ve enough lenses to go round without having to use that bit of plastic. It’s a keeper.

Dinner was from Golden Bowl and was our usual selection: Chicken Chop Suey for Scamp and Special Chow Mein for me. Both up to the usual high standard. Watched one of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise which was just mindless entertainment, no thinking required.

Tomorrow we may go for a drive somewhere scenic if the weather is as good as today.

Going to the dancing – 7 August 2021

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At 10.45am!

Ballroom dancing class in Johnstone, the posh end of Paisley. The class started with a fairly relaxed Tina Tango just to get us going, then we segued into the Foxtrot which we made a decent enough job of, we thought. We got round the floor without too many mistakes and increased our confidence in dancing around people. I picked up a couple of tips from Stewart about posture and its benefits and also how to better direct my partner by using my hand on her shoulder blade. Jane ironed out a flaw in Scamp’s Heel Turn that had been bothering her. Finished off with a Rumba One.

Next was the Sweetheart Cha Cha, the one we’ve been trying to get to grips with this week. It was much better than last week’s disaster. We’ve managed the first part of it (the Front End). The Back End is still a mystery to me, but Scamp will sort it out. We also filmed some of the demos the teachers did and we can work with them once we slow them down and cut them into manageable chunks.

We had a bit of rain going to the class and a heavier bit coming home. The road was really busy coming home. We just dumped our stuff and headed off again, this time to Stirling to go to Waitrose. We got a fair amount of things. Mainly things you can’t get in Tesco or Morrisons. I got a couple of lamb chops that are earmarked for dinner tomorrow and Scamp got some fish, also probably for tomorrow. Didn’t go in to Stirling proper, just came home because it looked as if the town was busy.

Later in the afternoon I went for a walk in St Mo’s, in the rain. PoD came from there. Dandelion clocks are a bit of a cliché, but if they get wet they hold little beads of rainwater and become a bit bedraggled too which makes them more interesting, I think. There wasn’t much else that came from the walk.

Dinner tonight was a Charlie Bigham Thai Green Curry which was plenty hot and really good. Expensive, but worth it, because it is Saturday and neither of us wanted to cook.

I think I might have pulled a muscle in my arm. I didn’t get much sleep last night and I’ve been dosing myself up with paracetamol all day. I’ve also used some Ralgex tonight. I don’t think it does much good. I’m pretty sure the massaging it in does more to encourage blood flow, but it’s worth trying.

We had some thunder again today and a few heavy rain showers. More of the same predicted for tomorrow, so I doubt if we’ll be going far. Maybe a bit of dance practise.

Recording Studio – 4 August 2021

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Scamp did the clever music stuff, I was just the techy.

First there were messages to do, but I wasn’t needed for that, so I kept a low profile and allowed Scamp to do the donkey work. Just to show that I wasn’t shirking the work entirely, I removed the fairy lights from the back fence. I could just have cut the wires and ripped them all down, but I wanted to find out what was causing them to fail. I think it might be bird damage. The wee birds trot happily along the fence looking for beasties to eat. I think one or more of them have pecked through the wire. I was just finishing when Scamp appeared with the shopping.

Just before lunch we started to look at setting up the recording studio. Scamp had been asked if she could play a piece of music on her piano and put it onto CD, so Veronica could play the CD and sing to it at her daughter’s wedding. We could do this between us, we’ve done it before, but first we’d to work out how we managed it the last time. We started off with Scamp’s Windows laptop. I got Audacity, an excellent free music editing app, downloaded and running. As far as I could remember the procedure was to get a line out from the piano, plug it in to the headphone socket of the laptop and fool the laptop into using it as an input. Windows didn’t like that and refused to work with us. I then tried my new Apple laptop, with the same lack of success. We adjourned for lunch and a think.

I tried doing the same thing with my old Apple laptop and got a bit further, but still no real success. Finally, after reading a couple of explanations on the Net I worked out how it was done, on a Mac at least. We managed to get the track recorded from the piano and into the computer, but there is a dodgy key on the piano which plays a rough note, that’s the only way I can describe it. It just sounds rough. I went for a walk! I got PoD which is a bunch of Forget Me Nots in a lovely little bit of sunshine. I came back with an elegant solution.

Could she, I asked Scamp, play the tune in a different key which wouldn’t use the dodgy piano key? Then we could record it and get a clean result and using Audacity, change the key to make it sound like a clean version of the original. “Yes” was the answer once she’d worked out what I had in my head. While she set about transposing the music in her head, I made the dinner which was Prawn & Pea Risotto with our own peas. Pods in the stock and peas in the pot! It was really quite good, augmented with some frozen peas.

