Category: Food

Off to the dance – 8 September 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Tea dance today, so we were off to the hall and we arrived there ahead of time!

As you will have read, yesterday’s blog did a disappearing act never to be found, so I spent most of the morning rewriting it.

Lunch was a piece ’n’ banana and a glass of orange juice. Then we were off to Glenburn Community Centre. We were one of the first ones there, for once. That’s what happens when you leave the house at the proper time and don’t get caught up in traffic. I didn’t think we did all that well with our dancing today. Too many mistakes in the simple dances like the waltz, but there two dancers who stood out. Before they even held hands, you could tell that these were semi-pros. We’d seen the girl before dancing by herself at Gorbals. She was a bit strange, other worldly, but my, could that pair dance. One thing I’ll say about the group who go to the tea dances is that they are never overawed by the semi-pros, nor are they critical of beginners like us, because, despite what Scamp will say, we are beginners.  HOwever, we did a brilliant salsa routine just before we left.  That made up for all the mistakes.

We were sitting with a couple we’ve not spoken to before and I doubt if we’ll rush back to be with them again. I found them quite condescending, but Scamp liked her golden shoes! Thankfully two others came to join the table and we’d met them many times before, and a good laugh.

We left early, just after 3pm to avoid the worst of the school rush and came home by the M74. A much quicker route compared to that bloody Kingston Bridge. In fact we only took about 40 minutes which beats our usual 50 – 60 minutes along the M8 / M80. We might try that one again.

Tonight’s dinner was to be Bacon and Borlotti Beans, but we didn’t have any mushrooms for it, so I walked down to the shops to get some. It had been raining heavily in the afternoon and there were puddles everywhere. One of the oak trees that line the path was starting to lose its leaves and the leaves in the puddle made PoD.

Later when we tried to catch the news, it became apparent that things were not right with the Queen. Half an hour later the announcement was made that she’d died. She was a good age, but didn’t manage her century. It’s always sad when someone dies and so it was tonight.

Tomorrow we’re intending to parcel up a bag, in a bag and then put the combination of bags into another bag. I hope she likes it.

Rain! – 6 September 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Today we drove to Stirling for lunch.

A week or so ago we went to Coast, a restaurant on the banks of the Clyde. Today we went to its sister restaurant, River House in Stirling. We’d been there many times in its previous incarnation and the food was always exceptional. Today we weren’t disappointed. Steak and Sausage pie for me. Fish ’n’ Skinny Chips for Scamp. We both agreed the owners may be different, but the food had remained the same.

We couldn’t decide whether to go shopping or head home. Eventually we decided to just go home and I changed the route, to take us over the wild switchback that is the Tak Ma Doon road. I wanted some photos form my favourite place near Loch Coulter and it didn’t disappoint today, although I must admit the sky was a lot greyer than the one you see in the PoD. Just one of the tweaks that’s possible with new software.

We had just left the parking place when the first raindrops hit the windscreen. After that, the rain just got heavier and heavier. It wasn’t the easiest drive home, but the wee blue car dealt with it well. However, we got soaked just running in to the house from the car!

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon researching new mobile phones. I’m not exactly settled yet, but I think it’s going to be another Android phone. So may different prices with confusing ‘deals’ from different providers. After spreadsheeting the results, I think things are becoming clearer and the ‘obvious’ deals are maybe not so good as they seem. It’s a changing picture.

Strangely, both Scamp and I had an upset stomach tonight. Maybe that great restaurant in Stirling wasn’t as good as we though it was, because it’s unusual for both of us to be affected.

No big plans for tomorrow. It really depends on the weather, as usual.

Just a lazy Sunday – 28 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

I’d thought we might drive down to Auchinstarry for a walk along the canal, but Scamp had other ideas.

