Eating my way through Scotland...

Perhaps it is fitting that the last (well, maybe) chapter in the Scotland journey is about the food.  While it certainly was not the raison d’être for the trip, it was a fascination for the Feeder.  Being a stranger in a strange land that has a different cultural heritage in foodways is always fun.  Just for reference, out of the 1260 photos I took, roughly 100 or so were of the food (not to mention the settings). So, almost one of ten were about the food..

And probably it is also fitting that we lead off the food of Scotland discussion with the enigma of “Haggis”.  As I noted before, knowing I would be in the land of Haggis presented me with a challenge.  The common perception (IMHO) here in the colonies (aided by helpful recipes) is that Haggis is made from unmentionable parts of the sheep and you have to consume a half bottle of Scotch before you eat it.  Well, nothing could be further from the truth (except the half bottle of Scotch which is always good).  My first opportunity to try it was on the initial night of our trip (excluding the miserable cattle car airplane), in our hotel in Ayr.  Before our dinner, there were passed appetizers, and one was little ping pong ball sized globes of a dark material (it may have had a coating I don’t remember).   “And what have we here?”   Haggis.   Yikes!  Okay, Feeder put up or shut up.  So without the benefit of liquid courage through Scotch, I took one, and hesitatingly took a small bite…….Hey!  This isn’t bad!  A big grainy, but not heavily flavored and has a nice little kick.

The other (mistaken) impression that I had was that due to the (presumed) disgusting nature of Haggis, it was only reserved for drunken festivals, like Robert Burns Dinners, or special occasions (like our Thanksgiving, for instance).  Wrong again, oh presumptive one.   Throughout our journeys,  Haggis was a common staple and appeared on many menus.  Fried at breakfast (along with black pudding – another story), a specialty item (Such as the “tower of Haggis” starter at the Carrick Lodge Restaurant), used to stuff chicken or guinea fowl, such as this “Guinea Fowl with haggis, potato and turnip dauphinoise, red cabbage and Whisky sauce” from our group’s farewell dinner in the Amber restaurant in Edinburg.

Come to think of it, the dish sort of characterizes Scotland: Haggis, potato and turnips (tatties and neeps), cabbage, and whisky.  A country on a plate!!

In general, we tended to eat as a group in the hotel where we had lodging, usually with a special room and menu for the forty some odd of us.  Most days we were all tuckered out from touring castles and such anyway, pooped from climbing those damn circular stone stairs, and were just as happy to remain where we were and not venture out.  Also some of the places where we stayed were kind of isolated (Western Scotland/Highlands). Typically for dinner, there were choices of starters, main plates, and desserts, with at least two, mostly three, sometimes more in each category.  Here’s the menu made for us at our hotel in Ayr (where haggis appeared) which was pretty typical of what we found on the rest of the trip

 (note expert photographer including his hand's shadow)

Generally the food was nicely prepared and presented.  For instance, here’s the excellent smoked salmon starter from the menu above

All in all, (aside from our one night at a restaurant) there were 70 items offered for our dinners.  Lots of seafood (duhh)

(Always served skin side up which I still haven’t figured out)

Poultry....

(Hey, what’s that dark stuff?  Take a guess)

And occasionally beef (or venison, such as this dish in Mull)

What was surprising to us was that although most days we looked at fields and fields and fields of sheep, it (lamb) was offered only once as a menu choice.  Our Scottish bus driver said that it was quite expensive and most of the meat was exported.  Still a bit strange.  Most of the time, there were vegetarian offerings, such as a pasta dish.  That pretty well covered evening meals, so going back to the start of the day for

Breakfasts (a tradition) varied.  Some places had a buffet either fancy

or Plain

Pretty generally there was a lot of stuff on them… many kinds of sausages and meats,

this was a little less quality than most, but has you guess it, haggis and black pudding

eggs of some sort, tomatoes usually fried or grilled, cheeses, cold meats, a variety of breads and pastries, cereals both hot and cold, several juices, and tea or coffee.

