Mythical beasties

I spent a few days in the highlands last week partly seeing how far north I could manage to travel from my base in Dornoch, but also to entice some shy beasties out to play.

The first night was spent at Fort Augustus which is on the Caledonian Canal as it runs into Loch Ness. Nessie was present only in the artistic interpretation shown above. Neither did she turn up as hoped when I stopped at Castle Urquhart on the shores of the Loch.

I was miffed, as I’d grown up hearing about my grandfather’s sighting of the monster some 80 years ago. Sig Other commented acerbically about family traditions of visits by mythical beasts, at which point I harrumphed and shut up. Loch Ness

Despite travelling a fair bit around and about, no dolphins appeared to me either. Lots of cavorting seals by the shores of numerous firths. Those photos are still in Sig Other’s camera.

Although the wildlife was largely in absentia, the sun was out and the beaches were as advertised with foamy surf and few other humans around.

However, I did achieve one goal of my trip and that was to find an old friend whose address I had lost in a long ago house move. I am quite proud of my amature detective efforts as I nipped into the public loos in Tain and asked the women guarding the facilities if they knew of my friend. Delightedly they said yes, and pointed me in her direction. (Tain is a small town.)

Even better, B seemed happy to see me despite the shock she must have had at me arriving out of the blue after some 14 years of silence. Kettles were boiled, high-speed gossip exchanged and I left with her contact details.

Although I felt some trepidation at boldly knocking on her door, I was reasonably confident of a welcome. We’d long ago agreed that as neither of us were any use at keeping in touch, that no matter how long it was, we’d pick up our friendship when we met again.

She said something rather touching … that “I carried a part of her past and she carried a part of mine”. We met in our first careers more than thirty years ago. This was a turbulent time for both of us professionally and personally, thus we were important supports to each other during these years. I no longer have anyone else in my life who knew the highs and lows and neither does she, so a renewal of our contact means some good/bad old stories can be dusted down and reappraised in the light of maturity and distance.

But this is also a reminder to me to trust in the bonds of real friendship no matter how stretched these might become.

Er, I’ll stop now as I suspect I'm beginning to channel Francis Gay's* column.
http://www.sundaypost.com/frangay.htm

*Another mythical beastie!

Visualising summer

Can I have my money back? This is not the summer I ordered online last month. No, what you’ve sent is wet, thundery and miserable. I want the blazing hot sunshine I was promised by that there weatherman. And by all the foolish optimists who spent the whole of May telling each other that the summer would be long and hot.

I suppose I’ll have to make do with a virtual summer. One that happens in my mind, or in memory.

To start this off here is a pic of a BBQ, the one and only so far this year that Sig Other and I have managed to create. We are a bit out of practice, so some things got closer to the charcoal than planned!

I adore veggie BBQ food. I used to like non-veggie, but that was a quarter century ago or more. I got hooked on BBQ food when, as a teenager I went to Canada for a stay. There, on the spacious balcony of a distant cousin’s penthouse flat on Yonge St in Toronto, we BBQ’d every night. This was BBQ at its most civilised.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonge_Street

It continued during my stay in some other distant cousin’s cabin on Lake Kashagawigamog. There are no pics of this lake as the interwebby thingy is not a suitable place to display my first and last attempt at fishing. It was a traumatic event, sitting in a small boat in the middle of the night in the middle of the lake being eaten by insects and dangling live bait off a line into the water. Most hideously, I can never forget being accidentally slapped in the face by a wriggling dying frog with which one clumsy fishing companion had baited his hook. Fortunately, I managed not to catch anything, so never faced cooking and eating something I’d killed myself –shudder!

Eventually I had to come home, leaving behind sun and BBQs but I soon invested in a small BBQ for Dad’s next birthday, so I could convert the family to this way of eating. They were happy to be converted, but we never managed the level of civilisation of my first BBQs. And rarely has the weather managed to stay hot enough to provide optimum BBQ conditions either.

