Category: Food

The ice is melting – 8 January 2024

Posted on by Zogman

And not before time say some!

But first things first. We were in dire need of food, so Scamp and I drove to Tesco to see what they had to offer. Blueberries, onions, bacon and razor blades were high on the list as well as bananas, milk and bread, but for some unknown reason there were no rolls. Real rolls, that is. There were plenty of those soft fluffy pretend rolls, but none of the crusty or well fired variety. You couldn’t call those soft things “Rolls”. This dearth always seems to happen on a Monday. Maybe the bakers were joining the junior doctors and going on a one day strike every week. Maybe the bakers really are qualified junior doctors and they had been called up to plug the gap in the NHS. For whatever reason, it looked like we’d have to forego our roll ’n’ banana today.

I had a plan that might avoid a roll-less day. On the way home we drove in to Condorrat where I managed to pick up a half dozen crusty rolls for £2.22. I even paid for I using cash. Real, hard cash, coppers and silver coins counted out carefully into the lady’s hand. We would eat a lunch of roll ’n’ banana!

Suitably fed and knowing we wouldn’t fade away from starvation, I went for a walk in St Mo’s, hoping to grab some of the sunshine that was coming through holes in the clouds. Ah, but as soon as I got to St Mo’s, the holes were filled in again and the sun slid from sight. I should have known. Still, I managed a few interesting photos. The first was a hogweed which had been covered in ice that was now gradually melting. The second one and PoD was one of my Dangerous Dan shots. Take an expensive camera with an equally expensive lens. Place it on the ice of the pond. Point it in the general direction of a subject and press the shutter button, lightly. As soon as the shutter clicks, whip it away before the ice knows it’s there and tries to grab it. Of course I’d tested the ice first to make sure it would hold the weight of the camera. A passing bloke walking his dog asked me I was all right, kneeling on the boardwalk. I told him I was fine, but afterwards I wondered if he was asking me if I was “alright in the head!” Maybe I’m not, but I love taking photos from strange angles.

After what I hope is the final adjustment to Lightroom Catalog 2024, I think everything is back to firing on all cylinders. The photos went into Lightroom and came out the other side looking better for their trip through its many and varied boxes of tricks. They are now on show in Flickr and one of them, the Dangerous Dan one is at the top of this page.

Dinner tonight was pasta with a nicely spicy Amatriciana sauce ( bacon, tomatoes, dried chilli flakes and basil) dusted with some Parmesan cheese.

Tomorrow Scamp is booked in the morning for coffee and a blether with June and Shona. I’m hoping to parcel up the calendars and get them sent out to the north of Scotland and the south of England and some places in between.

Freezin’ – 7 January 2024

Posted on by Zogman

It really was freezing. Freezing fog. Temp just below zero.

Just to check it out I took out the rubbish, slipped on the icy step and landed with a bump, knocking over the bin in the process. I don’t do it every day, but occasionally I do try to get a bit of gymnastic practise in and this seemed like a good time to do it. Thankfully it was foggy, so nobody was about to see my wee slide. Then I went round the garden in baby steps picking up all the fallen cardboard and yoghurt tubs. I think Scamp got a bigger fright than me!

Back inside I grabbed a camera and gingerly walked out into the back garden to grab a photo of what were our sunflowers with trails of frosted ice crystals hanging on them. It wasn’t a day for hanging around, so I equally gingerly made my way back inside again to the nice, warm, safe kitchen.

If you read yesterday’s blog (published today), you will have read that last night I gave up on trying to fix the botched attempt at clearing up the mess of the Lightroom catalog. Well, I did sleep on it, and somewhere in the restless night, I came up with a plan. Why build a new catalog when you can just adapt the one you’ve used for a year. There must be a way of changing the name from 2023 to 2024. There was and it was a Scottish lady who explained the intricacies of the renaming in a YouTube video. It was really simple, but also convoluted, with some parts being done while Lightroom was active and others when it was shut down. Long story short, it worked. So now it looks like I have an operating catalog for 2024. However, I’ll know better tomorrow.

Dinner tonight was the opposite of last Sunday’s three course meal and was lentil soup with apple pie and custard for dessert.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard about aquaplaning cars and flooded fields and roads. However he says it’s not too cold in the house and the builders start again this week. So work is progressing.

The frosted sunflower stalks with their necklace of ice crystals were PoD.

