Crunch

Obviously everything I cook is completely yummy but there are some dishes, such as borscht, that provoke spontaneous delight in others: who knew that virtue could taste so good. My granola works like that. It was one of the many things I discovered in Japan thanks to the excellent wholefood cooperative that catered to homesick Americans in far-flung inaka. When I got back to Britain I had sporadic attempts to make some myself but it was the blog by Orangette that kickstarted the crunchiness. It was then the lovely Japanese Kaori who requested this recipe and reminded me how good it is.

Maple & Olive Oil Granola (adapted from Orangette's adaptation of Early Bird Food's version)

300g porridge oats
250g pumpkin & sunflower seeds
50g dessicated coconut
150g flaked almonds
1tsp coarse salt
85g brown sugar
175ml maple syrup
120ml olive oil
chopped dried apricots, prunes, cherries


Stir together the oats, seeds, nuts and salt. Mix the brown sugar, maple syrup and olive oil ... add to the oats and seeds and stir to coat. Spread the mixture in a large baking tray and bake until golden brown for 45 minutes (180C, 350F, gas mark 4) checking and stirring every 15 minutes or so. When the mixture has cooled, add the dried fruit and store in an airtight container

While baking this I was making my first stab at sorting the family photographs that arrived from my dad's flat in some buckets and carrier bags. This was just the first sort of the photographs: dividing them into "Drumbuidhe", "Anywhere Else" and "Rubbish" ... if I didn't recognise the people or place then it got binned. Thankfully my mother had labelled most of the negatives but I've still got a stack to get through. As far as sorting out my dad's estate goes, this isn't one of the arduous tasks but my sister is trying to wring as much drama out of it as she can (even if that means she misses out on the gentle pleasure of revisiting my parents lives through the years). It was she who dumped all the photographs into buckets and bags so that she could A) rent out dad's flat less than a month after his death and B) sell the bureau that they were stored in. As I sorted through the photographs I came across a few where my sister has been cut out of the photograph and then, most bizarrely, the photograph has been returned. Apart from having my sister removed, the photographs have little else in common - they feature me, my mum, the Cambridge academic Pip Gaskell and my sister's Chilean friend Loretta. I don't think there's any grand meaning behind this, I think my sister was just being a bit daft ...

The deeds of dad's flat have recently been passed on to my sister (I'm inheriting my dad's 1/3 share of Drumbuidhe but that takes a wee bit longer to sort out). She was also up from Devon in Glasgow this week without telling me. I'm not upset at this (I very rarely take offence and I'm up in Drumbuidhe anyway) and I assume it's because she's selling my dad's flat and, after making such a fuss about how she was the only one who knew my dad's intentions, she doesn't want to admit that she just really needs the cash. Hey ho.

lentil life

In the classic 1980s sitcom 'The Young Ones' one of hippy Neil's main occupations was the preparation of lentils, lentils and more lentils. As a child I associated lentils with overcooked mush mixed with hated cooked carrots. I didn't like them. Then I lived with the vegetarian Lesley at college and was introduced to her lovely lentil and apple curry. Then the 1990s explosion of ingredients brought green lentils and their nutty yumminess to the UK.

Although Nigel Slater started as a food stylist, producing mouth-watering photographs for Marie Claire, my favourite book of his is the words-only 'Real Fast Food'. It has this great recipe described as "a life-saverwhen the fridge contains nothing but the cat's milk and an old packet of Japanese soya paste"

Lentils with Tomatoes
for 2
100g lentils
2 tblsp olive oil
1 chopped onion
1 chopped red chilli
1 tin tomatoes

* cook the lentils in boiling, salted water for 15 minutes 'til just tender, drain
* fry the onions in the oil for about 7 minutes, add the chilli and cook for a further minute or two
* add the lentils and tomatoes and simmer for about 10 minutes
* season and serve ... also good served cold as a salad

I'm coming to the end of a 2 week stint at losing some weight. I'm only a wee bit overweight but, with both parents suffering from metabolic issues, I want to halt the trend of increasing weight. So I'm especially thankful for spicey lentil recipes.

There was never going to be an ideal time to follow a carefully restricted diet but it turns out that I'm really, really bad at academic writing whilst half-starving. I'm not sure if I would have been brilliant if I'd been fully caloried up but the major review report I finally submitted was woefully underpowered - and late - which does not bode well for he review meeting in a couple of weeks.