I became rather adept at creating homemade dead-burgers, but have never managed to find a way of making a veggie meat-substitute burger. Until recently!

TVP burger

Soak TVP (textured vegetable protein) in water for ten minutes until it is swollen but not at all runny.
Prepare breadcrumbs (I used gluten free wholemeal bread, as it is so much lighter than ordinary)
A small amount of tahini
Very finely chop spring onion
Very finely chop a little fresh herbs of your choice
Beaten egg
Seasoning

Mix all together adding whatever extra is needed to make the mix fairly sticky and shape into very small patties. Large sized ones will crumble too easily.

These are still too delicate to grill straight onto the BBQ, so use a vegetable basket or fish griller or some other tool to contain the burgers and so that they can be turned over easily.

The easiest way to cook veggie BBQ is to skewer a selection of veggies on bamboo skewers and baste with BBQ sauce. My favourite vegetables are aubergine, which is great, sliced lengthways and brushed with marinade, as is courgette.

Halloumi cheese is substantial enough to withstand the BBQ treatment as long as you avoid the low fat one, which is too watery, so shrinks to nothing.

But actually, the very best thing about BBQs is the social aspect. It is great to share food outdoors and to take ages over cooking, chatting and enjoying a small bottle or two of Peroni, and leaving the clearing up till some other time.

Fake food and fatuous reminiscences

Recently I heard about vegan black pudding. In a trivial bout of synchronicity, I found it in a farm shop in Lancaster some days later and promptly bought it. It is called V-Pud and contains beetroot and herbs as well as other meat substitutes.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/first-vegetarian-black-pudding-has-lancashire-meat-lovers-spluttering-424652.html
The article is brief, but the comments are worth scanning as clearly, this has divided views in the vegan/veggie world because it is made by the producers of meat products. Some people have expressed opinions that to buy this is to prop up the animal slaughterers while others are simply glad to have an alternative to a food they liked before becoming veggie. I can see both sides of this argument and have felt that before in regard to McSween’s veggie haggis. In that particular case I don’t have to act on any philosophical beliefs as although I quite like the product, it really doesn’t like me. In fact I prefer Hall’s veggie haggis as it does respect my digestive system, but Hall’s also make vast quantities of food out of dead animals.

There is also the illogical argument from some carnivores who fail to think through why some veggies would want acceptable substitutes for common foods. In our culinary tradition, it is just easier to cook sausage shaped stuff and to continue with some form of non-meat and two veg.

I had no inspiration for a recipe with the V Pud, so cooked a full vegan breakfast for my daughter and self. This consisted of hash browns, baked beans, V Pud and fake bacon. It was fine and my daughter who has never eaten non-veggie black pudding enjoyed it, although she said it was a little bit minty tasting. Her other comment was that she'd prefer to have a veggie version of Lorne sausage. I never liked that, so had never thought of it. I can't see this happening as Lorne sausage is probably only eaten locally hereabouts so there wouldn't be much of a market for a meat free version.

On the whole, the V Pud was ok, but unless I was doing brekky for a vegan I probably won’t buy it again for some time.

Daughter graciously pretended to listen to my reminiscences about black pudding while eating. I recalled buying black pudding suppers from the local chippy as a teenager on the way home from the youth centre disco’s in the 70’s. These were ideal snacks as they were halved puddings deep fried in batter and cost 10p.

10p was half of my pocket money in those days, the other half being spent on entry fee to the youth club disco. My friend E was given 50p for her allowance. I’m not sure if that underlay some of the adolescent conflicts that frequently arose between us, but it did not help!

E and I were either “awfy, awfy close” or “awfy, awfy in the huff” throughout the mid 70’s. In time we drifted apart, aided by her marriage to an Eastern European missionary and their eventual settlement in Scandinavia. Is it cynical of me to comment, that if you fancy being a missionary, selling your god in Scandinavia is more comfortable than some other places? But wherever she and her family are, I wish her well.