More New Favourite Things (mostly food related)

Crème caramels

Since we discovered these about two weeks ago, we have eaten them everyday. For 65p per four, they are a close second to my mom's version and are also an example of cool packaging design. Each little cup has some liquidy dark brown caramel sauce that sits in the bottom of the cup and the custardy crème part sits on top of that (first pic). To 'prepare' the yumminess, one removes the label and turn it over onto a plate and pull the little foil tab on the bottom (second pic) to release the vacuum at which point the crème caramel slides gently onto the plate and voila!

Good use of space

This is one of the portable buildings, which have been set up for the festival. It serves Lavazza brand coffee drinks, which are made to order. It was dismantled on Sunday. Earlier this month this same square hosted another portable building, which housed a glass art and sculpture exhibit sponsored by Bombay Sapphire Gin. That building had carpet, a fully functional bar, LCD displays, live plants, security and air conditioning.

Sun dried tomato and red pepper rice cakes

These are good; we eat them in place of chips (or crisps if your British). Crisp flavours in the UK are quite exciting. ‘Sour cream and onion’ crisps share the shelf with flavours like ‘mint and lamb’ and ‘chicken and stuffing’. Vegetarians might be more interested in flavours like ‘mango chutney’. British ketchup crisps are more oniony than the ones in Canada and do not leave the indulger with incriminating red fingers. These little cultural differences are so cool!

Pea and mint soup


Pea and mint is a popular British flavour combo that is normally associated with spring/summer. I eat this for lunch about twice a week because it is simple to make, healthy, hot and yummtastic. I even bought a little mint plant so that I don’t need to buy it from the store. I can actually get mint flavoured frozen peas in the store but prefer the plain peas as they are more versatile. To make this I sauté a small onion and a clove of garlic and then I add a bowl of peas, cover with hot water and add a chicken bouillon cube and some pepper. I bring the whole thing to a boil then toss in a handful of mint. I take it off the heat and blend it using my handy-dandy hand blender until it is smooth. Sometimes I will add a scoop of yogurt if I feel like it. Usually I have my soup with a sandwich.

Sangria


Sangrias are Spanish wine punches made with either red or white wine and fruit. We make our sangrias with loads of whatever fruits we are handy. We’ve tried frozen berries, peaches, apricots, nectarines, strawberries, kiwi and clementines. We also add fruit juice, something colourless and fizzy and a splash of apricot brandy and/or captain Morgan’s spiced rum. We’ve also added ground cinnamon and cloves. Generally, the volume increase by four fold compared to the amount of wine used.

Double letter blog - Football and Tattoo

I have been to a couple of football (soccer) matches since I've arrived. We went to support the Hearts, which is Bryan's new favorite team. Hearts supporters are traditionally Protestant from the east side of Edinburgh whereas supporters for the rival team, Hibernian (Hibees or Hibs for short), are predominantly Catholics from the west side of the city. This is a picture of the Murryfield stadium where they competed for a position in the Champion's League (they didn’t make it). This stadium usually hosts rugby matches and has a seating capacity of 67,500.

Football is a huge deal here and the fans are crazy. ‘Cheering’ during the game goes far beyond clapping clever beats, doing the wave and flashing the ‘terrible towel’. They have multi-line songs and chants to which everyone knows the words (everyone, that is except for me, Bryan has taken the time to learn the words). This is where I begin to dislike the live stadium experience. I usually love live sports but find that the fan rowdiness detracts from the experience. There are people there who care little about the sport and spend their 2 hours yelling at the top of their lungs. My distaste is compounded by the fact that about half of the preferred cheers are hateful. They include things like ‘knee deep in Hib blood’ and ‘Hibees are gay’. These cheers are used in all games not just when they are playing the Hibs. To be fair, the cheers from other clubs are not better. I am trying not to be judgmental because this is part of the culture but I find it distressing that children in attendance are being taught that this is acceptable. How can a parent condone this level of hate?


The ‘passion’ extends beyond the stadium. Bryan, as a social experiment, wore his Hearts jersey around town. Fellow Hearts fans commonly responded by running up to him and touching the Hearts crest on his shirt. He also got honking and high-fives. It also drew negative attention from Hibs fans, usually shouting or snide remarks. If Bryan was smaller and mouthier I’m sure he would have easily picked a fight. We received the majority of the positive reactions while on the east side of the city and negative reactions while in the west side.

