Category: Food

Up North – 27 April 2016

Posted on by Zogman

combo bAfter a lazy morning (well, yesterday was a bit frantic, so we are due a lazy morning) we headed off just after midday bound for Ballachulish in Lochaber.

I just had to stop on Rannoch Moor to get one last time lapse. Yes, I know it’s old hat now, but just one more wouldn’t hurt. After 15 minutes I had my 10 seconds of video and 100 frames of high quality RAW files I’ll never use again. Such a waste and such a hammering the camera shutter takes making those 10 seconds of video. The good thing about travelling with two cameras is the ability to wander around taking shots while you’re waiting for the 100 shots to be taken. Saw a wee lizard on the moor. Didn’t realise you got them this far north. Maybe it was on its holidays.

Continued up to Ballachulish and booked in. As it was the end of an Itison deal, the hotel was full, but Scamp had pre-booked and also upgraded to a loch-view room with, as it turned out, a jacuzzi bath! Unfortunately neither of us could be bothered to try it out.

Went for a walk to Bishop’s Bay, a place we’d been the last time we were here, back in October 2015. The scenery and views were just as spectacular as last time. Time for dinner when we got back. Food was good, but our supercilious waiter needs to work a bit on his people skills. Scamp ordered scallops and he assumed she was ordering for both of us! What? Does his mummy order for him when he goes out to a restaurant. I had a burger which was fine and Scamp had a seabass fillet, but I’ve seen bigger sardines. She decided to have pudding and ordered sticky toffee pudding with ice cream. I ordered gin and tonic pannacotta and after leaving, he returned to ask if I wanted ice cream or cream with it. I was a bit bemused as you don’t usually have anything with pannacotta, but settled for the cream. I needn’t have bothered. It came as it was without an accompaniment and also without any semblance of G or T in its flavour.

I’d just remembered that the hotel had a lovely microbrewery IPA and we went through to the bar after our meal to see if it was still available. There was the pump with the River IPA. Unfortunately, there also was Mr Personality, the original dumb waiter.  Scamp had a G&T and I asked for an IPA. The scoosh from the tap signalled that the cask needed changing. “It’ll only take a minute” he said. He was right. It only took him a minute to come back and say “mvbemdm fnsn dm” or something like that. He certainly speaks fluent Mumble. It translates as “I don’t know how to change the cask”.  I asked for a pint of the River Blonde beer instead. I’m still not sure if he used a clean glass or the dirty one from the aborted IPA, but the beer was boggin’. I had two mouthfuls and left it on the table. The last time we were here there certainly was Service With A Smile. This time was different. Maybe we were just unlucky or maybe this is a turn in fortune for the Loch Leven Hotel. Only time will tell.

Hoping to head south via Oban tomorrow. Also hoping for decent weather, much like today’s.

Just another Saturday – 23 April 2016

Posted on by Zogman

Page_1-2- flickr--114After yesterday’s biz, today was just another Saturday.

We went to Stirling and bumped into Scamp’s sister and her daughter (the same ones from yesterday) in our favourite curry shop. I wouldn’t have bothered going back there after the disappointments of our last two visits, but I’m glad we did. The menu, if more expensive, had gone back to its previous old faithfuls and I’m guessing the chef was back from his/her sabbatical because the food tasted like it used to. The only stumbling block was the nan bread which we both agreed was too soft and doughy. We’ll let them work on it.

Walked round Stirling shopping centre. That didn’t take very long. Stirling, apart from the castle and the old buildings leading up to it, isn’t all that interesting. More and more shops closed in the shopping mall it’s a sign of the times. Not as bad as Dunfermline the other day. Things are getting bad when the Cash Converter shop closes down. Anyway, we didn’t linger long in Stirling and drove home empty handed apart from a Thunderball ticket that proved not even worth the paper it was printed on. Oh well.

