Category: Food

A Closed Shop – 16 April 2017

Posted on by Zogman

Not a union matter, just that every shop we tried today for a couple of tins of tomatoes was shut.

Earlier in the day, Scamp and I went out for a walk past the Mill and on out into this incredibly flat countryside under a wide blue sky.  Saw and photographed a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly and a Common Blue butterfly.  I wouldn’t mind being called Small if I was a butterfly, but I’d object to being described as Common.  Why are we so dismissive of these pretty flying insects?

It was after we returned and JIC took us off to wander round a garden centre that the problem reared its ugly head.  Sim had gone off to ride Valioso, so JIC was left to entertain us.  He did try his best, but shop after shop after supermarket after garden centre was shut.  Closed, padlocked, locked and shuttered.  It was like the end of the world.  The out of town retail parks looked so different without lights, with only a few abandoned cars and straggles of zombie looking folk.  That’s what it looked like.  It looked like the zombies were taking over.  Where’s that devil dog when you need her?

There was nothing to it but to drive back to the village and go to the corner shop which is always open, isn’t it, and buy the tins of tomatoes there.  At least we’d eat tonight.  We ate JIC’s chicken tagine which was much tastier than the one I made, although I think my Lamb Tagine would give him a run for his money.  After dinner we watched a confusing but very interesting episode of Black Mirror on Netflix.  Definitely one to search for.

Tomorrow we’ll try the garden centre again.  We may bring Vixen to dissuade the zombies.

Around and about – 15 April 2017

Posted on by Zogman

Today we started out being driven to Hitchen for lunch and a walk around the shops.  It seemed like a plan as the sun was out and it was fairly warm.

It seems a pleasant wee town with a busy market in the centre.  Had lunch in a Greek restaurant.  I had lamb casserole as my main after a starter of Borek which is filo pastry filled with Greek feta cheese & spinach.  Afterwards we went for a walk around the main part of the town where a Sikh group were giving out free food and cans of juice to anyone who wanted it, free of charge as part of their Vaisakhi festival.  We had just had lunch, but there were big queues at the stall, happy to make the most of the food on offer.  It appears that there is such a thing as a free lunch!

It being Easter, there were a few others stalls dotted around, a town crier shouting the odds and even a couple of Imperial Stormtroopers searching for those droids, I presume.  We were looking for Just Desserts, a dessert restaurant, but it when we found it, it was closed, not just for Easter, but for good.   It had had its just desserts.  Instead of a dessert, we settled for a posh, artisan coffee shop.  Coffee was lovely, if  a bit sharp and there were loads of cakes on display.  JIC and I had Yoghurt and Cranberry slice.  Best laugh of the day was when I went to the toilet and found the toilet brush was stuck in a Starbucks mug!  Someone with a sense of humour and an opinion of Starbucks much like my own.

Back in the town the Vaisakhi procession was in full swing with drummers and marchers who were preceded by two men spraying water on the road in front of the markers, presumably to ritually clean it for them.  It was all quite a jolly and colourful affair in the sunshine.  However, our parking time was nearly up, so we made our way past and old church back to the car with a few minutes to spare.

Went out later to see the new Mill House and it’s quite a revelation although there is still a fair bit of scaffolding enclosing it.  Sketched it, but I’m not impressed with the sketch.  May redo it later.

Dinner should have been in the Benington Bell which is a traditional British pub serving traditional Trinidad food!  I had Aloo Pies to start with, but everybody else had Salt Fish and Tomato.  Main for me was Lamb Curry for me and for everyone else was Chicken Curry.  I just like to be different.  Unfortuntely, Sim wasn’t feeling too good, so we just ate and left. (Since I’m writing this on Sunday, I can tell you that she was fine after a night’s sleep.) The food was really, and I mean really excellent.  Thank you JIC and Sim for that.

When we got home, Sim went for a snooze while we watched Black Mirror on Netflix.  Interesting programme.  Must search for it when we get back home.

