Good-bye, Bombay Saphire. I have a new love.

An independent whiskey shop opened its doors on Union Street the other month. One evening, as we were walking by, hubby dragged me in, “just for a look”. “Fine,” I said, “but you’ll owe me.” (I said this because whiskey doesn’t taste good and looking at whiskey is so. very. boring.) And then I saw the wall of gin. Yes. The wall of gin. And then the kind whiskey shop owner let me taste some of the different gins. And then hubby became bored and wanted to leave the shop, but I didn’t find it boring any more and wanted to stay. Eventually, hubby won out and we had to leave. I went away with Sipsmith. Not only is the label pretty (and a bit freaky if I’m honest), but the gin is very yummy, with its hints of lemon. So yummy that I’ve become a gin drinker again. Yay! No more boring, cold nights for me, and I’ll be up to the gills in quinine so will be unlikely to contract malaria. I win twice.

 

Bacon makes everything (taste) better

Ingredients? Simple: streaky bacon, dates, thyme, toothpicks

Method? Dead easy: partially cook the bacon.  Wrap bacon around date and thyme.  Skewer with a toothpick.  Bake in oven till bacon is crispy.

Who do I have to thank for this recipe? 2001 – Freya Conesa, Germany; 2010 – Terry Lou Allen, Canada.

 

 

Yummy Soup (No Pictures)

Butternut Squash Soup with Dill and Rocket

• Chop one onion and fry it in oil of your choice until slightly brown.  (Fry thinly sliced hot peppers with this if you like soup to be a tiny bit spicy.)
• Slice, peel and chop one butternut squash and add to pot.
• Add enough water to just cover.  Bring to boil and simmer till cooked.
• While the above is coming to a boil, reconstitute dried porcini mushrooms.  Add mushrooms and water to soup.  (How much?  Well, I used about 30g and that rounded out the flavour of the soup without bringing through the flavour of mushrooms.  Add more mushrooms if you’d like the mushroom flavour to come through.)
• Add one clove of crushed garlic while things are coming to the boil.
• Once squash is soft, take off heat, and blend until mostly smooth.
• Add freshly chopped dill to taste and a very large handful of rocket (or leaf of your choice).  Stir through. Serve.

Okay.  No pictures of the soup, but here’s one of the woodpile at my parents’ place.  Are you excited?  I’m excited.

(Alright.  Not really.)

 

Granola

Not too sweet.  Almost savoury.  No wheat.  No refined sugar. Just pure yumminess…And lots of fruit.

• 5 cups oatmeal (the good stuff, not the quick stuff)
• 1/4-1/2 cup (depending on taste) honey, softened or liquid
• 2 tbsp — believe it or not — olive oil
• enough maple syrup (the real stuff) to make it all stick together.
• mixed nuts and seeds
• spices to taste (I like cinnamon and nutmeg.  Ground ginger doesn’t usually go amiss, either.)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Bake at gas mark 2 for about an hour or until the desired colour.  Stir every 10 minutes.

 

I’ve a little…

…spring teapot that I’ve been holding off buying for over a month to see whether I really wanted it.  Turns out I did.

Now I’m going to go hang out at Grand Purl Baa.

 

Quick Update

1. Ha! Turns out our rooster is a chicken.  Show him my boot and he’ll attack ’till his dying breath.  Try to pick him up and he turns tail, not letting me within 10 feet of him.
2. 1st week without hubby is down.  Three more to go.
3. After waiting two years, The Chocolate Tree chocolate has made its way to Aberdeen.  Yay!!!  But wait…It’s cheaper by 60p a bar to buy The Chocolate Tree chocolate online!
4. The planner assigned to us says she will be visiting our swamp site this coming Wednesday or Thursday…or Friday, and from this visit will determine a) whether we can have the two stories we want, and b) whether we’re allowed to tear down the house that’s there.  (‘coz having a a structural engineer’s report saying the building isn’t stable as well as a demolition order from another branch of the council isn’t considered a good enough reason by the planners to tear the place down.  instead, what is supposedly good enough is the more-than-likely-non-engineer planner’s opinion on the matter.)  (taking a deep breath now….and release.)