Today’s photo is the final one in the series of Shug and Tam meet the Queen. By the way, just in case you were wondering, it has nothing to do with Mrs McQueen turning 90. It’s just such a nice wee minifig, I thought I’d like to do something with it. I’m done with Comic Life for a while. I’d forgotten just how irritating it was to work with. Until you’ve experienced it, it’s difficult to explain just how badly coded it is. Even the version 1 as its flaws, the most annoying is when it loses focus on the object being edited. Leave it for a while to get its wind back and focus returns. Not something you want to happen when you are working to a deadline, so I doubt if you’d use this on a commercial basis. However, it cost me nothing so I shouldn’t complain, but I always do 😉

To those who read my blog posts, I apologise for the number of updates to it recently as I struggled to add two short videos. I finally worked out today that the only video format that WordPress would abide was MP4. I was sure I’d added a MOV once, but I was wrong. It was only when I was checking the HTML code today that I realised my error. I may not embed any more videos for some time, but hopefully I’ll remember that I wrote this explanation – partly to you and partly to myself!

Walking through the Toon – 16 April 2016

Posted on by Zogman

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

We got the bus into Glasgow and went for a curry at Cafe India, where I’d gone to have my Indian cooking lesson back in February. The food wasn’t spectacular, but they were decent curries. Too much incense burning in the place and we both had the feeling that it was to cover up something. I don’t think we’ll be back.

Walked down to Glasgow Green via Parnie Street (Merchant City Cameras, but nothing inspired me). It was cold down The Green, but some Indian blokes were playing cricket. Cricket in Glasgow? Whatever next? Walked back through the town along Argyle Street taking in the sights. One bloke dancing and singing with his top off in a north wind that would cut the face off you. One bloke dressed as Superman, blowing hundreds of bubbles for the wee weans. One bloke dressed as a monster in Buchanan Street. Thankfully we missed The Bastard Drummers who were setting up when we walked down Bucky Street and having a rest when we walked back up. Sometimes we’re just lucky.

Bus home and that was our Saturday afternoon. I quite enjoyed our wee walk round the toon.

Birthday Boy – 8 April 2016

Posted on by Zogman

comboToday is my birthday and the kitchen didn’t switch on the extractor fans at 6.00AM or crash bang the aluminium trays to celebrate that fact.

We drove round the top of the island and over to Waternish. Rather than go on to Trumpan, we dropped down to Stein. Stein is a tiny wee village of about half a dozen houses and the famous Stein Inn. Google it.

We sat and watched the world go by for a while and the Queen sat and watched too. The Queen was a Lego minifig and was a birthday prezzy from Hazy. She had sat on our dashboard, taking in the sights from Staffin to Stein. The Queen is probably the cutest birthday prezzy, but the strangest must be JIC’s solid tapered lump of cocoa for making hot chocolate, carefully described by him as “Not a suppository” on its label!

I went for a walk down to the slip and saw the scene that I’d painted three times in different media. The actual picture. It’s a whitewashed cottage on a spit of land sticking out into the sea. On the day I first photographed it, it had a line of washing blowing in the wind. Today there was no washing, but what I noticed was that the building was two storey. I’d always painted it as a single storey building. Sometimes imagination is better than fact. The two storey building just didn’t look right. On the way back to the car, I spotted the snail. It was making a bee line (should that be a snail line?) for the other side of the footpath. It was travelling straight as a die and moving at a fast snail’s pace. However I was worried that he would get crushed under someone’s feet once I’d gone, so the least I could do was give him an airlift to the other side and placed him carefully in the undergrowth.

We drove back to Portree, the capital of Skye. There we went to Cafe Arriba for lunch. Macaroni for Scamp and Lamb and Chorizo burger for me. Brilliant! Drove back up the single track and double track road to Staffin and went down to the beach and watched the tide come in before we went for a walk on the beach.

Back to Jackie and Murd for dinner, then a dram or two in front of a coal fire. Brilliant end to a Brilliant day.