Tomorrow (or to be truthful, today 😉 we’re hoping to visit a garden centre.)

To the Manor Born – 14 April 2017

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Actually Wimpole is an estate, not a manor, but ’estate’ didn’t make such a good title I thought.

JIC drove us all there in the morning, and this being Good Friday, there were already hundreds, if not thousands of people there.  Most seemed to have brought their 2.5 children with then.  I did hope there were an even number of families, otherwise it might become messy with that poor 0.5 of a child wandering around.  Got parked and Sim set off in search of the ticket office and managed, somehow, to get to the front of the queue.  Tickets purchased we went in search of the formal gardens.  Most of the other families with their 2.5 children in tow were taking part in the ’Easter’ Egg Hunt which had been cunningly renamed to Cadbury’s Egg Hunt so as not to offend any non-Christians while they searched for eggs.  I thought it was a petty and childish piece of semantics and, as my mum used to say, “That’s how wars start.”

It being early spring, there weren’t a great variety of different flowers in bloom, but the colours of the daffodils and tulips made up for that.  You can see a couple of shots of them above.  As well as flowering plants, there were also veg and fruit plots and it was good to see that many of the plants had been labelled.  I learned on our visit to Kew a few years ago to photograph the label as well as the plant.

The estate farm was quite interesting, but there were too many weans squealing around the place, so I was quite glad when we left.  Even more squealing and grunting was coming from the enormous pigs in the piggery.  It’s not until you see these providers of our bacon that you realise just how big they are. Just as we were leaving the farm, which thankfully is a real farm and not just a petting zoo, an old plane flew over, a biplane.  I thought it was a Tiger Moth, and when I got home and checked the reg, I found I was right for once.  So strange looking at it through the EVF (Electronic View Finder) because it looked as if the propellor was stationary.  Must be due to the refresh rate of the EVF.

I took some photos of the Wimpole Hall itself. It was very grand and enormous.  Such a terrible waste of accommodation.  How the other half live.  Even more astounding was the view down the tree lined avenue which appears to be about a mile and a half long.  Another demonstration of one family’s wealth.

Having said all that, it was a great day out.  A bit cold, especially when you weren’t sheltered from the wind.

Back home, Sim made Trinni Stewed Chicken while Scamp watched and made mental notes.  Chicken was lovely.  Much better than anything we saw the contestants making on Masterchef later.  However I did have a nice bottle of IPA to take the edge off the bald bloke’s “Oh Mate!” exclamations.

Vixen still doesn’t seem to take too kindly to male bearded strangers, especially if they are standing.  Maybe tomorrow.

Tomorrow we may be going to Hitchin for a walk round the shops in a quiet wee town.

Happy Birthday to Me – 8 April 2017

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Another year older.

After I opened my birthday prezzies this morning (thank you all!) and had my breakfast, it was time to head out.  My choice of destination.  I chose Broadford and that’s where we went today.  It’s ages since I’ve been to Broadford.  Obviously, we’ve passed through it ever time we come to Skye, but we rarely stop and get out of the car there.  Hazy phoned me just as we stopped and parked.  Had a pleasant talk with her, even if the temperature she was talking about down there was almost twice what we were enduring.  That said, they have the weather, we have the scenery and we were staring out  the windscreen at that sort of scenery.  Out across the water was the pier  and the youth hostel.   But, as Scamp said, no dolphins.  You can’t have everything.

We went for a walk along the shore walk, then down the road before Scamp found a coffee shop where we stopped for a coffee and a scone.  Unfortunately, it was a cheese scone and I ordered it with butter AND JAM.  Apparently, you don’t have jam on a cheese scone.  Coffee was the best I’ve had on the island with the exception of Jackie’s of course.  It was just after I started it, I discovered that I didn’t have my phone.  Oh dear, did I drop it on the walk or did I leave it in the car?  Only one way to find out.  I had to curtail my coffee and go find out.  It was in the car.  Thank you, the birthday fairies who look after lost phones.