I think we will have to go out tomorrow to get some much needed supplies. Just simple stuff like bread and milk. No alcohol was mentioned!

Dancin’ – 6 January 2024

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Scamp was out first to defrost the car. We were driving to Brookfield for the first dance classs of 2024.

The temperature was hovering around zero when we drove out to Brookfield, but the sun was almost blinding, shining from a bright blue sky. Thankfully we got there without any roadworks apart from the usual 40mph drag through central Glasgow.

First surprise was that the tiny dancers, who usually take ages to leave the hall, had already gone! Maybe someone had complained. I should have asked Jane if it was her. Only four couples ready and waiting to go dancing. Last in were Peter and Gillian who travel almost the same distance as us.

First dance was the Blue Angel Rumba which we’ve almost mastered and was the gentle entry into this years dances. Next was the, new to us, Christmas Waltz. It looked complicated, but taken in bite sized pieces it wasn’t so bad, although there were a few unpronounceable and complicated bits to it. In retrospect, I think we managed not too bad in it, but it will need some practise during the week to cement it into my head. Finally a fast and frantic Samba with Samba Walks, Botafogos and Voltas. Voltas were described by Jane as “Like kids pretending to ride a horse”. A sort of “John Wayne dance step.” Google it and you’ll see what I mean. By then, my little brain was full to bursting and I was glad to change my dance shoes for clumpy black street shoes and drive us home.

Lunch was two bits of bread with a slice of square sausage between them. Scamp had similar with an egg substituting for the square sausage.

I struggled for a while trying to work out what was going wrong with the 2024 catalog on Lightroom. Eventually I gave up and as the sun was still shining I went for a walk in St Mo’s. The road and paths were quite slippery, but the boots coped with it. The sun was low by the time I was walking along the path behind the woods and I got a few decent shots of the trees and the shadows they were casting. One of them became PoD.

Dinner came from a cold walk over to Condorrat to Golden Bowl. As I was coming back I could see the mist lying about a metre above the grass. Quite creepy looking. I tried to photograph it, but failed to get the impression I was looking for.

Later in the evening I tried again and almost managed to repair the damage to the catalog. I gave up and left it until tomorrow when hopefully a night’s sleep will make things clearer

Temperatures around zero predicted for tomorrow. That will decide what we do.

 

Dull day that brightened up later – 5 January 2024

Posted on by Zogman

It started off misty and cloudy, but later in the day the sun came out and it was fairly bright.

The task for today was to take down the decorations, pack up the tree and get everything ready to go up into the loft later in the week. Scamp was in charge of operations and as usual she was organised. Cards were taken down and left in a pile for checking later. Tree decorations went into their box and then into their bag. Batteries were removed from lights to stop them corroding. I took the lights down from the wee tree outside and from the fence. They are still drying out, hanging over any vertical surface that will carry them. It really was a military operation.

By lunch time it was all done and I’d had enough time left to go for a walk in St Mo’s. Today’s PoD turned out to be fern fronds glowing in the sunshine. There wasn’t much else to photograph today. I should have taken a macro lens with me, but I forgot. After that it was computer time.

One of my SSD drives that power the iMac now has a dodgy connector socket, which means that if I’m not careful, and it gets nudged, I lose everything I’ve been working on. Most annoying. What I wanted to do today was transfer the data from the drive to a replacement that doesn’t seem to have the connector problem. It’s a fairly easy procedure to do, but even with the super fast SSDs, it takes time. That means there’s a lot of sitting about. Thankfully I could check the progress on my laptop as I was following an instruction video on YouTube that I’d used before and it worked. It worked again today, but took most of the afternoon to complete. I’ve now got it running fairly well, with just the occasional blip to fix.

It was late when I finally turned the computer off and had dinner which was baked potato with veg chilli. The chilli had been in the freezer for a few months and was really needing used up. It tasted fine, so being frozen for months hadn’t harmed it much.

We did manage a quick practise dance tonight. Part of Joy’s Waltz, part of the Quickstep routines from Stewart & Jane and also from Kirsty, then Kirsty’s Waltz Nioli to finish off.

Tomorrow we’re intending going to dance class in Brookfield, hence today’s practise. Other than that, nothing much planned.

Going out! – 4 January 2024

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Today we were going in to Glasgow on the bus.

We weren’t going for anything in particular, although Scamp had a free offer of a cup of tea and a cake for two at JL. So that must come first.