A Dull Day – 28 March 2016

Posted on by Zogman

comboOverall, quite a dull day, well dull in as much as we didn’t go anywhere or do anything.  Just a normal working day, but without the work.  It looked like nobody else was working either because few cars moved from their parking places outside the house.  The weather was a lot better though.

The only thing I did do was to go to the Spar shop in Condorrat via St Mo’s of course.  I got a few arty shots and a couple of landscapes, oh yes, and a tin of spaghetti.  The spaghetti came from Spar, not St Mo’s and the landscapes came from St Mo’s, not Spar.  I hope that has clarified the situation.  Tonight’s dinner was fish fingers, egg and spaghetti, courtesy of my walk to Condorrat.

First episode of Maigret played my Mr Bean.  Really quite good, but I kept expecting him to start talking gibberish and was disappointed that he didn’t.  Having said that, I hate Mr Bean with a vengeance and I liked the realism of Maigret.  Worth setting a series link.

Weather tomorrow is to be similar to today, so I think we must get out and “DAE SOMETHING”.  That’s the plan anyway.

I Think It’s Going To … 26 March 2016

Posted on by Zogman

combo b… Rain today.  Rained almost all day.  We went shopping.  Food shopping.  We could have gone to Tesco, but I thought it would be better to go to Stirling, even in the rain.  There’s a Waitrose there and I can usually pick up some nice meat there.  I also wanted a second look at a watercolour painting I’d seen in a gallery there a month or so ago.  Not to buy it of course, but to try out the effect the artist had achieved.  Thirdly, as usual I had a photograph in my head that I could take if the sun came out.  I didn’t get the meat I was looking for although I did get some kidney to make steak and kidney stew.  I didn’t get to see the painting either  because when we came out of Waitrose the rain had stopped, clouds were lightening and the sun was looking like it would start poking through so I went straight to option 3.

While we were driving to the location I’d picked, the sun did come out, but by the time I’d navigated Traffic Light City (do they really need all those red lights?) and found the spot, the good light had all but gone.  I did manage a couple of shots but without the light on the castle I wanted.  Actually there was no good light, but Lightroom is a brilliant piece of software that can spread sunlight where there is none and that is what I did.  Darkened down and texturised the sky with one graduated filter and brightened and warmed up the foreground with another.  That is how the top image and the bottom left image were faked created.  The image bottom right has only had minimal adjustments and show what the scene really looked like.

When we turned and headed for home after a disappointing stop, the rain started again, but not as heavily as it had earlier.

An excellent Chicken Curry tonight with my own version of a curry paste.  Feeling quite pleased with it.

A Lovely Lunch – 24 March 2016

Posted on by Zogman

combo bToday is Scamp’s birthday and we headed in to town to celebrate.  Lunch was booked for 1.30pm in the Battlefield Rest in Battlefield, where else.  At 2.05 after 35 minutes waiting, we had still not had our starters and were getting a bit fractious.  Thankfully it wasn’t much later when Scamp’s Smoked Haddock and Spinach Crepe and my Haggis Polpette arrived and as anticipated, they were lovely!  Mains followed soon after the first plates were cleared away.  Scamp’s was Smoked Haddock Risotto, mine was Italian Sausage Stew.  If it was possible for the starters to be bettered, the mains did it.  We more or less forgave them the bad start.  Coffees were on the house when Scamp revealed that it was her birthday.  Overall, it was what we expected in the Battlefield Rest.  If you’re in a hurry, it’s not the place to eat, but the food is very, very good.

Stopped off in Glasgow City Centre on the way home and in the course of wandering around the shops, managed a few shots of the bloke with the beard playing the guitar.  That was about it.

When we got home I saw the raindrops on the flowers in the hanging basket and thought it might make an interesting shot.  Today we had the first rain in 14 days.  This must be a record in Scotland.

It’s been a good day today.  Let’s hope it’s a Good Friday tomorrow.

