Nearly New

The grey clouds have settled in at the end of the year.  This year's Christmas miracle was present and correct but adjusted for reality: just over a week ago I travelled through to Fife to check on my friend N that I hadn't heard from for a while.  After a damp bit of dithering the police broke down his door and he was found alive but poorly.  N came back to Glasgow with me and we had a quiet Christmas followed by a (planned) quiet New Year up here in Drumbuidhe.  N has lost quite a bit of weight so there's been a lot of cooking, eating and gentle exercise.  He's also got a long list (and growing) of difficult stuff he has to sort out so there's been a fair bit of tears and trickiness.

Looking after N (and Christmas) has meant a pause in job-hunting but there were some decent interviews at the end of the year including an atmospheric trip to Dunoon and emergency trouser purchases for an interview in Glasgow's old BBC building.  Alas none of them resulted in the offer of a lucrative full-time position but I have strong hopes for a possible job in Fort William in the New Year.

In parallel with N's sorting out of stuff I also have my own issues of clearing (bank accounts, mooring permission, room rental, carer's benefit) that these last days of the year are made for.  First of all however there's still the track to be filled and a mark I landrover to get going.

My standard technique for weight building is bread, sausages and lots of vegetables but I've thrown some cookies into the mix for this winter.

white chocolate & cardamon cookies

250g butter
340g sugar (white & brown)
1 egg
500g flour
16 cardamon pods (seeds removed and ground)
pinch salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
200g chopped white chocolate

cream the butter and sugar; add the egg, flour, cardamon, salt & baking powder (I put these all in at once but an electric beater definitely helps); mix white chocolate chunks in; divide dough into two, roll into log shapes, wrap in clingfilm and store in the fridge; to cook heat oven to gas 4, cut slices from the log and place on tray lined with parchment paper; bake for 15 minutes.

Here's to a good new year.

hardcore

Although we've had some bursts of sunshine, the damn rain just keeps falling.

I was off to Oban on Thursday for the Rural Parliament and was saved from enduring a damp wait at Craignure by a neighbour who provided a lift for me and my bicycle via the Corran ferry.  The day in Oban was unmitigated rain and, after a couple of strolls up and down the Esplanade I was soaked front and back which meant I was pretty grumpy for the fringe events that day.  Even without the grumpiness some of Thursday's events were a bit daft.  A discussion billed as "making uplands more productive" turned out to be about reforestation and the leaders were bemused when I asked if there were any other ways of making uplands productive.  Back at Drumbuidhe I'm even more grumpy about this presumption: we sit in the middle of a woodland regeneration area which was established 20 years ago and has surrounded us in trees but the land seems a lot less productive than the days when it was used for stock.  In the 1970s and 80s we used to have the whole shearing circus over here in the summer and no matter how nice the trees are it's now a lot less busy.

Friday saw some more pragmatic discussions and although the 'Open Space' session definitely verged into new age territory, Alasdair Boulton of Morvern Community Woodlands introduced a decent talk about fair use of rural land.  This was brought into sharp focus by a phonecall from our estate owner.  Although my family owns Drumbuidhe and the surrounding land, we sit in the middle of a larger estate and there are frequent tensions regarding our presence here and the fragility of the track we use to access our property.  The estate owner (the Mrs of the couple who own the estate) called, from Suffolk, to say that there had been a landslip on the track and it was impassable.  Well, actually, she didn't say that, she has a rather anxious air and she started by asking where I was ("Oban") and when I was going to Drumbuidhe ("tomorrow") and then saying I might want to rethink that.  This defined the conversation as her checking my movements and advising me rather than just passing on information.  I figured, rightly as it turned out, that she was exaggerating a third party report which had the effect of emphasising her control over me.

Since I am both independent and experienced when it comes to the track her warning had little effect although I did make sure I got over the track in daylight.  It turned out that there wasn't a landslip but that the gravel had been washed off about 100m of the track turning it into a mini boulder field that was kind of interesting to negotiate in a fiat panda.  I did make it over the track but, since I'll be going uphill on the way out, I'm a bit worried about getting both me and the fiat panda out in one piece tomorrow.  So today was spent with shovelling.  Lots of shovelling.  I shovelled a load of pebbles from the beach into the back of the mark 1 Landrover whilst watched by a diving boat anchored in the loch.  I then drove up to the washed-out section and shovelled all the pebbles out into the more serious holes.  I also did a bit of drain digging and levelled out the track where I could.  Crikey but shovelling is hard work.  The landrover fuel guage is showing as completely empty (I think the gauge might be bust ... the landrover is definitely a bit poorly at the minute) so I walked back for lunch which had to be quick, substantial and tasty.  Hurrah for pasta!