Drove back up the road and parked ourselves by the slip to watch the waves and listen to the birds.  Went looking for photos and found that there were even more wee men parked around the boathouse.  I don’t know who is planting them there, but whoever they are, they have a great supply of araldite to weld them to the stone.

Drove Scamp back to the house and dumped the day’s photos on the Mac before venturing out for the last sortie of the week, up again to Loch Gangaig.  On the way there I caught sight of a couple of walkers up on a ridge heading for the Quiraing.  I was cold a couple of thousand feet below them and with the comfort of the car beside me, I’d imagine they were much colder and less comfortable where they were.  Got a few photos of the loch and one or two of the wee lochan I’d visited yesterday.  After that, there was nothing for it but to head back to Burnside for a dram and a plate of Mince ’n’ Tatties.  Superb.  Thank you Jackie.

Tomorrow, we drive south.

The day when nothing happened – 3 April 2017

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Basically, that about sums it up. Nothing happened, but then …

Painted for an hour this morning while Scamp went to her final physio appointment.  I’d already done the groundwork and used masking fluid to protect the mountains (it’s an imaginary snow covered landscape).  I made the mistake of using some tubes of Cotman colour, that is student quality, for the sky area.  What should have been clear and transparent, turned out dull and cloudy.  What more could I do but turn it into a cloudy sky, it was meant to be a sunset!  After I took off the masking fluid, I added the rocks that show through the snow and the water below the mountains.  It looks quite good.  Try to remember all the above and I’ll attempt to post a picture of the watercolour tomorrow.

Took back my library books. Got another one out on the subject of watercolours and there’s a complete section on painting snow.  I’d forgotten how useful a library can be.

Came home and had lunch. Went in to Glasgow to look at wet weather jackets. Not heavy ones like I wear in the winter.  Just a light jacket that’s waterproof and breathable and HAS LOTS OF POCKETS!  Couldn’t find one.  The ones with lots of pockets were either too expensive or weren’t waterproof.  More investigation required.

It was too early to come home, so I took some pics down by the Luggie, and that’s what you see above.

For dinner, I made an innovative pasta Genovese with a poached egg on top.  It was good, but not great.  Needs a bit of tweaking, I think.

Went to salsa and acted as doorman there for the extent of the beginners class but quite enjoyed the advanced even if there were far too many girls and the class was quite small.  That’s what happens during school holidays.

Other than that, nothing happened.

More researching into jackets tomorrow.

The Lodger – 1 April 2017

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The back bedroom has been *my room* for a long time, and the front bedroom is the spare room with just insufficient room to swing a cat, so when the lodger appeared, we were a bit lost about where he should go, but we needn’t have worried. He had provided his own bed in his own room.

When I got up to make breakfast this morning I was amazed to see a wren sitting, no, not sitting, dancing on the clothes rope in the back garden. Singing his heart out, he was obviously full of the joys of spring and eager to entice Jenny, or any other lady wren to dance along to his tune. After I’d grabbed the nearest camera and taken a few shots, then grabbed a more suitable camera / lens combination and repeated the exercise, I noticed him fly down to the back door. At first I couldn’t see where he had gone, then I realised. Scamp has a plant pot hanging by the back door. It’s called a Wanderella and is conical in shape with the wide part of the cone at the top. It’s almost full of peat and has holes about 2cm diameter all down its length. I’ll try to get a photo tomorrow. I guessed that Mr Wren was using one of these holes as an impromptu nest. It was actually a good ploy as Scamp had upended a bowl on the open end of the wanderella to keep the peat from getting waterlogged during the winter.
Later in the morning when Mr Wren was out carousing outside the garden we risked lifting the bowl and there was a beautiful hollow ball of moss with two entrance holes, just the right size for a wren. The nest was empty, so we put it back in place as carefully as we could. It wasn’t until much later in the afternoon that I noticed that he had returned. I hope we didn’t disturb things too much because a lot of work had gone into that green moss ball.