Other hotels had buffet tables for breads and pastries, but a menu for a la carte of your choice

Always hearty, even though we weren’t facing a hard day in the fields.  Before we leave breakfast I have to remark on Scottish bacon (just above is more typical).  Nothing like the “streaky bacon” (as ours is referred to) we have here, it was always wonderful, salty, thick, and tasty.  There was a pretty wide variation in the sausages, but generally the haggis and black pudding were the same where ever we went.  Kippers didn’t appear often.  I never had the full blown “Scottish Breakfast” which was offered on several menus, just too darn much stuff for somebody who generally skips breakfast altogether..  If only I could get the bacon though..

So with bookend meals taken care of, that leaves the meal in the middle,

Lunch

A lot of the time we were “on our own” for this meal, with an hour or two between motoring to morning and afternoon sites.  Time to shop a little, find an ATM (for even more pounds) and stroll about observing local culture.  Mostly due to time constraints, we ended up in little pubs or tea rooms and had soups and sandwiches.  You couldn't miss on the soups,  usually potato and leek, or barley, but always thick and tasty. 

I kind of found I liked their “toasties” which to us would be like grilled ham and cheese.

Or some of the sites we visited had food service, like one of our first lunches was in the (converted) stables at Drumlanrig castle.

If you can strain your eyes a little, note the “cheese and pickle” at the top of the sandwiches.  That was something that turned up a lot.  Turns out that “pickle” would generally be like chutney to us.   And most any cold sandwiches with cheese looked like this Lockerbie Cheddar and Baked Ham

Shredded cheese (and a little short on ham - but excellent bread).

We did have a couple of group lunches that were very good.  One was at a charming little inn that had a great little salmon dish (which I may have posted previously)

And another memorable lunch was in the Columba Hotel on the lovely little Isle of Iona and a wonderful BLT

(Ripe tomatoes, that wonderful bacon, hearty bread, and a pint.  ahhhhhh)

We also had a nice pub lunch on a rainy day in Inverness one of the oldest ones in the city

And had a traditional shepards pie

Not Haute, but just right for the surroundings..(actually tasted better than it looks - with a pint, or two)

Summary...

Okay, everybody is getting tired (or hungry) so we’ll cease there (and we didn't even talk about desserts!)..  there are so many more meals to tell, but you get the idea...  what was my favorite meal?  Hah!  I won’t fall in that trap!  Was it the gorgeous bacon breakfasts?  The little sandwiches and chips in a cozy little shop or pub on a rainy day?  The multitude and varied dinners? 

What a great food experience, one which I won’t forget any time soon, and besides I have all those hundred or so pictures to remind me.. 

Maybe my overriding memory of food will be HAGGIS is GOOD!

And you can even eat it
DFD

okay, maybe one more Scottish memory...without videos.  still can't figure that out.

The Bard...

First of all, happy 100^th Birthday Julia Child!

A few loose ends...

It occurred to me that I didn’t say much about one of the (many) Scottish national heroes, Robert Burns.  Although there are many more (Bonnie Prince Charlie, Robert the Bruce, etc.), it seems that Robert Burns has a special place in the hearts of most Scots.  I may get in trouble here with some of my more historically literate friends, but he was kind of the Mark Twain of Scotland.  He was an iconoclast, and wrote many poems (pronounced po – EMS in the local dialect) and was called (among other things), the Bard of Ayrshire.  One of his more famous poems, Address to A Haggis, is now legendary and gave rise to the dish’s consumption on Robert Burns night dinners, celebrated annually on January 25^th.  It begins with this first verse:

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace

(etc.)

We visited a couple of places that were important in his life.  The first was on our first day of the trip (same day we arrived in the bleary eyed morning).  We stopped at Mauchline, where Robert lived in the 1780’s and where he wrote many poems and songs.  Mauchline is a quaint little town with a museum in the place where he lived for a while.  Our group was met by one of the senior members of the local Burns Society who gave us a little talk Burn’s life and time in Mauchline.