Herb and Roast Tomato Pasta

* three handfuls dry pasta
* three handfuls ripe cherry tomatoes
* parsley
* garlic
* olive oil
* soft cheese (1/4 pack of Boursin)
* salt & pepper

set the pasta onto cook; half the cherry tomatoes and place in a roasting tin, add salt, pepper & olive oil and set under a hot grill 'til they start to blacken; chop the parsley and garlic as fine as you can be bothered; when the pasta is cooked, drain and return to the pan; add roasted tomatoes, chopped parsley and garlic and soft cheese; stir and serve.

Fed and watered I trekked back up with a can of petrol and renewed vigour.  Mending the track is like painting the Forth Road Bridge but there is at least enough of a flat surface to be able to squeeze me and the panda out tomorrow.

Dam!

The dam burst.  The one that supplies our electricity (via a water turbine) and our domestic water.  It's still a bit of a mess up there but with a concerted bit of cobbling I've now got both domestic water and electricity working.  In fact the electricity is working better then before.  This is mainly due to the strong steady rain we've had for the past 3 days but a wee bit of it is because the water intake has improved.  The dam was too big for requirements (part of why it eventually collapsed) and the water inlet was 1m under the surface of the water.  The inlet is constructed from 4" pipe (the pipe down to the turbine is 6").  In an attempt to allow a filter to be placed in the inlet it was constructed using a t-junction with the inlet pointing vertically up (the horizontal portion was blocked off).  A motley collection of pipes and netting was then placed in the inlet to try and stop leaves, twigs and frogs getting into the turbine.  The effect of all this was a reduction in water flow and continual blocking of the inlet.  Any benefit produced by the extra-large dam was lost in the convoluted inlet.

I've now unblocked the horizontal inlet which is still below the reduced level of the dam and tried out a couple of filters.  My first attempt used an old scallop net and it kept out the leaves but, since the flow rate at the inlet is so high, the net was sucked tight against the inlet and the small surface area was blocked by the leaves it was filtering within 48 hours.  The next attempt was a 1m tall dunce's cap fashioned out of a rusty but just-about-pliable metal grill.  This fits over the inlet and stands proud providing a much greater surface area for filtering.  It seems to be working and we've been getting a steady 3A for the past 24 hours.  There are no photographs of the new filter because it was installed in the middle of the strong steady rain and everything was just too damn wet.

grumpy gluten

It had to happen eventually but, after two summers of volunteers, C finally got so grumpy that he scared a couple off after just 48 hours.  It was the result of our policy of accepting any volunteers who are organised enough to get to our far-flung rural corner: I could see that an American couple interested in "authentic experiences" and "permaculture" were always going to be an awkward fit.  I hate to agree with Frankie Boyle but he does have a point when he says the ironic thing about people with emotional intelligence is that they don't realise everyone hates them.  In this case the couple didn't realise that C's grumpiness was an inevitable and authentic reaction to their book-learning preachiness.  It was the young lady's description of her aversion to wheat that finally did it.  Gosh they were dim.

Because our cottage is dead lovely, they were replaced pronto with a sweet young German lady who turned out to be volunteering nearby on Lismore and was able to come a wee bit early.  She's done a grand job with all sorts of stuff, cooked cakes and kept C company.

The authentic volunteers did at least provide a baseline measure for people who aren't suited to west coast life but the other who've visited this year have ranged from gently incompetent Americans to stern cheese-loving Germans including the Catalonian couple who provided the picture above.  They've all provided an opportunity for C and I to practise our referendum rants.  We've got a copy of the SNP's manifesto/white paper on the mantelpiece and we did a decent double-act of reasons why independence would be a rubbish idea.

After a civilised bit of voting (free sweets and a nice chat with the polling clerks) and excellent lunch in the White House I woke up spontaneously at 3am as the votes came in and stayed up 'til Glasgow at 5am when the writing was on the wall.  I was driving south the next day and I'd been prepared for scenes of devastation akin to 'The Road' but I felt the waves of relief rising as the day went on.  Until I got to Glasgow where the old enemies were rioting in George Square.  And so it continues.

a good set

This was a good year for the Edinburgh Festival.  The flat I rented stayed pretty empty (a couple of jolly lunches with schoolfriends and west-coast neighbours filled the space and made inroads into the enormous quantity of potatoes I'd brought with me) but the shows were good and the rain held off.  The rise of rubbish multi-media events in the international festival's drama programme means that I went to very few plays although I should be mentioned in dispatches for sitting through two and a half hours of pointless Russian drama that was The War.  After that marathon, honorable mentions go to John Byrne's portraits at the National Portrait Gallery; Sister Marie Keyrouz in Greyfriars Kirk and Daniel Kitson in a suitably dingy basement.  Last year I sang in The Events at the Traverse and Daniel helped continue my run of sold-out shows by casting me as the (pivotal) 'person C' in his wee drama.  Every one of my lines was dead filthy but I delivered them with both volume and conviction.

