As you may have noticed from my sidebar of links, I like food, and food-loving people. Here is my newest discovery: HunterAnglerGardenerCook. If only I’d known of this site when I tried to cook wild hare last year!
I made two cakes. Two! For our two June birthdays.
Carrot cake (above)
Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness cake (with Drosophila)
(NB: the Guinness cake is stated to be ‘very moist’ in the recipe. Translation: The center is a crater of pudding-like, barely semi-solid, squint-your-eyes-at-it-and-it-could-be-coffeegrounds chocolaty goodness.)
It’s a whirlwind of activity here! Updates to follow…
I’m finally starting to feel at home in Edinburgh. One of the things that makes me feel at home is getting to know the people who work in the shops I frequent, like my friendly neighbourhood butcher.
I’m kind of a meat snob. Being in the vet med, I’ve worked on lots of farms and have studied meat production and food hygiene, so I fancy myself slightly more educated about meat than the average consumer. I’m also a stickler for really good food, and I am willing to make sacrifices in my budget to afford it.
My butcher, who has a shop just around the corner, has great meat. He sources all of his beef from Scotland, which means the cattle have good welfare and the meat is clean and fresh. It’s not organic, but I’d rather buy from him than buy the stale, packaged stuff from Tesco that is labeled organic. The special thing about my butcher’s meat is that is tastes so good- it’s moist and flavourful and delicious. I absolutely love his sausages- they don’t ooze fat like the supermarket sausages, and they’re just so tasty!
And did I mention he’s friendly?
I stopped in this morning to get some mince for a BBQ, and Mr. Butcher promptly asked me what I was listening to on my iPod. This lead to a comparison between my iPod and his, and a recap of last night’s Coldplay concert on the BBC. Mr. Butcher likes his music, that’s for sure. He was telling me about his new iPod, and how many albums he has on it, and what his favourites are. It was great, I felt so homey.
(And the burgers? They turned out a-mazing. Recipe here.)
The thing about adventures is that they never go exactly as planned. Especially if you don’t have a map.
JM and I met for breakfast at the city hall, which was giving out free bacon rolls and coffee to cyclists in honour of National Cycle Week. We ate, we perused the stalls, we accepted free water bottles.
And then we were off.
Leaving Edinburgh we were on mostly ‘A’ roads. (The roads in the UK are graded according to how busy they are- A is the most, B is less busy, and I’ve never seen a C.) It was a bit harrowing, with huge lorries barreling past us every few minutes, but once we made it out of the city there was a cycle path that ran alongside the road. I felt excited and a little apprehensive to be setting out on such a long journey. JM and I started horsing around, hanging off each other, and I ended up crashing into the bushes and scratching up my leg- silly me! We navigated the round-abouts and road signs using some vague directions I had written from Google Maps. So far, so good.
We met a Finnish cyclist who had been touring Scotland for 2 weeks. He was on a stout mountain bike fitted with panniers and a handle-bar bag, and he was listening to the radio on his headphones. He had a map, and I wrote down better instructions from it, including some B-roads I hadn’t noticed before. Our Finnish friend cycled with us for a while, but once it started raining JM and I picked up speed and he was left behind. Sorry, friend! Our only rain was about 2/3 of the way to Glasgow (about 40 km on the bike computer)- it started suddenly, briefly turned into hail, and the stopped as abruptly as it began.
It felt glorious to be on the bike- I felt independent, adventurous, and healthy. The world was my oyster! I felt like a traveler of old, self-reliant and worldly, but also at the mercy of the weather and the kindness of strangers (should my chain break, or some other catastrophe occur).
We approached Glasgow from the east, steadily cycling through the suburbs towards the city centre. JM and I were so happy to reach Glasgow- hurrah! You have to understand that to people from Edinburgh, Glasgow is a very long way away, both geographically and otherwise. Although it’s only 60 km to the west, a trip to Glasgow is treated as quite an ordeal, complete with the risks of getting mugged, stabbed, or spoken to in a very fast and thick Scottish accent.