After lunch, Scamp was looking longingly at the front grass and I could see her arguing with herself that it was a warm, dry day and the grass really did need cutting. I, on the other hand was going to make a Tagine with a couple of pieces of lamb neck I had taken out of the freezer last night. Decision made. Scamp would cut the front grass and I would make my tagine. There was no point in me doing the grass cutting, Scamp would only go and redo it … properly. Since I’m the meat-eater of the family, she was happy for me to cook my dinner.

That’s how it turned out. I let the slow cooker do the hard work of making the tagine after I’d filled it with chopped onions, fried lamb chunks, lots of different spices, chopped dates, chopped apricots and some orange juice. I took the slow cooker up to the back bedroom to bubble away to its heart’s content. That’s the great thing about slow cookers, you can dump them anywhere there’s a power socket. They don’t need to be taking up real estate on the kitchen worktop. Scamp was still grass cutting and trimming and blowing the cuttings away with the blower, so I wrote an email to Alex with some photos.

Speaking of photos, today’s PoD is a yellow rose that’s just “going over” to use the technical term for losing all its petals. Not my best work, but I couldn’t be bothered going anywhere today. Too much driving in the past few days and no real wish to go for yet another walk in St Mo’s.

A thin gin and tonic after we were both done made the slide from afternoon to early evening quite pleasant. Dinner was OK. Just OK. In retrospect, I’d have preferred potatoes or even rice with the tagine, but I’d opted for couscous. It was too dry and it didn’t really go with Scamp’s Ratatouille. I must make a note on my recipe not to use couscous. I’ve never really liked it anyway!

Watched an amazing drive by Verstappen coming from 14th on the grid (after losing his pole position because he’d used too many engine components) to win the Belgian GP. I almost felt sorry for Leclerc only able to achieve a 6th place after some startlingly poor tactical decisions by Ferrari. It would appear that the team have a death wish at present.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard about his troubles with squirrels or mice eating his big tomatoes, but leaving the small ones alone. It being a bank holiday tomorrow in England, he has an extra long weekend.

No plans as yet for tomorrow. We’ll take it as it comes.

Dancing, Dodgy Cars and Coast – 27 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Drove to Brookfield for dance class, but with half an eye on lunch at Coast!

The traffic was fairly heavy going both ways on the M8, but we had left slightly earlier than usual and had time to spare. Car did a strange thing, it beeped three rapid beeps then the engine appeared to turn off and immediately on again. That’s a bit disconcerting and something I’ll add to my growing list of problems when I take it in for service next month.

Dancing was almost all about ballroom today. I think the teachers are aware that we haven’t had much actual teaching recently and were attempting to fill that gap. We started with the Vogue Waltz which we originally learned at the Perth weekend, so it was really a reprise for us. Next was the Charnwood Cha-Cha which we kind of knew. By “kind of” I mean that Scamp kind of knew it, but I was floundering! Finally we did the Jet Lag Waltz which was totally new for us at least, although some of the others seemed to know it. That’s a lot of different dances to get through in an hour and a half, but we were able to film the Jet Lag Waltz and hopefully Scamp will be able to decode it, chop it into manageable pieces and feed it back to me. I hope so, because next week the teachers are off to Tenerife for a week.

After a Midnight Jive to finish today’s session we were driving to Langbank to have lunch in Coast. That’s when I found out that half my stored destinations had disappeared from the memory of the sat nav. I’m beginning to think that the glitch in the morning caused that information to disappear. This really is the craziest car I’ve ever had the misfortune to drive. We did eventually get a route to the restaurant, but it was a different one from the route the Nissan app had given us yesterday!

The restaurant was fairly busy, but not too busy. My main course was the same as I’d had the last time I was there, Spicy Sausage Rigatoni Ragu with Penne pasta replacing the Rigatoni (a sign of the times). Scamp had Smoked Haddock and Salmon Gratin which she had had at the sister restaurant in Falkirk. We are creatures of habit. Both meals were declared excellent.