I packed up my bags after Sweet Mambo, added some clean underwear and a gold maxi-dress and set off south with high hopes of drunken parties and further uses for my potatoes.  I ended up in the Cotswolds with fine chat (apparently Castro isn't really a 'people person') and wicked caipirinhas.  Thankfully the party was in A's cottage and she's a thoughtful and generous host.  Left alone in the cottage to sweat out the remains of south american liquor I've been able to critique A's refurbishment (very classy although she'll have to get her gutters checked ... we west coast architects have a keen eye for rain-based issues) and work my way through the party leftovers.  I've almost reached my limit for smoked-salmon bagels but I've also made a stack of blueberry jam which is looking damn fine.  I'm not quite sure why jam-making has such mystique applied to it but maybe I'm just more slapdash than others.  My Glasgow Cookery Book goes into exhaustive detail about testing pectin levels (they assume that every kitchen has methylated spirits to hand ... maybe it's a Glasgow thing) but it seems to me that as long as you include fruit skins in the jam and boil it with extreme prejudice you'll be fine.  A decent set can be elusive but it is at least easy to see when you get it: pour a bit of the jam onto a saucer, blow on it to cool and push with your finger, if the surface wrinkles you're done.

blueberry jam

about 1.5kg blueberries (couldn't find the scales)
dash of lemon juice
1kg sugar

boil the blueberries and lemon juice 'til most of the berries have broken down
add the sugar and stir 'til dissolved
boil hard for about 5 minutes - test for a set
pour into jars

I had a little sit down after the first boiling (the south american liquor was unexpectedly potent) and I've still got to wipe down the kitchen (as well as being tastefully decorated it's also much cleaner than anything I normally operate in) but the whole operation took about 15 minutes.  I bought the sugar from the local shop where jam retails for £2.99 so I've got about fifteen quid's worth ready to go.

a bit of blight

The fruit and vegetables are coming in thick and fast now with more blackcurrants and chicory than we know what to do with.  On the foraging side there's been a fair crop of blaeberries from the surrounding countryside and a couple of handfuls of wild cherries which have gone into a wild cherry gin (overenthusiastic splitting of the stones to get at the almond-flavoured kernels broke my mortar).  C is trying two different recipes for cassis but we're still wading through stacks of the wee black things so there'll be a massive jam session this coming weekend with a couple of jellies thrown in to polish off the last of the redcurrants and gooseberries.  Consistent feeding of the garden has seen outstanding growth for broccoli and beans but not as many flowers and beans as I'd have liked - still they make the garden look fabulously lush.

The vegetable garden does have planning behind it but there's a really long lead time before you can work out if a given plant has been a success: first you have to come across the seed (my local deli in Glasgow started selling Franchi seeds about 7 years ago which is where I came across Cavolo Nero and Latuga Romana which have done excellently both in the garden and on the plate); next you have to get the seeds to germinate which is a thankless task when it comes to parsley and, in our case, is frequently foiled by dramatic frosts and damn mice who push off the propagator lids to get at the baby seedlings; next they plants have to survive and thrive in the garden itself where they are subject to yet more mice (we now plant peas and beans out in tin-can-collars), frosts, droughts, too much sunshine, too little sunshine, deer and weeding by folk who should know better; the plants then have to be harvested at the right time before delicate wee courgettes have turned into bloated comedy marrows or mangetout peas have turned into rock-hard bullets; finally the produce has to both cook well and store well.  Experience has taught us that onions are very prone to neck-rot in our climate and it's depressing to realise that the crop you planted six months ago, looking forward to the "award-winning flavour" is now mush.  The chicory we planted this year is growing very well all over the garden but I thought it was going to be a decent base for salads and it's far too bitter for that.  Since we've got lots of the stuff I'm experimenting with sauteing mixed greens made up of chicory and broccoli leaves.  That's a full year from 'thinking about new plants' to either 'eating delicious freshly-picked veg' or 'admitting they weren't worth the bother'.  I often think that I don't really have the patience for this gardening malarkey, not in a world where greengrocers exist.