Probably best not to mention (yet) to my, rather annoyed, supervisor that I've put my name down as a labour candidate for the 2017 Highland council elections.

tu veux un aperitif?

For someone who doesn't drink very much (I get a wee bit arsey when drunk and I have absurdly bad hangovers) I have a large amount of the stuff floating around. Campbell left behind a large wine collection (extensive in quantity, rather than quality ... he lost his sense of smell well before his taste for alcohol). This year's crop of berries was outstanding so, after jams and pies, I've got a couple of bottles of cherry gin and a bottle of redcurrant gin. Then there's the birch sap wine (polished off at the festival), dandelion wine and redcurrant wine. The redcurrant wine was made using export-strength gin and it's a bit too strong and the dandelion wine is a bit nondescript in flavour as well as a rather uninspiring cloudy yellow colour.

Inspired by a lovely wee radio programme on aperitifs, I decided to have a go at mixing my own vin maison. Using the key ideas of 'not too strong and not too sweet' I've come up with two rather nice wee drinks ... a dandelion + orange peel and a dandelion + redcurrant. The orange still needs a bit more gin added to stop the fermentation but it tastes lovely and the redcurrant and dandelion is a beautiful pale, rose pink.

I'm now headed down to Durham for a party and I've brought some of my vin du rose as a gift for my hosts. Weight issues mean that I've had to bring it in a plastic water bottle so we will see if the taste can transcend the packaging.

The wild cherry gin (made with Sainsbury's cheapest gin) is quite delicious and needed no further mixing. I used it to make some scrumptious chocolate truffles with some leftover butter. Well worth the tiny risk of cyanide poisoning.


gean truffles

50g unsalted butter
100g plain chocolate
2 tablespoons wild cherry gin

Melt the ingredients together in the microwave, stirring very gently to melt the last of the chocolate. Place in the fridge to set, ideally overnight. When set, scoop into rough balls and roll in cocoa. Keep in the fridge before serving

a confusion of cats

Such is the mouse problem here that every single gnawable item (bed linen, gas supply pipes, soap, sandals, chairs) has been well and truly gnawed; checking crockery for mouse poo is standard and only 2 out of my initial, 48 pea plants made it to maturity. I've been pondering the obvious answer of getting a cat and, after initial concerns about how a cat would stand up to the resident pine marten, fox, wildcat population, was starting to seriously ponder a rehoused farm cat. Events have since overtaken my gentle ponderings.

A week ago I was due to go the Tron Theatre with my friend Peter Hamilton (a dashing, dance-loving sherrif who knew my parents from student days). There was no answer when I arrived at his flat so I called the police who broke down his door and we discovered he had died in his bed. The sad drama was added to by his cat, Findlay who was left orphaned and very scared. So I have unexpectedly adopted a cat. An elderly indoor cat.

It looks like Findlay will be heading to Devon in September to satisfy my nephews' pet cravings but I still have to look after him for July and August ... whilst shuttling between Glasgow, Drumbuidhe, the Edinburgh Festival and with a jaunt to Marseille thrown in for good measure.

Up here in Drumbuidhe the fruit is bursting out all over and, having started dabbling with airbnb, I have my second lot of guests here at the minute with four more to follow. It turns out that none of them have read the description so they have missed the crucial information "boat access only". It's a steep learning curve for them but they are rewarded with one of the best views in Scotland and oodles of fresh cherries.

Midsummer

It's the longest day of the year which means I'm still getting used to going to sleep in the light and, when I wake in the morning, wondering idly whether it's 5am or 10am. I'm up at Drumbuidhe and struggling (as I have been these past 6 months) to get some constructive research work done. I've got plans of course (reading to do, a literature review paper to write, contacts to follow up on, conferences to investigate) but the lushness of summer always takes me aback. The garden is growing like topsy even if I did manage to get the potatoes mixed up. Alas the pests are also growing and the gooseberry bushes are being stripped bare by sawfly.  I picked off all the caterpillars and pupae I could see and then stripped the berries themselves (gooseberry jelly and basil & gooseberry sorbet) before I spray them with bug killer to try and make some dent in next year's sawfly population. I'm also going to give the potatoes a blast of bordeaux mixture which I found in the shed in the hope that we can stave off blight this year. Some fabulous bits of sunshine had dried the garden out so, although the current rain is a bit grey for midsummer's day, it's welcome nonetheless.

