About
Veggie Guide to Glasgow
Cruelty Free Guide to Edinburgh
Accounts
Click here to check if anything new just came in.
July 11 2010
orkney redux
we went back to orkney (again) last week. this time, with j’s mother, sister, sister’s boyfriend, and three dogs. we kept our visits to the main tourist attractions (skara brae, maeshowe, broch of gurness, tomb of the eagles) down and instead spent a lot of time on the dramatic coastlines watching for puffins, and mostly spotting fulmars and razorbills!
yesnaby:
•the yesnaby coastline looking to marwick head•
•the orkney coastline is peppered with all these amazing flowers that grow out of scree•
birsay:
•a view of the tidal causeway to mainland orkney from the brough of birsay•
•jumbled-up norse & pictish settlements on the brough of birsay•
•seabird cliffs on the brough of birsay•
•the barony mills in operation•
•vintage flour sacks•
•the drying floor (there’s a beautiful old kiln directly below that smells of woodsmoke)•
•outside the barony mills•
deerness:
•the covenanter’s memorial near mull head•
•bog cotton – not as spinnable as it looks on account of the fragility of its fibres•
•the gloup, a collapsed sea-cave that looks better the rougher the sea is, but looks amazing anyway•
marwick head:
•me wearing dutch world cup orange (hey, it’s worked so far – we’re in tonight’s final) in front of the kitchener [stitch] memorial•
•abandoned boat winches by the fisherman’s huts along the west coast•
stenness:
•the bewitching ring of brodgar, one of those incredible stone circles we’re so lucky to have in abundance•
south ronaldsay:
•photo of the holiday: j’s boardshorts have “here comes the sun” printed on the waistband and he was trying to put them on in the car while the rain pelted down outside… welcome to scotland!•
bay of firth:
•this was the view east as i was eating breakfast at 5am yesterday morning before catching the 6:30 ferry back to the scottish mainland for an 8-hour drive back to edinburgh, from where i caught a train to glasgow and arrived home in time to see the first uruguayan goal of an eventful third-place play-off that germany eventually won – phew!•
i’m working on some orkney-themed socks at the moment, which i fully intend to post something more about by the end of this week. however, there is the more pressing issue of a Very Important football match tonight that i now owe my heritage to spend a significant part of the day working towards. if you have access to a screen, you may want to watch history being made tonight (no, i’m not being over-confident. even if we lose, spain will still win the world cup for the first time ever, so it’s history no matter the outcome!)… let’s hope it’s a beautiful game.
June 22 2010
visit crieff, buy dress
so, j had a conference in crieff yesterday and my manager gave me the day off to go with him. i’d never been to crieff before! we hired a car for the trip because crieff takes about 4 hours to get to by public transport, and it was a nasty little budget-line peugeot 107 with tacky trims that are styled to look like more than cheap plastic. apparently it’s 95% recyclable. whether it Gets recycled or not is a different matter!
crieff itself was a bit of a let-down. the conference was at the hydro, which is one of those beautiful old hotels that you can imagine the crème of scottish society retreating to in the good old days. now, it’s one of those overly-fancy places with a big lobby, luxe modern fittings, a cloakroom, hand cream in the bathrooms, and valets. i had a wee chat with one of the housekeeping staff and they let me look around a bit – the rooms were tiny and bland. in fact, if it wasn’t for the spa, gym, tennis courts etc, you may as well be staying in a travelodge!
the town centre almost exclusively consists of a high street. but it’s not a wide and free-flowing high street like the ones you find in the scottish borders or west country of england. instead it’s narrow and pokey. however, if you ever find yourself in crieff, may i recommend king street? it’s home to green days, damson and delivino. three thoroughly modern establishments that evoke a sense of what crieff was like in its heyday.
there’s also a brand-new gem on the high street. called ‘an cnoc’ after the hill that towers over the town and offers splendid views, mandy moore has turned a somewhat neglected unit into a beautiful shop showcasing handcrafted items from craft fairs and makers’ markets in perth & kinross, and beyond. a knitter and felter herself, she either buys items or arranges a commission agreement with the maker. nothing in her shop is unsympathetically displayed and she shows a genuine interest in and knowledge of her stock.
there are also charity shops/op shops/thrift stores, whatever you call them. yes there are. they’re not great, but there is always a sneaky wee gem to be found:
namely, a lined grey-navy cotton dress with 4 architectural pockets for the measly sum of £4. and all four pounds go to a cambodian orphanage. awesome and virtuous!
oh, and did you notice that i’ve not blogged a single word about the world cup? it’s a concerted effort. sometimes, there’s just so much to say. frequently, though, in this particular tournament, i’ve been caught speechless.