Because Scamp was the owner of the golden ticket, she got to collect the tea and a scone each while I was tasked with finding an empty table for two. I got one with a view up Sausage Roll Street, one of my favourite views in Glasgow. JL’s offer was for tea or coffee with a cake or scone with butter, but we had to pay extra for jam. I thought that was a bit mean of JL. Giving you something free, then asking you to pay for part of it. Penny pinching.

The rain had been torrential when we were heading to Glasgow, but when we stepped out of Buchanan Galleries the sun was shining and it remained shining all day long. We walked down Buchanan Street and along Argyle Street then down to Clyde Street, along the Clyde Walkway, then over the suspension bridge before turning right and along past the new Business Centre, turned right there and crossed The Squiggly Bridge to the other half of the Business Centre then back into the city centre with a stop at Nero for a coffee. Not a bad walk, that gave me nearly today’s 10,000 steps.

We hadn’t anything else to do, so we walked back through JL and just managed to catch the X3 for a run home, but not just home, because we stayed on and got off at the shops, a new experience for us, getting the bus to the shops! Scamp got flowers because it was Thursday and we chose some veg, prawns, noodles and sauce to make a stir-fry for dinner.

Scamp had intended taking the tree and decorations down today and I had intended having a practise of the Quickstep, but instead I sourced some pictures of the Kelpies to send to Simonne to add to a Memory Book for her dad. Then I wrote a message to Hazy and finally I updated the OS of my blog. It was only about two years out of date! If I get this blog posted, that will be most of my To-Do’s, To-Done! Yes, I know the apostrophe shouldn’t be there!

PoD was a photo of the Metropolitan Cathedral of St Andrew down by the Clyde in Glasgow.

A good day out, just walking. No plans for tomorrow, but some things still on the To-Do list.

Another wet day – 2 January 2024

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Another day when it never really stopped raining.

It wasn’t a day for doing much. I didn’t go out to take any photos, because it was raining and there seemed to be little point in getting wet when I didn’t have a subject in mind.

Instead, I took a tabletop shot. My subject today was a Sarracenia plant. It’s a carnivorous pitcher plant and quite a small one. It feeds on insects that fall into the liquid at the bottom of the funnel shaped ‘leaves’. I had a bigger variety last year that was happy to grow outside, even in winter. It survived temperatures down to -10ºc. Unfortunately the drought in June 2023 was too much for this bog plant. I’m being more careful with this slightly more delicate one.

As usual, the actual photos took about half an hour to take and a couple of hours to process. But I was fairly happy with the result.

Dinner tonight was Potato, Cabbage and Bacon. An old favourite with both of us, of course, Scamp doesn’t eat the bacon. We watched Sing 2 The second in what might become a series of comedy digital cartoons. Not much of a story line, really, but made up for it with the excellent dialogue. I laughed and so did Scamp, so it was a winner.

After dinner I struggled for a good two hours trying to get Word and Excel to speak to each other, but eventually gave up. I think I’ll cancel my free 30 day subscription before it runs out. Even worse, It looks like my old Toshiba laptop may be on its last legs. I got a message tonight ti say that there was a problem with the cooling system and to shut down immediately. Immediately is not a word the Tosh understands. Immediately usually means an arthritic ten minute wait. I’ll leave it to cool down gently tonight and see what can be done about it tomorrow.

No real plans for tomorrow. Scamp is booked for coffee in the morning with Isobel. I’ve got a visit to the nurse in the afternoon to see how my BP is doing now that I’ve reduced my meds a bit. I’ve a set of results ready to bamboozle her with my Excel skills!

… a new one just begun – 1 January 2024

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A new day and a new year. I wonder what it will bring.

The weather was fine today and we were going for a walk. Not driving out for a walk as I’d intended. Scamp though a walk nearer to home would be better. We walked down to Broadwood loch where there were more than the usual amount of photogs, all carrying some heavy duty glass. I had the A6500 with short and very short lenses. One of the photogs asked if I was there to photograph the Smew (pronounced Sm you). I told him “No” then he proceeded to tell me that a smew is a small white diving bird with strong black patterns and a white crest. I’d heard of it, but not being a ‘twitcher’, I wasn’t really interested, but he seemed quite excited about it. Then I recognised him. He used to teach at the same school as me, long time ago. I let him go and put the camera back in my bag in case someone else would give us more directions to the best smew spotting places.