We drove over the Erskine bridge then through Bearsden and Kirkintilloch to get home avoiding a third day of the misery of the Kingston Bridge. It probably took longer, but we were travelling all the time. One little misfire from the blue car on the way home.

Back home I took the opportunity of some sunshine to take some more dragonfly photos in St Mo’s, but PoD went to a hoverfly feeding on a wild Scabious flower.

Watched a fairly boring Belgian GP Qualifying and later caught up with Shetland!

No plans for tomorrow. Maybe a day of not driving?

Dinner in Hamilton – 26 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp was out in the morning and I was off the leash.

Scamp was out at her FitSteps class in the morning and I had the morning at least to myself, to do with as I wished. The trouble was I didn’t have anything in mind to do. I watered the chilli plants and checked on their condition. Both the old Jalapeño plant and the new hot looking thin chillies were doing fine. The old plant has two Jalapeños which are fattening up nicely but the chilli plant I brought back from Jans Vans in Skye are producing either long, thin, straight chillies or a strange corkscrew variety, both on the same plant. The Jalapeños are staying green as Jalapeños usually do, but the Skye chillies are starting to turn red. I’m not sure what’s stronger, the red or the green. I must try them some day, to compare and contrast.

I spoke to Ray while he was making his lunch and caught up with all that’s happening in his world.  I’d hoped that he would agree to join the Auld Guys for a beer or two in Glasgow, but he carefully avoided the subject.  However it was good to keep in touch.

In the afternoon I took a camera out to see what I could find in St Mo’s. Lots of dragonflies about, but the PoD went to a little grey and black spider on its web, just sitting beside the boardwalk.

In the evening we got dressed to go out to John & Marion’s in Hamilton. It’s ages since we’ve been together with Covid, holidays and weddings we’ve passed like ships in the night. All the talk tonight was of weddings and photo albums and catching up with what the families are doing now. While Scamp and Marion were discussing the photos and the weddings, John and I were planning a day with the Auld Guys in Glasgow. Hopefully that will come to pass soon.

We eventually left around 11pm and were home and parked just before the witching hour.  I got a surprise present from Marion.  A wee bottle of Limoncello!  All the way from Sorrento.  How nice was that!

Early(ish) rise tomorrow to drive to Brookfield for dance class, but with the sweetener of lunch booked at Coast in Langbank.

Dancin’ – 25 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Tea dance. The first one in ages.

An accident on the M8 set us back by at least 20mins on our way to the first tea dance in at least a couple of months. We shouldn’t have complained, the poor soul(s) in the badly bashed red car on the hard shoulder were having a far worse day than us.

We drove on and ignored the route the sat nav was giving us and instead we forged our own route, one the sat nav had given us months ago. Why it changed its mind on the best route to the outskirts of Paisley is anyone’s guess. It was a good day for a drive round the motorways of Glasgow, even if some idiot towing a caravan almost forced us off the road. Some folk don’t realise that sitting a driving test before you take a car on the road is not an option, it’s the law. Maybe he just forgot he was towing a massive big white brick behind him. Maybe he was a moron. Probably all three.

We danced a decent waltz today, especially as it’s been so long since we’ve danced among so many people. Yes, we danced on the cruise, but that was in a tiny little elliptical floor. No room to show off our catalog of mistakes. Today we had the whole room to impress with our footwork. We even managed a reasonable Social Foxtrot as well, but we did stumble a bit in the rumba. More practise needed there to smarten up the routine. Lots of sequence dances in between and most of them I got right.

We left early to try to avoid the traffic on the Kingston Bridge. Scamp thought the traffic was lighter than yesterday, but I’m not so sure. In retrospect, I should have taken the M74 rather than the M8. Short term pain for long term gain.

I went for a walk in St Mo’s later and found a compliant dragonfly that sat very patiently for me to get some ‘head on’ shots of it. It almost feels like dragonflies, and damselflies too, are studying you while you’re studying them. The head to head shot got PoD, but a close second was a little hoverfly pretending it was a bee on a wild Scabious flower. The wee thing was completely covered in pollen and you could actually see the pollen on the stamens of the flower. That’s how pollination works and that’s why we need insects, even if some of them are a bit of a pain, literally!