While I fail to get on with my research, N is up in the garden chopping down hedges with gay abandon. With both parents gone, I can now go about drastic remodelling of the garden with gay abandon and the much-hated leylandii hedge is the first bit to go. This may be my version of Campbell's continual urge to drill holes in things but, gosh, the garden looks better for it.

Of course cooking is my standard displacement activity and I'm already planning tonight's dinner (smoked mackerel, new potatoes and cavolo nero) followed by trfile using up the last wee bit of a fabulous cake that I made on Sunday.  The recipe is from Carol Kohll via the Guardian's recipe swap and it's moist light and tender as well as beautifully aromatic.  I made some minor changes because of stuff we had to hand (coffee grinder and olive oil).  We had it for pudding with cardamon-scented hot chocolate.



Cardamon Cake

3 eggs
300g sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp seeds from cardamon pods
1/2 tsp cinammon
zest of one orange
zest of 1/2 lemon
350g self-raising flour
180ml olive oil
1tsp vanilla extract
180ml orange juice

* put salt, spices, rind and some of the sugar into a coffee grinder and grind till fine
* whisk remaining sugar with eggs for about 8 minutes
* add everything together and mix til smooth(ish)
* pour into large (lined) cake tin
* bake at gas mark 4 for 45 minutes

The recipe warned that the cake doesn't keep very well (hence the trifle) but that's unlikely to be a problem.

Theatrical Landlady

I seem to have drifted into a landlady-life without any firm planning on my part. There is a whiff of fate about it since caring duties (looking after J from 2005 to 2007 then C from circa 2010 to 2016) have a strong portion of old-fashioned domestic labour underpinning the new 21st century emotional labour. I can now change  bed in about 1 minute and whip up a decent hollandaise in about 5. Both decent landlady skills.

My lovely lodger G is back in residence in Glasgow and is far too polite to comment on the mild chaos in my flat as I struggle to get my kitchen back together. Up in Drumbuidhe I've put the fank on airbnb and had the first ever guests. They were charming although the £100 they paid and the lovely review they wrote did help to confirm their charm. I spent £115 on bed linen for their visit so I haven't hit on a cunning plan for untold riches but, still, it should help offset the running costs.

Of course I've still got multiple personas going on so last week was the Scottish School of Graduate Social Science Summer School (a fair mouthful even before I tried discussing the neoliberal hegemony over  glass of rose). Some great workshops but also a chance meeting with a Newcastle researcher who had a recently installed off-grid electrical system. He uses a propane generator which opened my eyes to the fact that there is an alternative to the diesel-hungry, over-sized, high-maintenance lister petter that we currently have. The genny has both a recurring overspeed fault and an inappropriate battery. I've been dithering about getting a maintenance visit since it's a minimum £500 per visit. Since a propane generator (silent! sits outside in its own box! easily stored fuel!) can be got for about £2000 it looks like that could be big step towards a new Drumbuidhe grid.

One of my other burgeoning personas is film festival curator following the success of the first Drimnin Sheep Film Festival. We demonstrated that extensive social media coverage doesn't make a blind bit of difference to attendance on the west coast after blanket coverage on radio five's film review programme failed to nudge attendance for 'Rams' beyond our standard six. I also proved that gorse flower syrup isn't really worth the effort but makes a pleasant enough cocktail with gin.

Gorse Flower Syrup

250g flowers
250g sugar
500ml water
Juice & rind of 1 lime & 1 orange

Boil the water and sugar together, pour over the flowers, juice and rind and leave to infuse overnight. In the morning, strain and bring, briefly, to the boil again. Bottle - adding a camden tablet if you want to store it unrefrigerated.

I made up cocktails with gin + syrup + lemon juice, lengthened with soda water and enjoyed over ice. They were very nice but more citrus than gorse.