We walked over the dam and round the exercise machines. First time I’ve been there for ages, not since last year in fact 🙂 . Then up past the shops, all of which were closed, but some had lights on inside. Scamp guessed that they were taking down the Christmas decorations and getting the Easter eggs in. I think she might be right. I had a few shots in the bag, so we walked back home.

Lots of computer stuff to do at the end of a month. Photos to move into long term storage disks and catalogs to, well, catalog! All just the housekeeping that computers don’t do for themselves. I started it and let it run while Scamp made Scrambled Egg with Smoked Salmon. Very nice. We had it on toast after I cleaned out the toaster and then managed to remove some charred remains of long gone bread from the inside. It actually worked after that. Perfectly happily toasting bread, too lightly, but that’s not a problem. Maybe there was some bread crumbs in the electromagnet and my shaking and poking got rid of it, or maybe it was just a lucky day when it felt like working. Anyway, we had toast.

Dinner tonight was a strange but interesting cooked mix of veg for Scamp and a very nice sirloin steak for me. Both washed down with a glass of Merlot courtesy of Jamie & Simonne. Thank you both.

PoD turned out to be a photo of some gulls looking for that Smew!

No plans for tomorrow, yet, but I’m sure we’ll find something to do!

 

 

Frost then Snow – 30 December 2023

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We woke to thick frost over everything, but no snow.

The weather forecast device we have in the living room was predicting snow and the sky was the right colour for it. We reckoned it was only a matter of time until the white stuff started falling. Just about 11am the first flakes appeared, think and whisky, but soon they fattened up and when the wind caught them they started filling the sky. First snow we’ve seen falling since about February. We’ve woken to snow lying about a month ago, but this is the first time in months since we’ve seen it falling.

According to the weather fairies, the snow wouldn’t last, but would be replaced by sleet and then rain. It took a bit longer than we’d anticipated for that to happen, but after lunch I thought I could safely bundle up and go for a walk and hopefully some pictures in St Mo’s. The first shot I took turned out to be the PoD. It was a couple of folk walking home in the snow carrying their shopping. I liked the sky and the shape of the photo. I got about another twenty shots, but the snow was indeed melting now and it was slippery underfoot. Not from ice, but because the snow was lying on sodden ground and it tended to slide away from my feet as I was walking. I was glad to get home into a warm house when I’d done what I intended to do. By then the road up past the house was almost clear and slushy.

When I got home, Scamp was half way through a cartoon film, ‘Sing’. I usually can’t stand these digital cartoons, but this one was funny. Lots of one liners and smart comments. I watched it through from where I entered the story and could see why Scamp found it entertaining. We’ve lined up ‘Sing 2’ for the next dull afternoon.

Dinner tonight was to be Paella. Dead simple as long as you’re organised and I was. It turned out almost right. Rice could maybe have done with another five minutes cooking, but that would be nit picking. Watched the second semifinal of Christmas University Challenge. We’re leaving the final for tomorrow night.

That was it for a cold wet day. The snow was good for me. It gave me different challenges for photography and although I only took a few shots, I was happy with the three I short listed.

No real plans for tomorrow. We think we have everything we need as far as food is concerned, but if the weather is good to us, we may go for a walk somewhere local.

Off east to see the horses – 29 December 2023

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I’d promised Scamp an afternoon at the Kelpies and I hate to disappoint her.

So we drove over to Helix Park in Falkirk where the Kelpies live. It started off as a beautiful day, but by the time we got there, the clouds were rolling in. Paid for parking and walked over the canal bridge, then down the path beside the Forth & Clyde canal to admire the great beasts. I got a few photos as we were walking and we also passed the RE: Wild Thing which is an installation made from recycled bike parts made to represent the nature and wildflowers within the park. Very clever recycling (pun intended).

We crossed over the outfall of the canal and back to the main event, the Kelpies themselves. We both noticed that there were lights inside them today. I imagine they look quite impressive after nightfall. There was a small skating rink in the park, but I wasn’t intending going on the ice. I never did fancy ice skating. Thankfully there wasn’t much of a queue at the cafe and we could sit in relative comfort with our coffee and a scone, watching the folk taking selfies and group photos in front of the sculptures.