One of Scamp’s specialities for dinner today, Potatoes with Cabbage and Bacon. Scamp going for the vegetarian version without the bacon. It’s one of those meals that doesn’t sound as if it works, but it does.

Tomorrow, Scamp is heading for her FitSteps class. I’ve got a couple of phone calls to make.

Out in the wide world – 24 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

Both of us … together!

Back on the cruise, in what seems like a different world now, I felt a clicking form my dance shoes. I thought it would go away, but it didn’t. Today I was going to look for a new pair. If time allowed after that, we would go for a walk in one of the parks on the south side.

The weather didn’t look that clever in the morning, but the weather app maintained that all would be well in the afternoon, and gradually the sky lightened, the rain stopped and we went out.

We drove to the shoe shop in Rutherglen, hoping to get parked outside like we did last time, but today luck wasn’t with us, so we drove on to Tesco and parked there. Long story short, I got a pair of plain black dance shoes that seem to fit perfectly. Job done. Of course Scamp also saw a new pair of dance shoes and just had to have them!

After a couple of wrong turnings, ok, three wrong turnings, we found our way to Bellahouston Park. We had a wander through the park and found an elephant, a rusty, steel, life size elephant.  Cast from melted down scrap locomotives from India and South Africa. Locomotives that had originally been made in Glasgow. A photo of that “Nellyfunk’s Bum” became PoD, but it was close run thing between that and a couple of other images that may make their way into Flickr.

Lunch was in the Art Lovers’ Café in the House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston.  Peppermint tea for Scamp and a decent cup of coffee for me with two massive scones to keep the hunger pangs at bay, although I did fancy the Pork Belly with Potato Cake, chargrilled spring onions, Spinach and Mustard Cream sauce.  Maybe next time!

We drove home by the M8 and over a Kingston Bridge that was beginning to clog up to its usual afternoon traffic jam. Then Scamp noticed warnings that more roadworks were about to start in a couple of weeks and would last until January 2023! We’ve had months of roadworks earlier in the year, they finished in June before another set began in July. It seems that every month there has been roadworks in this stretch of motorway. I doubt if this latest set will be the last. Unfortunately for us, this is the route we take to dance class every week.

Just as we were driving in to the estate, and home, another electronic sensor in the car reported a failure. This time it’s the tyre pressure sensor which reported an error. The car goes in to the garage for service next month. I doubt if anyone will be able to diagnose the fault, but they will reset the failure log and tell me it’s fixed. Then they will want me to come in and choose my next new car. It might be a Nissan, but I doubt it. It most certainly won’t be coming from a dealer who can’t fix the problems with my current car.

I had a bit of sad news today. Jack Doyle, who I worked with for many years at school, passed away a few weeks ago. I’ll always remember Jack’s sense of humour. He was a great guy who drank beer, but never lager and told great stories, so he did!

Tomorrow I’m hopefully breaking in a new pair of dance shoes.

A dull day – 23 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

As we stroll into autumn, the temperature appears to drop significantly.

Having said that, it was warmer outside than it was in the house today. But oh what a dull day. From when we woke it seemed to grow darker and darker. Eventually Scamp said we should get up before it got too dark.

By lunchtime the day had lightened a bit, but it didn’t brighten up much more after that. There were occasional spells of sunshine, but they were few and far between. I wasn’t at my brightest either today, finding something wrong with almost everything. Even after I found that I’d achieved an ‘Explore’ in Flickr for my loaf picture, I just grumbled that there was nothing special with the photo and why was it chosen for the ultimate Flickr accolade?