Spring and stuff

C's celebration went well: the daffodils bloomed on time; the stories were short and sweet; the grandsons read poems from Ogden Nash & Spike Milligan and 200 folk turned up to join the party. The organisation had inevitable messy bits, as one of my friends pointed out, organising a funeral is lime organising a wedding but you have to do it in two weeks. I thought that he grandsons, aged 7 and 9, were too young to speak at a large event (I was wrong, they were excellent) and my sister accused me of spoiling her memory of our mother by preventing her partner from playing his guitar at her memorial (I didn't). My mother's brother turned up from New Zealand and sulked a bit when he wasn't hailed as the family patriarch. I left for London after the party and picked up some evil southern flu which has left me poorly for a couple of weeks. I confirmed to the executor that my sister was going to take C's car before the party but she forgot to collect it (it's sitting at the Honda garage) and accused me of witholding it to make her life difficult (I didn't ... there's a bit of a theme going on here). As a sweet coda to the celebration, at least two of the guests got in touch with Galgael, which I'd mentioned in my euology, which provides training in traditional wooden boat building.

I'm now back to research with a long day at Heriot Watt where I went to the post-graduate research showcase and finally got round to setting up country by country data on energy assessment. Sorting out the estate winds its slow way along. The executors have managed to track down the deeds for C's Glasgow flat which, it turns out was owned jointly by my parents, this means my mother's estate will have to be adjusted before C's can be sorted. Hey ho.

Life at Drumbuidhe continues and, although I'm still coming across stuff that C has cut holes in (propagator trays, walls, windows, expensive machines ...) there is growing optimism that I will, eventually, manage to limit the amount of time I spend looking mournfully at machines that don't work. I'm starting small with the two chainsaws which I've brought down to Glasgow to see if they can be saved. I'm giving myself two years to tidy things (since Drumbuidhe has at least 7 vehicles, none of which work properly, this is not a trivial task) and sort out where and how I'm going to be based. I'm thinking seriously about selling my Glasgow flat and moving permanently to Drumbuidhe, renting a property in the central belt for work. Obviously, while this pondering goes on, the potatoes still have to get planted.

While I've been poorly and distracted, my kitchen renovation has been halted but I've dismantled enough of it to make cooking awkward so adventures in cuisine are limited to toast and yoghurt at the minute. When I got back from London, and while I was still poorly, I went to the Gardeners Cottage in Edinburgh with two of C's colleagues. Outstanding food even if I did throw up when I got home. One of the seven courses was wild garlic soup with ham hock and hazelnuts. To echo this I picked a stack of garlic from Casteal nan Con while heading south after potato planting. The quickest and easiest option is undoubtedly pesto. For this I used what I had in my depleted kitchen (sunflower seeds) and a present of pumpkin seed oil from C's Austrian colleague.

wild garlic pesto
* garlic leaves
* parmesan
* sunflower seeds
* pumpkin seed oil

Pulse everything together in a food processor (inherited from C) and use the fabulous green paste wherever a taste of spring is needed.

There is a bit of a sad memory attached to this since C became a bit obsessed with makig this in in final years. Last year the first workaway volunteer we had visiting told me that C had grabbed and shaken them when they didn't respond fast enough to his demands to help him make it. This meant that I couldn't leave C alone with the volunteers.

death & taxes

On the morning of Friday 16th January C died in his sleep. He was getting increasingly frail so I was going round to see him twice a day. I arrived at his flat just after he'd died.

C is survived by his brother and his two daughters. There was a private cremation the week after his death but I'm now in the throes of organising a great big party at Oran Mor to celebrate his life. Oh, and there's his obituary and cards to all his friends and sorting his estate. I'm tired and sad but doing OK.

My sister is another matter. She's very upset and, after a quick five days in Glasgow (the cremation was timed to fit in with her plans) she's back down in England, not taking my phone calls and seems to be teetering on the edge of a breakdown. I started off thinking that she had money problems since she keeps trying to get access to C's cash before probate but she's so out of control that I'm worried something else might be going on. It doesn't help that I listen to the Archers regularly and spend most of my time shouting at the radio for Tom, Kirsty, Fallon, Iain ... anyone! to see that Helen is drowning not waving.

In an appropriate twist, this week was also the deadline for tax returns. I did manage to get something approximating a return in with 4 days to go.

In less grim news there was a fine Burns Supper at Drimnin with music, recitation, a quiz and many fine words from friends of C. Sad stuff for those of us left but, oh, what a life!