Today’s theme song: Run Runaway by Slade.

(P.S. See that castle in the Slade video?  That’s Edinburgh Castle.  In 1997, thanks to my friend Stacey and the crazy, wacky things that happen to her, she and I were running around the inside of the castle at 3 o’clock in the morning with a Mr B. from the military police.  Ahhh…to be young again.)

 

Buttertarts and Family Hearts

Waking up to the sparkle of the hard frosts we’ve had the past couple of days is truly good for my Canadian soul.   The chickens aren’t so keen on -7C, but what do they know…they’re chickens.

But that’s an aside.

Today has been a day of family gatherings.  Not the usual kind with everyone converging on Kevin’s/Shelly’s house (because theirs are the ones that hold everybody) with Grandma/Joe cooking up a feast.  Naturally not, because they’re in Canada and I’m in Scotland.

No.  Today I had a quiet visit with my Mom, my Great Aunt Ruby, my Grandma Allen, and my Great Grandma Lawrence.  Today was a day of buttertarts, gods’ eyes (a.k.a. pinwheels), raspberries, and transparent threads that tie family and the generations together.

Aunt Ruby's piecrust recipe, passed on by Mom

Great Grandma's apron keeping me clean and Mom's buttertarts.

Tart shells waiting for this summer's raspberries, and summer's raspberries mean Grandma Allen.

A cuppa with the women in my family.

 

Bok Bok (Translation: meet the girls)

Not yet named. Stuffed with personality. Love to be fed. Not yet laying eggs. Six in total.

See the brown ones? They’re Legbars. They’ll lay blue eggs. The white ones are Orpingtons. My guess is white eggs from them. That’s okay, though, we don’t think less of the Orpingtons (mostly).

 

Seeing Red

Yesterday, I noticed that our plums are beginning to turn red. When I think of plums, I think of hot countries, or, rather, countries with hot summers. I guess that isn’t so. It makes we wonder why we didn’t grow them in Northern Ontario. Mom? I’m hoping you can enlighten me.

Notice how loaded the branches are? And we’ve three trees. You do the math. (Anyone have some recipes they’d like to share? Mom, talk to me about plum preserves, please.)

And these aren’t exactly red — more pinkish, I woud say — but they’re so cheeky that they deserve a spot on the blog. (Yep. They’re actually growing in the gutter.) We also have access to a billion bramble bushes, so if any of you have some blackberry jelly recipes hangin’ about…

And now for something completely different:

Wouldn’t you like this site to be in English? Seriously. I would happily pay £5 for that sandwhich.

And did any of you hear about this when it went down? I didn’t. And my knee-jerk reaction is: who is the crack-head that allowed it to happen? “Let’s see…the earth needs to stop warming up, so why don’t we help things out a bit by injecting something into the atmosphere that combines with water and reflects the sun’s rays? Ya, that should work, and we’ll deal with the ozone-destroying properties later.” Grrr….. Okay. Calm Crystal has returned, is feeling slightly more rational, and still cannot understand why someone would take the risk of possibly harming our atmosphere, even in light of global warming and melting ice-caps. Is it a ‘lesser of two evils’ decision? But perhaps it is. And perhaps it is not risky to release large amounts of sulfur dioxide into the air, the same substance volcanos release when they erupt. I can’t help thinking about this, though, which is a perfect example of good intentions going awry.

And tonight’s final act is LibriVox for all you bibliophiles out there who no longer have time to sit down and read a book. Of course, it’s not the fact that I can now listen to any one of hundreds of books (in the public domain) while doing the dishes that has me excited; it’s that you can volunteer to read any one of hundreds of books (published before 1923) and upload it to the site so that others can listen to it. Heaven has finally arrived for this (soon to be no longer) frustrated reader-out-louder. (Not a real word, I know. Humour me.)