It seems that old Robert had quite an affinity for the ladies, and had many liaisons and miscellaneous children which we won’t go into here.  After the little lecture, went into the little church where Robert would have attended services, and our guide showed some of the pieces that would have been used.

One of the other things he showed us was an actual book which chronicled some of the tribulations of Robert and his ladies that were addressed in the church (dating back to late 18^th century).  He proudly displayed the book holding it in his hands turning pages for us to see the names.   We were invited to come up to the front and see for ourselves, whereupon MFO immediately stormed the alter and informed him that he ought to be wearing gloves!!  After that blew over we toured a little more of the churchyard and surrounding village.

They have such neat places

Upon leaving Mauchline we drove to that night’s overnight destination of Ayr.  A pleasant place.  This is where I was introduced to the practice that I was to see throughout the rest of the journey (and may have commented on it before).  I strode to the bar and asked if they had any special scotch.  Why yes, they did: one that was distilled locally.  Well, then I’ll have one with an ice cube.  The barkeep produced a glass and a jigger and poured a carefully measured portion of maybe a half ounce that barely coated the bottom of the glass. (I think I did say this before).  Make it a double.  Maybe two sips.

The next day we visited

It’s kind of divided into two parts, a new sleek visitor center and also a museum in his home

They always do a nice job with displays in these places.  Very informative.

We found out that there was to be a little talk on Burns in one of the meeting rooms in the visitor center so we went over and listened to part of that.  There was a very engaging guy there (whose name I didn’t write down), of course who recited many of Robert’s poems, some even in dress

He also sang some songs (and here hopefully is a technological breakthrough for the Bottom Feeder - disclaimer, this is the first time i've tried this so qualtiy may suffer...)

389.mov

It is left to the listener to try to figure out what the hell he is saying.  It is English, by the way, just as historically spoken.

After a while you kind of get enough Burns, but he is part of the amazing fabric of Scotland

Looks like maybe he was

DFD

... NOT in the air...

Well, we (reluctantly) need to leave Scotland to the memory vault, and move on to more topical things like how is the Cracker Barrel coming on their “Now Hiring” campaign..

"Leaving" is kind of problematical…I would love to take you on the day by day journey with us, because each day held such great sights and experiences that could be shared, but it would take at least as long to talk about it as it did to do it, so I am forced to condense.   We've seen some of the magnificant natural scenery, so maybe a few of the castles we saw.   Castles are funny things.  Most were built to provide a place where you could try to lead kind of a normal life, protected by massive walls, defensible positions (like on tops of mountains), many people with weapons, etc.  As I mentioned before, battles, conquests, invasions (from both “internal” and foreign sources) were such a part of life they were forced to fortify themselves.  Mostly it didn’t work.  While some of the castles we saw were from antiquity, some were not.  This is the castle at Drumlanrig, built in the late 17^th century and home of the very powerful Douglas clan, and now the residence of Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch and Queensberry.  It has a fabulous art collection including a Rembrandt.

Much older ones remain, such as from the “reformation” in the 1500’s, during which John Knox and the Calvinists pretty much destroyed many of the Catholic Cathedrals and presumably art, leaving things such as this one in St. Andrews (built in the late 12th century).. how magnificent it must have been to see - a mere 800 years ago!

But we also saw many others in places like

Edinburgh

Stirling

Which had a wonderful exhibit on their kitchen (of special interest to the feeder)

Near Mull

On way to Skye

On Loch Ness (we missed Nessie)

There are more.  Each of course had its story and history, the rise and fall, who and when, why it was important and what part it played in the wild history of Scotland.  I must say most had great exhibits, some had interpreters like Stirling Castle.

It is hard to describe this fellow’s job, although he was pretty graphic about it.  Let’s just say it involved helping the King with his daily duty, and he had a very good view of the backside of the King.. these days he would be in a commercial for Charmin… nuff said.

Tomorrow we’ll delve into the food aspects of the trip and yes, Haggis.

And in closing this phase, you know my usual byline, well, guess what?  Nothing much changes…



Home Sweat Home...

Sigh...