We drove through torrential rain today to go to Vecchia Bologna for lunch. Mine was one of the worst pizzas I’ve ever eaten, but Scamp said her veggie penne was lovely. I know I should have complained, but this is the first time I’ve had a poor meal in the restaurant. That’s one of their lives gone. Two strikes and you’re out. These days there is far too much competition for food to be sloppy about cooking and presentation.

Waitrose, then home. It looks like Crazy Water Fish tomorrow. Something we learned to cook in Sorrento at a one day cook school. It’s a long time since we’ve made it, but Scamp thinks she still has the recipe.

Fought with iTunes in the afternoon and eventually managed to get it to give up the forty tracks it insists on leaving on my iPhone every time I try to clean it out. I’m a great Dylan fan, but if I hear Abandoned Love one more time I think I’ll risk the six points on my license just to throw the phone out the window. Anyway, with the help of the Interweb, I finally ditched the forty songs. I also managed to get rid of the ‘greyed out’ tracks on iTunes. It’s amazing the little tips you pick up on the iTunes forums. I’m a firm believer that Bill Gates wrote the code for iTunes. It’s clumsy, it’s bloatware and it never works properly. Typical Windoze crap. I rest my case.

Had a quick walk around St Mo’s just before the sun completely disappeared, but only got a few almost usable shots of a coot sitting on its nest. Not great, but not too bad either.

Tomorrow we may be going to the (F)Art Galleries to hear a choir. Scamp will probably listen to the choir and hopefully, I’ll sketch. No Sunday Social until the arm is healed 🙁

A day out with the boys – 29 March 2017

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Today five auld guys had their first meeting of the year.  In fact, it might be the first meeting since August last year!  How we drift apart.  After a couple of beers in the Horseshoe Bar in Drury Street, we moved across to Paesano in Miller Street for a pizza.  Five pizzas later ( five total, that is!) three of us headed back to the bar for another beer before we split up and went our separate ways.  Thankfully, Scamp came to pick me up from the train station because it had started to rain.  It was good to get back in touch with everyone and we must do it again, but not leave it almost half a year next time.

Earlier, in fact quite early, I went for a walk in the woods at St Mo’s and found that a group of little ‘Hobbit Houses’ had arrived.  I’m guessing that this is the work of one of the local secondary schools.  Behind each door was the picture of an animal.  A lovely idea.  I think I got photos of all the little doors.  After that Scamp ran me to the train station where I met Fred.  We went for a walk through the ’Toon’ before we headed to the pub to meet the others.  The walk involved a quick trip to Cass Art of course.  Bought myself a mapping pen and some nibs.  Old school drawing, but I like the effect you get with indian ink and it wrecks fountain pens, but doesn’t damage the old fashioned dipper pens.  I was looking for a bottle of granulation medium, but that’s too unusual for them to carry, so it looks like I’ll need to go to Millers later in the week.  How I miss the Art Store now.

No sign of the weather improving tomorrow, or Friday.

Embra – 25 March 2017

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We took the train to Embra this morning in the sunshine that was predicted would last all day.  It did.  Blue skies over Embra, but also over Cumbersheugh which was a greater surprise.

Wandered up the Grassmarket and decided that we’d just have an early lunch at Petit Paris, except that it was 12.00 and we were half an hour too early.  Rather than be disappointed like yesterday, we sat in the Grassmarket in the sunshine and waited until nearly 12.30 and then made our way down to the restaurant.  Scamp had Soup de Provence and I had what I always have there, French Onion Soup because they do it so well.  For main we both had Poisson de Jour which for Scamp was Coley with Red Pepper Sauce, served with mashed potatoes.  Mine was the same, except they had run out of Coley, so I had Cod.  Same difference.   Scamp had a crêpe with Grand Marnier for pudding and I had coffee.  I took a risk and had a glass of house red with my meal.  Ha, ha Nick the Chick, I wipe my nose with your drink driving limit!