Back in the studio we were good to go. We recoded the music without a problem. Re-transposed it electronically in the laptop and then looked around for the CD burner. We’re still looking! It must be in the house and I think we both looked everywhere it could be but it’s still hiding. My inelegant solution was to copy the MP3 Audacity created on to a memory stick and plug it into my old Toshiba laptop running Windows 7. After a struggle we finally got it to burn the CD using Windows Media Player. Ancient technology. We played the track on the CD player and it sounded perfect. So here’s the pathway to our success.

Fairly new HP laptop – couldn’t record
Almost new Apple laptop – couldn’t record
Old Apple laptop – could record, but couldn’t burn CD
Old Tosh laptop – managed to burn the CD.

I hope Veronica likes the track and doesn’t decide she’ll sing a different song. I don’t know how these bands manage to record albums. I’m presuming they have a few old Mac laptops lying around to record the tracks and a couple of 20 year old Tosh laptops to burn the demo CDs.

That was our day. Just a musical extravaganza. It looks like rain tomorrow, so I don’t expect we’ll be going far.

“I have seen the future …” – 3 August 2021

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“… and it works.” Reputed to be the words of Lincoln Austin Steffens after he had visited Russia in 1919 and had seen the new Soviet society in operation.

We did travel east today, but not as far as Russia. We went to Embra. We wanted to ‘expand our boundaries’, travel on public transport and live like ‘ordinary’ people. We survived the adventure. One of the places I wanted to see was the new St James Quarter with its roof that isn’t really a roof and its multi-storey shopping extravaganza. But first we had to get off the train at Haymarket, walk through Ladyfield (where today’s PoD came from) to Cafe Nero on Lothian Road, because that’s what we used to do when the world was a different place. The last time we were in Embra was in January 2020, by the way!

After the coffee and feeling suitably refreshed we walked round past the Usher hall and up on to the Grassmarket. Strange to see it without any stalls but with cars and buses driving past. Lots of tables set out where the stalls usually are, so the cafés and restaurants were in business. From there up the hill and round to cross the Royal Mile, then down The Mound (not the pile of turf beside Marble Arch, but the real Mound) to Princes Street Gardens. On that walk I got this shot of an old joke. Scrawled on a sign beside some scaffolding. It made me smile. Back at the stroll through Embra, we walked through the gardens and finally reached The St James Quarter which is quite impressive on a first viewing. But anything would be impressive compared to the old St James Centre which always looked like it was based on the design for Cumbernauld Town Centre. Yes, that bad!

We had a wander through one of the levels, marvelling at the amount of shops some with names we’d never seen before. Some with names we’d seen in foreign climes. Some we feel sure will last 6 months and then be replaced with shops that people will actually buy stuff from. I wanted to have a look at the ‘toys’ in JL, the new six storey JL. Why do they put the best stuff on the top level? I saw, what might be, my next camera. One version up from what I have now, but light years ahead in tech. I did say at the start “I have seen the future …”. Scamp wandered round the lower levels but didn’t buy. However she gave an ultimatum that she was looking for a new dress. I got the impression that the shortlist has already been written.

We exited the bit glitzy glass building and found our where we were. We were heading for Valvona & Corolla, only to find that it’s not there any more. We were definitely in the right place, but it wasn’t! We walk on along Rose Street to find our second choice, but it was closed. At least it was still there. Eventually we gave up and walked back up the Grassmarket and waited five minutes at Petit Paris for an outside table, because it was still a lovely, fairly warm day. Scamp had Salmon Rillette followed by fish of the day, Coley with a Basil Sauce served with mash. I had Countryside Terrine followed by Chicken Supreme with Forestière sauce, and Hazy, we hadn’t brought the voucher, but we asked if it was still valid and the reply was “Of course! Bring it next time.” Lesser restaurants would just have said no, but the trio of French blokes are better than that. We’ll know for next time.

We retraced our steps from the morning and after almost exhausting ourselves climbing about a million steps to get up from the low Kings Stables Road to the Castle Terrace, then marching down Morrison Street we managed to catch the train home with a couple of minutes to spare.

A great day. It was almost like it was before the world turned upside down.

Two days of eating out. We need to get back to cooking and eating our own food tomorrow! We might even get some rain.

Out to lunch – 2 August 2021

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Away into the country.