A case for better weather – 16 March 2016

Posted on by Zogman

P3160679- flickr--76Today we spent our afternoon in Livingston selecting a case sufficiently large for Scamp to pack for our next holiday although it’s not even on the horizon yet, in fact we haven’t even decided for certain where we’re planning to go. That’s forward thinking for you. I did manage to get myself a waistcoat in a sale, so it wasn’t a total loss for me.

The day started with high cloud and although the east seemed to have better weather than the west, contrary to what the forecasters said, the sun never really got through the cloud. When we were on our way home, the cloud just seemed to get thicker and darker and the light got gloomier.

I went out to get basil to make pesto for dinner and there was just a glimmer of golden light appearing between the cloud and the land, so I took a detour from the road home and grabbed a few shots. Saw some geese flying north, another sign that winter is on the way out for another year. Further on, I saw a field full of geese. I’d have stopped to grab a few shots, but I was on a really narrow, almost single lane, road and couldn’t find a passing place. Another day maybe.

That’s about it for this Wednesday.

Last full day in the sun – 11 March 2016

Posted on by Zogman

combo bMaking the most of the last full day. It started with grey skies, but by the time we headed off after breakfast, the sun was breaking through. We were headed again for Corralejo town. Basically it’s north to the town or south to the dunes. East is the Atlantic and there is no road west. We wandered round an open air market and I was thinking about buying a Rolex watch, but I couldn’t decide between it and a Breitling. Both were €35. I decided to think about it. Scamp was taken by a woman’s scam, selling wine bottle openers.  She had a slick pitch, but was no match for Scamp.

So we are now sitting in La Cantante in Corralejo having a mojito after another of their excellent tuna pizzas. On the walk back to the hotel. On the way we passed a wee shop selling souvenirs and I got two shirts for €6. A bargain at twice the price. Ok, they were so thin you could spit peas through them, but bright cheery colours to match my sunny disposition.

When we got back, there was just enough sun left for an hour or so on the sun beds. Then it was back to the room to pack. 🙁

As you can see there were a lot of photos taken today.  To get a better look at them, visit my Flickr page by clicking on the mosaic.

Another day in the sun – 10 March 2016

Posted on by Zogman

combo bToday started like yesterday with a search for a couple of sun beds together. We found them by the pool just outside the flat and that is where we stayed most of the day. The day began earlier with a sensible preparation for the sun. Rather than be caught out like yesterday we got thoroughly covered in sun cream. Then it was off to breakfast before we faced the sun.  The sun was not so constant today which was a blessing really because it was too hot yesterday.

WARNING!  MAY CONTAIN TECHNOSPEAK
After lunch we rested for a while beside the pool and then Scamp decided it was time for a walk. I’d said I wanted to do some painting on the dunes, so we headed up the road to the mini Sahara again. I didn’t get any painting done, but I did confirm my suspicions that this end of the dunes is a nudist beach. Couldn’t settle on a suitable spot for a painting and was getting exasperated with the camera occasionally overexposing. So started off back when I hit on the idea of doing a complete factory reset. I’d just done it when I realised that the over exposure only happened with the old kit lens. I checked it and sure enough, no matter what aperture setting I set on the camera, the lens aperture was stuck wide open. That would explain the overexposure. At least the overexposure in the camera. The overexposure of the blokes in the bushes was another matter entirely. Anyway, the reset seems to have made the E-M10 useable again.

Dinner tonight was in the Spanish restaurant where we had tapas to start with and then I had shoulder of lamb that simply fell of the bone – delicious and Scamp had salmon which apparently was quite good too. Pudding was banana flambé which was good, but with little evidence of any flames. Not like mine at all!

Tonight’s show was billed as Radio Gaga, but announce as We Will Rock You. Actually, it was better than the full length show we went to see in The King’s in Glasgow. The cast were all miming, but that didn’t affect our enjoyment. Sometimes enthusiasm is better than ability.

More pictures of the architect’s house, a desert shot and a cat for Hazy!