May 04 2010
where we’ve been
i’ve been absent for a while, so apologies to commenters who i’ve not replied to. you’re not being ignored.
first, i qualified as a bike mechanic two weeks ago – go me! second, we went to orkney:
… land of mysterious, ancient standing stones:
… beautiful flowers on windswept plains:
… and grand historical ruins:
… on bikes!
which was both wonderful and horrendous, depending on wind direction!
after a night in the somewhat depressing kirkwall youth hostel, we cycled across the churchill barriers to south ronaldsay to stay on mike and christina’s farm outside st margaret’s hope. then wind and rain set in and we found ourselves sheltering in our tent for almost a whole day. our one effort to venture out on our bikes ended in a small disaster when i got a puncture courtesy of this filthy vagrant of a drawing pin, which found its way beneath my front tyre:
although we had a spare inner with us, it was so old that the valve snapped when i tried to inflate it, so we retreated to a café for a cup of tea and shelter from the howling wind to wait for the vulcanising solution to do its worst on the punctured inner tube. by the time all was said and done, the wind and rain had worsened enough for us to head back in the direction of our tent. we never made it to hoxa to see leila thompson‘s beautiful tapestries…
April 03 2010
holiday-weekend ramble
although we don’t celebrate easter in our house, we still benefit from the easter public holiday that consists of good friday, holy saturday, palm sunday and easter monday. at the moment, with me not working and j having fridays off, we don’t really get to enjoy the true bonus that is easter weekend, the free friday! still, we made use of our saturday to take a woodland walk beside a lively burn:
… and followed the burn climb a hill that lends a panoramic view of glasgow (excuse the poor visibility):
… with a series of reservoirs at the top, one of which we ate our lunch beside:
the snow was up to our knees in a couple of places, but never particularly serious. the worst part of the walk was the marshiness of the peatland, the worst of the snow has melted in recent days with the melt water is just waiting on the peat to drench wayward walkers!
our point of entry and return was faifley, another of glasgow’s many satellite towns, where we stumbled across a derelict waterworks:
as neglected and vandalised as the building was, as covered as the floor was in smashed glass and broken sections of rusty pipe, somehow plants managed to survive. we didn’t explore the whole building, but we could see the tops of young trees poking out of the crumbling roof and ferns finding their footholds all over the place, even growing out of cracks in the graffiti-soaked walls:
and i really wanted to show yous the beautiful young willow outside the front door:
ain’t no destruction can stop the march of spring…
January 29 2010
honest scrap awards
it would seem that they're rolling peer-to-peer blog awards, and they have rules. now, i'm not really a stickler for rules - i'm not very good at sticking to them, anyway - but i'll try to do what i can with this...the rules
1. Thank the person who nominated you and link back to that blog post.
2. Tell ten honest things about yourself and make them interesting, even if you have to dig deep!
3. Pass the award on to ten bloggers you feel embody the spirit of Honest Scrap, and whose blog you find brilliant in design and/or concept.
the scrap
1. my dad's dutch and my mum's malaysian-chinese, but i was born in england and have lived in australia and scotland. i have dutch and british nationality, but only use my dutch passport to travel.
2. new acquaintances frequently check me when i say i'm married. they usually think i'm some exploited child bride, and i have to insist my culpability.
3. i've eaten a vegan diet since mid-2008, mostly due to the devastation wreaked by meat and dairy industries. i don't know many other socio-environmental vegans, so fellow herbivores are usually surprised when i say i stopped eating dairy before fish.
4. i've been knitting for almost a year and my friends still hope i'm pregnant when they see me knitting a pair of socks from the toe up for the first time. strangers on the train ask if they're baby socks.
5. i haven't had a 'proper' job since i left a major NGO 4 years ago. it's getting increasingly hard to explain to my mother-in-law what i do: "activist" and "artist" are not occupations in her book.
6. i love rain. people like to express concern that it rains a lot in glasgow. water off a duck's back, i tell you.
7. my husband and i live in a victorian flat in govan, glasgow. it's the kind of neighbourhood that makes our families concerned, but there's a lot to love here. we have big sash windows and high ceilings, a real wooden floor, open fireplaces and a coal bunker. we can see the river and the old town square from our windows. we can also see the alcoholics and the homeless people who ask for 10p as you're running to catch a bus.
8. my manager was caught off-guard last week when he discovered how much i love sport. i've taken monday off to watch the australian open final. i also devote my life to cricket, cycling, surfing, motor-racing (even though i don't like cars), athletics/olympics, rugby and darts, but my real love is football: scottish league, premier league, spanish league, lower league, champions league, non-league. i even know the offside rule, as much as anyone does these days.
9. i yearn for a garden with a compost heap. every time i throw away a banana peel, i feel bad for it. it will likely never have the opportunity to return to the food chain.
10. my all-time top-five favourite foods are peanut butter, bananas, broccoli, tomatoes, chickpeas and cardamom. oh wait, that's six.
the blogs
• vegancraftastic
• herbivore knits
• sticks and string
• affectioknit
• a girls' cycling compendium
• that crafty fish
• the adventures of captain teabot and me
• slippedstitch
• urban vegan
• herbivore dinosaur
hey, i made it! thanks again, vegan fox. this wasn't as tortuous as i thought it would be!
listening: the smittens
reading: blogs, it would seem!