Drove out to The Smiddy near Blair Drummond and accepted the last table they had. Not really a table, more like a shelf with two high seats to sit on. We were lucky to get it because not long afterwards people were told there was a 20min wait for a table. Also, others seemed to waltz in, have a few words with the manager and jump the queue, no questions asked. I don’t think that’s a good way to run a restaurant. At least not if you want the jilted customers to come back.

Despite the poor managerial skills, the food was good. Scamp had her usual Mac ’n’ Cheese, but a much improved cheese sauce she said. I had the fishcakes and although they were a bit small, they tasted great with big chunks of fish and floury potato. Also, they were surprisingly filling, although that could have been down to the chips I snaffled from Scamp’s plate.
All in all, a good lunch if you can get a seat.

Instead of driving straight home we took a detour further out into the country on a road we’ve been on before we think, but couldn’t recall any of the scenery on it. Driving on ‘B’ roads in the lakes may have inspired my choice of narrow roads today, but the sun was out and we were away from the towns for a while. Our detour eventually took us through Thornhill and back to The Smiddy. We didn’t go in though. We’d been lucky once today, we didn’t want to have to wait 20mins for a table and then find some friends of the owner got seated before us. We drove home instead.

I’d taken some photos before we left the restaurant and today’s PoD is the result of eight of those frames being seamlessly joined into a panorama of the Carse of Forth. The ‘Carse’ being the name given to the low lying fertile land either side of the River Forth.

Watered the garden tonight and included our next door neighbours flowers in the deluge because he’d watered ours last night. Scamp watered the back garden. We may have another good, dry day tomorrow, but after the middle of the week, things will go downhill. With that in mind, we may go out somewhere tomorrow before the rains come.

Down the Green – 1 August 2021

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We went for a walk this morning.

It’s been ages since we’ve been down Glasgow Green. It used to be a favourite place for a walk, but we’ve been staying closer to home recently. Maybe it’s time we stretched our boundaries and found some new places to walk and also remembered old ones. Today we remembered old ones.

The park had changed a lot since the last time we’d been down there. The boathouse that stands on the banks of the Clyde just before the weir is under renovation, as is the riverbank from there to the weir. Not sure what they are doing and there are no signs to say what work is being undertaken, so maybe it’s going to be a secret submarine base or something like that. Much more information about the restoration of the boathouse which is now going to be a community hub of sorts with other areas inside, not just storage and repair areas for boats. Might be a good thing to give a wider section of the public a chance to use this space, not just the rather elitist rowing community.

We walked on and watched a man feed the ducks and saw the frenzy of wings as the gulls tried to steal everything white in the water. Most went for the bread, but some fought for a piece of white plastic bag. Each gull sure that it was theirs until another flew in to steal it. We walked on to the suspension bridge but there was little to see there. The university boat club who own the upstream boathouse were going out in fours, but we got bored waiting for them to do their downstream run.

I wanted to go for some photos in The Barras so we headed over there next. It’s just a shadow of its former self, but there was certainly more activity today that the last time we walked there. Good to see the trade in knock-off DVDs and CDs is still good and folk are making a dishonest bob from it. Scamp was half looking for a new kitchen carpet, but there weren’t many worth buying today. I got a few decent street photos, but very few were in focus. The Sony A7ii is noted as being particularly poor in the focus department. Some day I’ll trade it in and maybe get an A7iii, but not this week!

Back home Scamp went for a walk to the shops while I tried to fix the fairy lights on the back fence. The solar panel seems to be charging and the battery is holding a charge, so I suspect a break in the cable. Not easy to find and not easy to fix either. Cheaper to buy a new one.

When Scamp came back, we emptied the Tattie Bag and got enough for two dinners from it. We might empty the second bag next week, all being well. We might need to water it too, because the one we emptied was bone dry.

Dinner was a burger for me and a salmon fillet for Scamp. Both served with fried onions and our own potatoes.

I went over to St Mo’s for a walk, but didn’t get anything worthwhile. PoD went to a photo from The Barras of a group sitting having breakfast in Gibson Street.

Watched the carnage at the start of the Hungarian GP, then saw Hamilton attempting and almost failing to pass Alonso to come third to Ocon who won an amazing victory. I think the unlucky Verstappen was tenth after being caught up in the stramash at the start. If it wasn’t for bad luck he wouldn’t have any luck at all.

All in all, not a bad day. Tomorrow we may ‘stretch our boundaries’ if the sun shines.