Despite all this trendy Italian veg, the solid backbone of the garden is potatoes and this year I planted a large selection.  Such is my effete metropolitan nature that they are all waxy potatoes but I wanted to experiment beyond the standard Charlotte and pink-fir types that we use.  The blight has now struck, wilting the potatoes' leaves and stopping them thriving (I plant potatoes under plastic so the air-borne blight fungus doesn't drip off the leaves into the soil and affect the tubers but it does make the plants looks rubbish).  The striking difference is between the potato types.  Last year's Anya potatoes have been badly affected but Maxine is still doing well and Picasso and even Harlequin showed some resistance.  The Kestrel potatoes were the first ones we harvested, tasted fine and showed no signs of blight.  Next year I'm going to try Charlotte and Maxine as the two potato crops.

In celebration of harvest - and using the Anya potatoes (on the left of the photo) that I've started harvesting - I'm making a couple of potato dauphinoise: one to eat today and one to freeze for reheating later with some cheese on top.  As well as the pink-fir taste Anya potatoes also have a fair bit of their knobbliness so I've gone for a brief parboiling of the whole potatoes so that I can peel them without sacrificing half the tuber.  The proportions of the recipe come from Felicity Cloake's excellent series in the Guardian in search of the perfect version of classic dishes.

750g Anya potatoes
250ml double cream and 100ml milk
crushed garlic cloves, salt, pepper, nutmeg50g Gruyere cheese or similar

Pop the whole potatoes in a pan of cold water, bring to the boil and boil for 3 to 5 minutes.  Drain the potatoes, leave to cool then peel and slice as thinly as possible.  Grease a dish with butter and add the potato slices in rough layers, adding salt, pepper, garlic and nutmeg between the layers as you go.  Pour in the milk and cream.  Cover the dish with foil or a lid and pop into the oven (160C / gas mark 3) and start testing the potatoes for doneness after 30 minutes.  Once they're done, remove the lid, sprinkle with cheese and give it a final 10 minutes 'til nicely browned.

bother with buoys

Summer is upon us and everything is looking lush.  I had a long rant planned about difficulties with C as he gets grumpier and more perverse by the minute but physical drama took over as I attempted to install the first part of our old/new mooring.

 Many years ago we had a mooring out at the end of the point which was a circle of rope (known as a running trot) attached to a tree on the shore and to an anchor about 15 metres out.  This meant you could get out of the boat, attach it to the rope circle then pull it out to the anchor.  The end of the point only ever dries out at very low tides and the mooring was next to a rock shelf which you could clamber out onto.  The boats were kept safe from bashing against pontoons or rocks and could be used almost all the time.

The downside was that accessing the mooring involved walking to the end of the point and a bit of a scramble up and down the rocky ledge.  We stopped using the mooring about 15 years ago when my mother decided that a pontoon should be set-up on the other side of the bay which she could more easily walk to.  In practice she never did walk out to the new pontoon (it still involved a bit of scrambling over rocks) and the new pontoon dried out at every low tide so we were limited when we could use the boats.  We now have two pontoons: one at road side which only floats at high tide and the metal one on the far side of the bay.  These pontoons are badly secured, falling to bits and covered in projections which have fatally holed one of our boats.  I now spend more of my time patching up the pontoons than I ever spend in an actual boat.

I proposed to C that we kept our boat out of the water this year and spend the time sorting out the pontoons (demolishing the roadside one, creating proper anchors and then moving the metal ones next to the road) and reinstating the old mooring.  The fact that C responded to this suggestion by buying another boat is part of his general confusion.

Two weeks ago at a low, spring tide I traipsed out to the end of the point with chains, shackles and buoy to secure to the old but existing anchor in the fetid mud that makes up the bay.  As I was lowering myself down onto the rocky ledge (about a 3 metre drop) the ancient rope that I was holding onto broke and I fell onto the rock (taking most of the impact on my left arm and leg and avoiding the further 4m drop onto the mud).  I hit my head on the rock and although there wasn't any concussion there was an awful lot of blood.  I limped back to the house along the shore feeling very pathetic and was cleaned and patched haphazardly by a shaken C (in 1999 C befriended a Yorkshireman who was travelling the coast by boat and who slipped, hit his head, and died on the shore as he was returning from the pub on Christmas Eve).  I spent the rest of the day in bed (wanly greeting two bemused Czech volunteers who arrived for a week's working holiday that evening) and drove back to Glasgow the next day.  I went along to A&E on the Sunday for a tetanus shot and reassurance that no great damage had been done.