January 26 2010
yay for the loopy ewe!
even better, my order was for yarn i can't seem to get anywhere in the UK because it has been discontinued:
crystal palace, you are fools to be stopping the fern colourway of panda cotton. fools, i tell you!some of you may wonder (or you may not have even noticed) where the food blogging has gone. well, not only is it winter, and therefore the time for knitting, but the daylight hours are also Really short in scotland, so there hasn't been much opportunity for taking photos. i don't think i need to explain how disappointing food photos look when they've been taken under energy-saving lightbulbs...
however, last night was burns night, so we had some good friends over for hearty traditional scottish fare of haggis (the veggie variety), neeps and tatties with plenty of single malt whisky to hand. when i say plenty, i mean, we had ardbeg, highland park, distiller's edition lagavulin, edradour, 17-year-old cask-strength bowmore, famous grouse and bells. like whisky much?
we also had the no bake black bottom peanut butter silk pie from vegan with a vengeance, except i think our ideas of agar are maybe different so mine didn't set hard. nevermind, i covered it in shedloads of coconut flour and it tasted like something angels might have made!listening: the low anthem - and going to see them in two days! and the lucksmiths because it's australia day!
reading: the redressing the balance handbooks - for community environmental activists
January 24 2010
Easy as Pie (Pasties)
You can always tell that Burn's Night is on the horizon when the supermarkets start stockpiling haggis on groaningly full shelves. They are everywhere you turn! I really don't mind though, I quite like haggis, well veggie haggis, obviously (I wouldn't eat the timorous wee beastie), but I tend to forget about it during the year, until this not-so-gentle reminder appears.
This year I wasn't stuck for ideas as I threw a couple of vegetarian haggis in my trolley. Back in December Mangocheeks made some truly inspirational Clapshot Vegetarian Haggis Tikkia, which is on my make-soon list and Johanna went haggis-crazy and made nachos, pasties and crepes with her veggie haggis. 
I just wanted something quick and easy to make, so I bought some ready made shortcrust pastry and some nachos, salsa, guacamole and sour cream. I didn't really enjoy the haggis with nachos, but I am not a great lover of nachos at the best of times. Graham enjoyed them, so that was the main thing. However, the pasties were fabulous! So tasty, very filling and so quick and easy to make.Here is my how-to-guide for quick veggie haggis pasties:
Easy Vegetarian Haggis Pasties
Preheat the oven to 200c/400f/gas mark 6. Roll your shortcrust pastry fairly thinly and cut into discs. I cut mine using a small glass bowl measuring 13 cm/5 inches, but you can make your pasties any size you want depending on your whim.
Spread mustard across half of your pastry disc. I used wholegrain mustard, a favourite of mine. The mustard is optional, but it works so well with the haggis and potato.
Spoon some haggis onto the pastry, being careful not to add too much or you will have problems later when you come to seal the pasty.
Add a few cubes of boiled potato to your filling, then season with pepper. Brush the edge of your pastry disc with milk to seal.
Fold the pastry over the filling to make a half moon shape and seal by crimping the edge with your thumb and forefinger. Cut slits into the pastry to let out the steam and them brush the pasty with milk or an egg wash for a lovely golden finish.
Bake the pasties in a preheated oven for 20 minutes or until golden.
Break open and enjoy while they are still hot, then enjoy the leftover pasties, if there are any, the next day cold for lunch.
These pasties are great made this quick and easy way, but do make your own pastry and haggis, if you have the time. I use Delia Smith's recipe for shortcrust pastry, which is always successful and if I was going to make my own haggis, I would definitely use Johanna's recipe.
Here are a few other recipes to help your Burn's Night go off with a bang:
1 Clapshot and Vegetarian Haggis - Allotment to Kitchen
2 Clapshot Vegetarian Haggis Tikkia - Allotment to Kitchen
3 Haggis with Warm Butter Bean and Spinach Salad - The World Famous Burns Supper
4 Vegetarian Haggis Pakoras - Food Lovers Britain
5 Vegetarian Haggis Nachos - Green Gourmet Giraffe
6 Haggis, Neeps & Tatties Pasties - Green Gourmet Giraffe
7 Haggis, Neeps & Tatties Crepe Stack - Green Gourmet Giraffe
8 Vegetarian Haggis and Winter Tzatziki Wraps - Mostly Eating
9 Baked Onions with Vegetarian Haggis - The Foody
10 Vegan Haggis - Veg World
December 01 2009
warriors of the rainbow
When the Earth is Ravaged & the Animals are DyingFrom all Colors Classes & Creeds
Who by their Actions & their Deeds they will make Again
the Earth Mother Bloom Green
they will be Known as the Warriors of the Rainbow
while we were on deck, it started sleeting, so we sheltered in the bridge. i spied a crew member knitting socks. even bloody greenpeace didn't know whether their biscuits were vegan or not...
then we went to ocean terminal - a terminally ugly shopping centre at the edge of the ocean - which was a painful experience but brightened by the presence of cute bike tiles embedded in the pavement:
so yeah, that was sunday - eco-warriors juxtaposed with consumer hell. nice, eh?listening: ballboy - i hate scotland
reading: ryan giggs in sierra leone
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