Our last day in the UK/Scotland began in Edinburgh with a ungodly 5 am call for bags in the hall (with a bus time of 0600).  As you probably know, the European model is that you get to the hotel, get off the coach/bus, check in and go to your room, and (mostly) sooner or (less common) later the nice porter brings your bag(s).  Maybe because a lot of the older places have no elevators.  Anyway, our plane was to leave from Glasgow, hence the early call for bags and leaving.   We chose to put them out the night before, so we could “sleep in” until 5:30.  So a bunch of bleary eyed travelers boarded the coach for the last time and off we went to Glasgow and home.

The coach park was quite a distance from the entrance to the terminal so we had to schlep the bags (now weighed down by purchases  made in country).  Then get in a long line, out with passports, no, nobody gave us anything, yes we packed the bags ourselves, no they haven’t been out of our sight, okay pass through.  Finally checked the bags to DCA followed by another quarter of a mile walk to security.  Remind me to wear elastic pants next time, as removal of my belt just about results in removal of pants, so to prevent that, it occupies one hand.   I did have the foresight to wear the Crocs, which are not only comfortable but easily removed for the dear humorless security folk. After redressing and gathering we headed for the gate (again decades of gates from us), and guess what?  To get there you have to walk through a seemingly endless series of “duty free” shops urging you to purchase perfumes, liquors, clothing, accessories, etc.  We finally arrived at the gate, and still had about an hour to kill before boarding.  Eventually we stuffed ourselves into our center and aisle seats, with MFO feeling pretty puny by now.  A last minute arrival filled the open window seat dashing our hopes of spreading out.  She was a lovely young lady, and when she learned MFO was not feeling well (as evidenced by coughing spells and many tissues used) she asked the attendant if she could find another seat so MFO could have more space.  I really think she did this out of sympathy, not fear of infection.  Another seat was found so she did the best she could to spread out and snooze a little. 

We settled in for the 6 hour 58 minute flight “over to Philadelphia” according to the flight deck.  I got out my own little ear buds (that worked in one ear on the way over), but all I got was static.  Eventually I asked the attendant and she fiddled with it with no results, and she even slipped me the five dollar version from the airline and it still didn’t work. Apparently I was not alone. So instead of being able to listen to classical music, I tried not to stare at the silent TV screen above.

Again USAir felt that food should precede drink by at least 20 minutes as I watched the cart creep toward us from the front of the jet.  Was offered the choice of pasta or chicken and given the crap that served for chicken previously, I chose the pasta and was served a plastic enclosed lunch

Of what may have been ravioli filled with some indescribable “stuff” and orbs of cheese (not bad) and cherry tomoatoes of uncertain texture. MFO found her little pouch contained a special tool

After suffering through some movie (it’s like a train wreck, you don’t want to watch, but you can’t help it) that I think was about wrestling and other "selected shorts, we finally reached the Philadelphia airport.  During the stand around waiting for the other people to depart the aircraft, we chatted with the nice attendant who gave me the earphones (which never did work), and she asked “where are you headed?”.  Said we were headed for a little town south of DC in Maryland.  Which one?  You probably never heard of it, it’s called Lexington Park.  Oh yes I have, I went to Town Creek Elementary School!  For non local readers, that is approximately two miles (by road) from the house (and a quarter by water).  Amazing.  Her father went through Test Pilot school here.  You just never know..Small world.  Finally we gathered our carryons and exited the plane to the terminal.

What followed was a walking tour that would have done justice to any downtown tourist trek.  Because we were international we had to retrieve bags, which involved a very long walk to the carousel, then what seemed like retracing our steps with the heavy bags to customs, and rechecking them on to DCA.  Because we somehow left the “secure area” we had to once again go through security.  One handed again (narrowly avoiding unintentional disrobing), and finally we were able to look for our gate for the short flight over to DCA which turned out to be in Terminal F (we were in A).  Oh, terminal F?  you need to take the shuttle sir!  And where is that?  Gate A1.  Fine.  We noticed we were approximately at gate A573 so once again we hiked past of what seemed miles of blank walls we reached A1 and the little bus.  Upon opening the door to board, we were smacked in the face by what seemed like a wave of hot bath water.  Temps and humidities were paired nicely in the nineties, a far cry from what we experienced in Scotland, at least a 30 degree step in both.  Disgorged at the F terminal, we were mercifully only a few gates from F19 our departure gate for DCA.  This was about two thirty or so and our commuter jaunt was to be at three forty.