Luckily, I kind of know my way around downtown Glasgow, so we took a little walk down one of the main streets to give our bums a well-deserved rest. We ended up at McDonald’s for lunch (although I had packed myself a home-made, organic curry chicken wrap so did not eat McDonald’s food… except, um, some fries… and an ice cream…). We rested for a about half an hour at MacDonalds, reveling in our success at reaching the city. Greenock was only another 40 km away, and we were certain we would be there before supper.
Leaving Glasgow, I asked for directions to the A8, the road which was to take us all the way to Greenock. We managed to get onto the A8, but it split a few times and we ended up getting lost… ah well, we thought, as long as we’re heading west, we’ll get to the Atlantic before nightfall. We went through Paisley, asked for directions again, then went through Johnstown, where we finally looked at a map in a petrol station. The verdict: We were going the wrong way, having headed too far south, instead of north. We were headed towards Irvine, not Greenock.
Fatefully, we met a cyclist who had just cycled from Irvine along a National Cycle Network path. The NCN is a network of cycle paths (some quite good, others a bit muddy for my sleek road tyres) that crisscross Scotland, traveling through some amazing scenery and past some tourist-worthy castles and monuments. The cyclist we met said that although Irvine was 20 miles away, the path was fully paved and quite nice. (He also reported that Irvine was not on the coast, which proved, thankfully, to be untrue.) After some deliberation, we decided to cycle to Irvine, rather than back-tracking into Glasgow to try to find the elusive A8.
The cycle path- route no. 7- took us through some brilliant countryside. We saw cows and horses, and green rolling hills outlined by old stone walls. There were wildflowers along the path, and birds too. There was a powerful headwind, so I drafted behind JM for a large part of the ride. The cycle path wasn’t very busy, and was clearly marked. As we got closer and closer to Irvine, our bums got more and more sore, but our spirits became higher and higher. The cycle path merged with a small, paved road just as it entered a series of rolling hills, some of which were quite steep. I stopped joking around and started to focus on making it to the top of each successive hill. JM was in high spirits and flew past me, shouting something about Graeme Obree and the Tour d’France. At the top of one hill we looked across the hilltops and we could see the distinctly flat horizon which could only mean one thing- the Atlantic ocean!! Irvine was on the coast, much to our delight.
We cycled into the town of Irvine, and before long our trusty cycle shoes were sinking in the sand dunes at the beach. JM took some photos (copies of which will hopefully be in my possession soon) and we gloated at our awesomeness. I collected some sea glass.
It was getting late (it was almost 7), so we headed to the train station. Unlike in Edinburgh, the train station attendant was helpful and pleasant, and we got tickets back to Edinburgh. We were relieved to learn that it was alright to bring out bikes on board, so after JM had his first cigarette of the day and I had stretched my aching muscles, we were on our journey home.
It was a great trip, my longest cycle trip ever, and I can’t wait to get back on my bike again soon.
Tomorrow I am cycling from one coast of Scotland to the other: From Edinburgh to Greenock, in the company of a self-described ‘French dude’, my friend JM. The trip will be 100km (62 miles) if we don’t get lost, and longer if we do. I’m excited, but a little apprehensive. JM thinks we will be there in 5 hours, I think it will be closer to 7 or 8.
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Berlin was awesome. I love my friends there, both new and old.
I like the young German people there who wear brightly colored cloths and smoke cigarettes, and lay on the grass in the parks, sunbathing.
I like the fact that the Berlin wall is circumferential, not linear like I’d previously thought.
I like the Turkish areas of the city, where girls wear head scarves and bangles. I especially liked visiting this big Turkish market, where they sell everything from bananas, fish, and pizza to beads, fabric, and shoes.
I loved having Lebanese brunch in the shade on the patio.
I liked watching football.
And I LOVED the flea market.
I made beau-ti-ful carrot muffins yesterday! In addition to carrots they contained raisins, coconut, and apple. I didn’t want to spend my precious oil on a muffin recipe, so I used butter instead, and as a result the muffins taste even better, and are probably upwards of 400 calories each. Nice. (Recipe here)
Big thanks to Kevin, my enabler.
Minus the boyfriend. Not that I don’t like her boyfriend, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t necessarily put him at the top of my list. Because, you know, that would a little weird.
I am especially jealous because she manages to present her Likes in a non-linear way!