We went to a preview performance of the Edinburgh military tattoo a few weeks ago. Bryan took these pictures using the camera on his cell phone. It was too dark for me to get good pictures with my camera. The tattoo is held annually at Edinburgh castle. These pics show the sea of people flooding in and out of the stadium. Tickets for all 24 preformaces have been sold out for several months.

Incoming Tide

Outgoing Tide

Different Scottish regiments lined up together. The whole experience was much like a parade. There were military bands and preformers from all different parts of the world. Our favourites were the Swiss "Top Secret" drumming group and the band from New Zealand.

Castle highlighted with yellow flood lamps. Later in the show, Scotland's military history is reviewed using still pictures projected onto the castle. It looked kinda neat.

Scottish highland dancers. Some dancers are carying flags or fake swords which lit up like light sabers in the dark. The tattoo is produced by mostly volunteers and is not-for-profit.

My new favourite things (part 1)

Marmite
If Kikkoman (Japanese soy sauce brewer) and Guinness (Irish beer brewer) got together to develop a fusion product, I'm convinced they would come up with Marmite. Some people hate it and some love it. The only other food I know of that inspires a similar type of polarization amongst food lovers is durian. I tried marmite for first time a few years ago and found it salty and disgusting. I have tried it again recently and was surprised to find that I like it a lot. I think the difference this time is that I used it 'correctly', that is I only used a little tiny bit scraped very thinly over some hot butter toast. The first time I tried Marmite I ate about half a spoon full directly out of the jar. If you have ever had marmite, you will understand the severity of this faux pas. Marmite has a strong salty, yeasty taste. If you believe in the seven basic tastes (sweet, salty, bitter, astringent, chili called pungent, sour and umami) then Marmite definitely belongs to the umami/salty group.

Highland Oatcakes
Oatcakes are essentially Scottish crackers. They are made of oats (surprise) and are available in either Highland, rough or flavored varieties. The Highland variety are my current favorite, they are slightly sweeter and have a finer texture than rough oatcakes, which contain little bits of steel cut oats. Highland oatcakes taste like less sugary digestive biscuits. Cheese, dried fruit and herbs are mixed in with the oatcake batter to make flavoured oatcakes. Oatcakes are a traditionally served along with haggis, neeps and tatties. I like them on their own or with peanut butter (no very popular here) or cheese.

Malty Loaf
This is a yummtastic, sweet and extremely chewy bread. It very dark, presumably because of the malt, and has raisins in it. Normally, I’m blah on raisins but it is yummy here. I will eat slices of malty loaf toasted or untoasted, plain or with margarine either for breakfast or as a little snack. The Soreen website also offers recipes such as “spicy lamb kabobs with couscous” that feature malty loaf. I have not tried this yet.

Bailey’s and Hot Chocolate
As you probably know, I do not drink alcohol because I don't like the acrid taste of ethanol and the unpleasant, nauseous feeling it causes. Recently, I’ve found that a tiny amount will not have an adverse effect and the acrid taste is indiscernible when it is diluted or mixed with fruit juice (more on sangrias in a future blog and perhaps beers in a distant future blog). This brings to me Bailey’s and hot chocolate; I don’t know what this is actually called in the bartending world but it is yummy. Often drinks like this in restaurants/bars are made with too much alcohol for my taste but now that I make them at home to my taste, they are gooood. I’ve always been interested in alcoholic beverages because they offer a variety of unusual flavours and because they come in cool bottles. Maybe dilution will be the key to my enjoyment.

Dog Mug
I got this mug this week for half price at Whittard of Chelsea in the city center. It makes me happy. I love this mug and drink tea from it daily. There is a dog bone on the other side.

Stirling Castle Adventure

We made an impromptu trip up to Stirling on the weekend via train. I love the train that was actually my main motivation for the trip. Stirling has a population of about 40,000 and is surrounded by farms. The River Forth runs through the city and passes close to the castle. This river opens directly into the Firth of Forth, which is essentially the North Sea. It is easy to understand why the site for Stirling Castle has been a strategic strong hold since the stone ages. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the castle or a view of the river but the good news is that we will be going back for a second look soon. I was having some camera troubles as well therefore some of the piccies are a little blurry.

This is a little garden area situated within the castle walls. Most of the castle buildings are from the 15th and 16th centuries, although some walls are as old as the 12th century. The castle and grounds are in good condition becuase it was used as army barracks until 1964. These doors open into a display area which explains what they know about the castle's history as well as their continuing efforts to restore the castle and uncover its mysteries.