What followed was a unbelievable display of the most inept handling of a flight and gate I have ever seen.  Despite the fact that all 29 of our remaining group (some stayed, some were going to Wisconsin) had confirmed seats, we were told that due to the amount of dead heading crew, not all would be able to board. Our leader went ballistic.  I can’t begin to describe what turned out to be delays that resulted in taking off at five, with all of our group and 4 empty seats (and six employees).   One poor family from Sweden that thought they were going along was left at the gate.  They said they didn’t understand and our dear little overwhelmed gate agent said something like “it’s just the way it is”.  Fortunately our tour director took time to explain to them that there was another flight in (now) about twenty minutes and they would be on that.  The USAir people kept spouting stuff about “rules and regulations” totally unsympathetic to real people.  thank you so much.

We finally arrived at DCA, retrieved bags and were bussed to our waiting cars in Mechanicsville, and the MOMSTER took us home and the stifling heat and humidity.  Despite the late hour and exhausted and battered body from hours in fetal position on the airplane, I celebrated the end of our journey with a DMOTRWAT and a resolution to never darken Philadelphia airport or give USAir any money to be treated like cattle..(except for the Town Creek lady who was nice), and raised the glass to the nice young woman who gave MFO her seat which was beneficial to her health..

There remains a lot of stories to tell of Scotland, its food, people and culture.  I’ll relate some of them over the next few days.  Meanwhile we’ll get the travel waves out of the brain and return to the “real” life that was suspended by a lovely ten days in a wonderful country, rich with history, relics of time past

And breathtaking scenery

We’ll leave food for future editions

DFD

Extra Rant Unrelated to Scotland – Sports “fans” only…

Yesterday was spent huddling in the air conditioning trying to deny the outside conditions, and of course I tuned into the Olympics.  The first thing I saw was the final of a basketball game between Russia and Spain.  It was a close game coming right down to the end.  But, the announcers treated it as just a preliminary to the "USA" game.  They then proceede to wax eloquent about the previous game with Nigeria.  “A spectacular display of basketball!”  “record breaking performance!” Apparently the "USA" team rolled up an astonishing 156 points, winning by some 80 points against an obviously overmatched Nigerian team, giddly recounting how many points LeBron, and “Mello” made showing clips of multiple uncontested threes (kind of like shooting practice).  Lauding the "magnificant performance" of the “USA Team”.   Great basketball!!  Maybe they can find an elementary school team to play and get even more points! Last I checked, the team is made up of the same spoiled, egotistical NBA players that only care about how much money they make, creating circuses out of their signing, selling their talents to the highest bidder, or demanding to be traded where THEY want to go, making sure they make one more dollar than the next guy.  Well guess what LeBron (et. al), I don’t think you represent anything more than yourself, and your values don’t reflect true America, and you certainly don’t represent me.  Have fun.

Golfer Quiz..



If you carry clubs or follow golf, you HAVE to know where this is...

and here he is..(with no tee time)

and for extra credit, who is buried here??



He and his son are buried in the remains of this old cathedral..





we did a tour of the city, saw the course and then moved on to Edinburgh where we reside tonight.  We are both kind of succumbing to the weather and schedule and have the first indications of a cold (excuse me while i blow my nose and cough a moment.).  So, tonight we're staying in.

Tomorrow night will be our last night in scotland, and maybe this will be the last pos from heret.  we will see.  there are lots of more things i want to say about the place, the people and the food.... but it will all be good at a later date.  I have about 900 photos in the bank..

and i guess tonight we won't be having to

DFD

PS we get the olympic coverage through the BBC, which, from what I hear is better than NBC.  at least it's live here..