Walked back down the Grassmarket rather than go up past the Royal Mile and all the twee gift shops, because, to be honest, the only reason we were there was to have lunch.  Got a book I’ve been looking for, for ages in Waterstones and then got a cut-price Bergy jacket in Tiso’s.  Actually it’s exactly the same as the one I’ve had for ever except it doesn’t have inside pockets.  Same style, same material almost, even same colour.  Boring, that’s me.  It was a bargain.  You can’t let a bargain go past, can you?

Back home we watched Best Marigold Hotel again.  Still has the same magic as the first time we saw it.

A lazy day in the sun.  Bought some fat hand made sausage rolls and some pork sausages too at the Farmers Market, so that’s tomorrow and probably Monday’s lunch sorted.  Hoping for more sunshine tomorrow.  Always hoping!

Happy Birthday Scamp – 24 March 2017

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Today is Scamp’s birthday.  She had chosen to go to see the live sized portrait of Graham Norton by Gareth Reid in Cass Art and then go for lunch at Vecchia Bologna, so we set off on the round trip after parcels and cards had been opened.  Also after we had a Skype call with Hazy.

As well as visiting the portrait artist’s exhibition, Scamp did a bit of shopping and we had a coffee before returning along the M80 to Bridge of Allan to Vecchia.  Unfortunately, when we arrived the usual waiter came to meet us and tell us that the kitchen had closed early and they were not taking any more diners.  Oh well, there was nothing for it but to head back along the M80 again because Scamp had chosen Milano as her second choice of lunch venue.  Almost as good as Vecchia, but not quite.

When we got home, I helped her out of her massive crepe bandage and got her settled and headed off to St Mo’s while she was on the phone to Jackie.  Got a few macro shots of larch flowers, looking like miniature pineapples.  Also took a four shot vertorama ( vertical panorama ) which I later merged together in Autopano.

Tonight being Red Nose Day, we chose a film from Netflix, only to find that the internet connection was flaky and we had to give up on it.  Ended up watching Steve Jobs from DVD instead.

Overall, not a bad day.  Not as good as it could be, but sometimes life is like that.

Lost and Found – 23 March 2017

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Sometimes I feel that the day just got brighter.  When I look back on it to see what it was that happened to make me feel that way, I realise that it’s not what happened, but what didn’t happen that made the change.  It’s like finding something I was certain was lost.  I haven’t actually gained anything, just not lost it and that subtle difference changes everything.

I drove in to Glasgow this morning to drop Scamp off at the hospital to have a *bite* as the dermatologist described it, taken out of her arm where the mole had been.  This was to be a larger excision than the one she had before we went to Trinidad in January.  Neither of us was talking about it on the way in, but it was playing through our heads, that was obvious.  As she was going to wait for an hour and a half before she would go to the theatre, and as she had company in the ward, I took my leave.

I wandered round the town, seeing nothing very much to photograph or to take my mind off the day.  Totally by accident, I walked into the exhibition room of Cass Art and admired the portraiture of the winner of the Sky Portrait Artist of the Year and especially his portrait of Graham Norton.  I saw the bloke who sits on the toy horse outside the Apple shop ‘blacking up’ ready for a hard day in the saddle.  I watched one of the beggars who’s hands shake all the time outside Buchanan Galleries pluck a smart phone from her inside pocket and hold it to her ear, steady as a rock, then remember to start shaking her other hand holding her cup.  I walked back through to the car park and grabbed a few shots of the city skyline through the glass panels of the bridge and that’s what you see above, slightly edited.  Well, considerably edited.

Drove home and found it strange to be sitting alone in the car going along the motorway.  Lunch was a *piece ’n’ banana*.  Not long after I got the text from Scamp to say that she was back in the ward with a BIG bandage and then the text to say that a taxi was required.

Since she had been a very brave girl she got to choose tonight’s dinner, which turned out to be a fish supper with a pickled onion and a tub of Tablet Ice Cream as pudding.  She deserved it.