This picture was taken inside the building shown above. I would have been a giant in medieval times. I don't think the cushy leather head-injury-protector is original.

The process of removing modifications made to the castle by the army have revealed some interesting features including this stone head which would have been used to hold up wooden ceiling beams back in the day.

Of course no castle is complete without some canons. The canon balls that go with these canons are about the size of a grapefruit.

A few castle rooms have also been outfitted with addtional displays about the craftsmen that would have been employed by the court. This dress, owned/worn by Mary Queen of the Scots, is displayed in the tailor's workshop. The neckline and V-shaped belt are heavily jewled. The display says that she loved fashion and owned a ton of clothes. Personally, I'm not sure why there is an obsession with her, she basically turned Scotland back over to England and then got herself beheaded. Perhaps it is because she was attractive and her position made her a bit of a celebrity. I think her parents, son and English and Irish contemporaries (Elizabeth I and Grace O'Malley) were far more interesting.

This is a statue of Robert the Bruce (aka Robert I) located outside the castle walls. I thought the restoration of the statue was cool because one can clearly tell the difference between the restored bits and the original. Robert the Bruce was king until his death in 1329 after freeing Scotland from England through winning the 'wars of independence' which ended in 1306.

This is a piece of more modern Scottish history. It is the house in which Arthur Conan Doyle lived as a kid. This pic is orange becuase of the sodium lamps lighting the area. I have pics of this house in an earlier blog but the vegetation hid most of the house. The brush has since been cleared away and I'm not sure what they are doing with it. The house was delisted (de-protected as a historical building) in 1997, I'm not sure if it has been relisted since. Stay tuned.

As you may know, August in Edinburgh is festival month. There are five major festivals: Fringe, Jazz and Blues, Book (Literary), Film and International (which is mainly focused on the 'traditional' performing arts such as ballet/modern dance, theatre, opera and classical music). These festivals are staggared throughout the month and draw a huge number of tourists to the city. I think the streets are at least five times as busy as usual. There is stuff going on everywhere and all the time. Fringe events run 24 hours a day and pubs which usually close no later than midnight are permitted to open until 3am during this time. The popularity of the festivals have some interesting effects on the city which I will try to describe.

During August, street entertainers appear like earth worms on the pavement after a heavy summer rain; Amoungst these are an alarming number of human statues. These people dress up in costume and pose like marble, metal or wax sculptures. There are generally two stratigies to their art. The first, is what I think of the the 'Queen's Guard' strategy, that is they stay completely still and appear oblivious to any annoying behaviour a passer-by might inflict upon the performer. The second requires the performer to attract the attention of an on-looker and convince the on-looker that he/she is really a maniquin. When the on-looker is convinced the performer makes a movement to startle the on-looker. The person above is getting ready to join the human statue army.

Edinburgh has a resident population of about half a million people. The number of permanent pubs and venues available is insufficient to accomidate the festival tourists. Entrepreneurs have solved this problem by erecting a large number of temporary buildings to accommodate the new clientele. I've included some architectually interesting examples here. The first one is a juice bar. I thought this was a clever design because it immediately advertises the product without words. The geodesic dome thing houses a few small trampolines. A fee is paid in exchange for some time jumping time. The purple building is actually huge and i couldn't get it all into one frame. It is a temporary pub and houses a large outdoor stage around the corner from the cow head. The cow also has 4 inflated purple legs which stick up towards the sky.

The book that advertises the fringe events is 256 pages long (A4 paper of course) so the competition for patorns is fierce. There are many marketing strategies that productions will use to get attention. For me, this is one of the most facinating aspects of the festival. The pair above might be characters from a show, I'm not sure, but there were other people in-costume hiding behind trees and boulders in the vicinty. I assume they were from the same show because all their costumes had a similar alice-in-wonderland quality to them.

Smaller exhibitions also show up during festival season. The curator of this installation in St. John's chruch clearly recognized that he/she had a captive audience and placed these small frames on the pews. Each frame had a picture drawn by a child from somewhere around the world and included the slogan "Let peace prevail".

I also came across a small Scottish furniture exhibition at St. John's chruch. This chessboard is the coolest thing I saw. Notice the little nooks along the side for the killed off chess pieces. It is made by an artist named Fiona Campbell and can be purchased for 1,950 pounds.