I did manage to get a PoD. It was a Echinacea from the front garden. It’s a bit faked, because some of its petals had been chewed and I replaced them with other ones, but you’d have to be very picky to find which ones were replaced. We really thought these cone flowers were annuals and were surprised when they produced new flower heads in the early summer. They’re still flowering well now that it’s almost autumn.

Dinner for me was tea and toast tonight, because my stomach was a bit upset. I think it might have been a slightly sour and very dry Victoria plum I had in the afternoon, but it prevented me from cooking pasta tonight. Scamp chose to have a baked potato instead.

Tomorrow looks like the best day of the week if the weather fairies have it right. We may go out for a run somewhere. It will give us a chance to buy some of the cut-price petrol that’s appeared in the pumps, perhaps.

Spiders in the rain – 22 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

It was a wet day today. No real incentive to go out.

Scamp drove up to the chemist to get her meds, but I stayed at home. She walked over to St Mo’s later to post a couple of parcels and got thoroughly soaked for her trouble. So badly soaked was she that her raincoat is still drying in the kitchen.

Earlier I almost managed to choose a dry spell for a walk in St Mo’s. Lots of spiderwebs with their attendant spiders easily visible after the rain. One of those shots got PoD. I was quite pleased with the out of focus raindrops hanging from the web. It almost looked like the Milky Way to me. Although I did get wet, I wasn’t nearly as wet as Scamp was later in the afternoon.

Spoke to Fred for a while later and discussed paintings he’d done and sketches I’d done. I must get that back bedroom cleared out and create some space to get some painting done.

Dinner tonight was a very tasteless Spice Tailor daal. With leftover chicken from Saturday’s dinner. It’s not often we have a failure with Spice Tailor kits.

Scamp and I played Rummikub later because there really is nothing worth watching on terrestrial TV. Maybe we should have a rummage through the offerings on Amazon Prime and Netflix.

Maybe it was just a bad day and tomorrow will be better. It doesn’t really look like it though. Wednesday looks the best day of the week. We might go somewhere then.

 

There’s a light – 20 August 2022

Posted on by Zogman

It’s “… at the end of the tunnel”, I believe. Or, it might just be “… over at the Frankenstein Place …”

I held off until after midday before doing today’s Covid test. I was hoping for a line at ‘C’ but no line at ’T’. Well, it wasn’t quite like that, but the line at the ’T’ was the faintest I’ve seen. I deemed it enough of a success to show a step in the right direction, but just not enough to allow us to go to the big 70th party with a clear conscience. I certainly felt a lot better than I’ve been for at least a week. It would have been good to go to the party, but June and Ian were going in our place, so the family was represented at Hamilton Racecourse.

I managed to do my “8 active hours”, but didn’t quite reach the heady heights of 10,000 steps. I did go out in the afternoon to grab some photos over in St Mo’s. My favourite by far was the broken branch of a tree. I’ve seen it a few times but never photographed it. Today the lighting was good enough and I did take that photo which became PoD.

Earlier in the afternoon, Scamp and I went for a walk to the shops to get something for today’s lunch and also to get a chicken for tonight’s dinner. Both items were purchased. Cold meat for lunch, both for Scamp and for myself. The chicken was cooked to perfection by Scamp, because I’m not that skilled at roasting things in the oven successfully yet. Generally I overcook them and they end up a bit too dry.

The European Championships trundles on. Today was the men’s single diving championship and it was amazingly boring. At least the mountain biking circuit showed grit and determination from the contestants, but watching punters jumping off diving boards into a swimming pool isn’t breathtaking as far as I’m concerned. However, the UK showed its mettle by achieving a silver for its controlled splashes.

We watched another episode of Shetland tonight wondering who they will get to replace “Perez” and why. It’s a convoluted story with people dropping in and out from various different soap operas. It gives the viewers the chance to ask “What was he/she in?”

I’m not doing a test tomorrow. I’ll assume that the faint line will be almost invisible by then and I’ll be able to go shopping in Tesco without a mask.