It was quite cold today and as the sky was clearing, it seemed to get even colder. Maybe that was because I knew the temperature was going to be sub zero tonight, or maybe the wind was stealing all the heat away.
We had one more walk round the horses and then walked back to the car, then drove home via Tesco for a couple of bags of messages. On the way back to the house I stopped at Fred’s house to hand in a Christmas/Birthday prezzy for him and a box of chocolates for Margo. Poor Fred’s birthday is on the 25th of December! He must have felt hard done by when he was younger, only getting one lot of prezzies!

We watched an entertaining Celebrity Masterchef. It’s not every day you’ll hear me saying that, but this one was special, because it was the food critics who were cooking for the previous winners of Masterchef. I don’t know how faked it was, but the celebs really did seem to be having a hard time getting things finished in the timescale. Worth looking for on iPlayer if only for the looks on the critics faces!

Dinner was a delicious Chicken Milanese. Chicken fillet battered flat with a rolling pin, coated in breadcrumbs and fried in the frying pan. Served with potatoes. A Scamp classic.

PoD was, of course The Kelpies, viewed from the other side of the canal from my usual place.

Tomorrow we might get some of the white stuff. Temperature is already -1ºc, right in the middle of the danger zone. Need to find our snow shovels perhaps.

Glasgow in the rain – 28 December 2023

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Based on Annie Lennox songs, it wasn’t so much “September in the rain”, more like “Here comes the rain again”!

I took the bus in to Glasgow this morning to meet Alex and to get some shots of the lights in George Square and maybe St Enoch’s Square. I did think of driving in, but Scamp might need the car and besides, I’d still got half of Kevin Bridges monologue to listen to, so I would be entertained on the way.

We met at Buchanan bus station and walked down to our usual starting point at Cafe Nero near the Royal Concert Hall. A cup of coffee each and we planned our day. It was all all covered by the square mile of Glasgow city centre. We’d been here before and there was no point in heading out of town on such a dull, wet day. Best to stay central and be able to nip into a shop if it got too wet.

First stop was Princes Square just in time to shelter us from the first deluge. A few shots of the escalators, still done up in their Christmas regalia and a walk round the painting gallery and by the time we walked out the rain was gone and the sky was back to grey again. I had thought of sheltering in the Apple shop which would have been nearer, but I could just hear Alex’s cries of “How much?!”

St Enoch’s was a bit of a let down. Not enough stalls, not enough fairground rides and because of that, not enough folk to become models for us. It was time for lunch and as usual that would be in Paesano.

Paesano, is the pizza shop for folk who like pizza. It was rammed, as I knew it would be, but there is almost always a table for two. For four or six or eight, you’ll have to wait, but two can usually be squeezed in. Alex is settling in to the rhythm of the place and has his two favourites. Either a number 3 (with anchovies, olives and capers) or a number 5 (cooked ham and mushrooms) both with tomato sugo but no cheese. I’d also go with a number 3 or a number 5 (but with sugo and cheese), but I’d add a number 7 (with Fennel sausage). In reality I’d have any of them, bur realistically, not all at the same time! When we left, the queue was out the door and along the street. We must have just hit the sweet spot!

George Square as getting busy when we walked up to it and we did get a few shots. Mostly we both seemed to be concentrating on the roundabout with the traditionally painted horses on spiral poles and the stalls selling vastly overpriced sparkly fairies for hanging on the tree. No use to Alex as his tree had come down yesterday to prevent his grandson, Olly, from doing any more damage to it. I did find more interesting material in the Chair-O-Planes, especially the close-ups of the uncomfortable looking shiny chrome seats reflecting the coloured lights.

By late afternoon, the light was failing and for a ‘golden hour’ there was enough light to shoot by, but not enough to dilute the colours. After that hour, it became too dark and we resorted to taking photos of the reflections of the decorations in the puddles of rain water outside the fenced off square. My PoD was one of those reflections. It looked good on the big 21” screen, but on the laptop it looked a bit dull and disappointing. It still held its place of PoD.

We walked back to the bus station and said our goodbyes, agreeing to meet again next year. Which hopefully will be in two weeks or so!Another hour of Mr Bridges life story carried me home, again in the rain.

I didn’t really need any dinner, but Scamp’s “Just Soup” was too much to resist. We watched the first semi-final of Celebrity University Challenge later in the evening while Scamp watched Antique’s Roadshow while processed some of the 200 odd photos I’d take today.

Tomorrow looks like a bright sunny day for a change. A glimmer of light in the darkness. Let’s hope it works out that way.