Two weeks later and I've still got a slight limp (I tore a fair chunk out of my left heel and knee) and a dramatic scar on my forehead.  I'm still a bit shaken but life goes on and C's increasingly manic ebullience still has to be controlled.  I was back up at the cottage this week to transport the next volunteer (a Spanish water engineer who coped admirably with C's shouting) and to provide an impromptu dinner party for a Norwegian sailor and his crew of two.  I'm back in Glasgow now, still recuperating and providing myself with comfort food in the form of a fresh summer pasta.  C has taken to criticising, well, everything and he objected to me calling a dish 'risotto primavera' - he "hates" the name because 'primavera' just means 'Spring'.  I pointed out that risotto is an Italian dish so giving it an Italian name* made sense but having his grumpiness contradicted, no matter how gently, just leads to sulks.  Hey ho.  By myself I'm free to call stuff whatever I like:

Pasta Primavera
(serves one)

5cm chopped chorizo
2 handfuls of skinned broad beans
2 cloves chooped garlic
3 chopped cherry tomatoes
pasta

while the pasta is cooking, saute the chorizo in a dash of oil and skin the broad beans (a bit of a faff but I reckon it's worth it) add the garlic and chopped cherry tomatoes then, just before serving, stir in the broad beans and cooked pasta.  Heat through and serve.

* Pasta Primavera was created in the 1970s in New York but arguing about the relative authenticity of Italian cuisine vs Italian-American cuisine is fraught at the best of times let alone in a small kitchen on the west coast of Scotland with a demented elderly gentleman

the naming of things

Finally the west coast is starting to dry out and I've had the chance to try out my, slightly alarming, graphic scheme for the hall flooring.  The hall floorboards were replaced haphazardly with silicon to fill the gaps and they've proved impossible to clean.  The cheapest option to cover them was hardboard so I took the opportunity to try out a comic-book option with the idea that it can always be painted over if it gets too much.  It was already getting a bit much outside.

There was a rush to get this finished before the arrival of my sister, her boyfriend and her two wee boys.  I had intended being in Glasgow whilst they were in residence but the combination of gardening (planting of potatoes and seedlings that were getting too big for the propagators) and the inaugural curry night at the village hall meant that I headed up for what was meant to be the first couple of nights of their stay.  Alas the diesel generator was still recovering from its October reassembling (the guide tube seals had been replaced wrongly so it was leaking oil badly) so gardening was delayed whilst C and I wrestled with mucky manifolds.  This meant I had to stay an extra couple of days finishing up with some frantic weeding and planting: purple-sprouting broccoli and brokali (cross between chinese and european varieties) seedlings planted out; courgette seedlings planted and protected; carrot, beetroot and parsnip sown; rocket, lamb's lettuce and mustard sown; fertiliser applied.

However the extra time gave me the opportunity to discover that my sister's boyfriend is not just incompetent but pretty horrid as well.  This time he wasn't able to dig up my herbs and scatter seaweed in the wrong places and he was limited in what he could do to help C who found boyfriend's attempt to apply PTFE tape excruciating to witness.

Instead he devoted his time to riding roughshod over our culture.  He announced the first night that he and his sons had decided C's new numberplate stood for "Horrible Grumpy Man".  He then repeated this a couple of times daily including using it instead of C's name whilst singing 'Happy Birthday' until I suggested that C was getting depressed (poorly diesel generators and incompetent son-in-laws will do that to a man) and that this repetition wasn't helping.  The boyfriend's use of the passive voice whilst pompously informing his seven-year old son not to use the line didn't fool anybody.  On his second night he insisted on repeating a rubbish joke ("Did you hear the joke about the Haggis? it's offal!") several times despite C and I protesting each time that we found the boyfriend's Scottish accent offensive and distracting and that telling the joke again wasn't helping.  The boyfriend went to Eton.  It shows.  Since he can barely pick up direct requests to stop saying stuff it was hoping too much that he might pick up the following indirect request.

In front of Drumbuidhe there is a small peninsula at the very end of which we used to moor our boat.  This is known to use as 'the point' since it's the only one we can see from the house.  The full name given on the OS map is the gaelic rubha na oitir which refers to the shallow bay (it dries out fully at low tide) it encloses but can also be taken as meaning 'the point'.  Alas the boyfriend has heard this as 'otter point' and despite the fact that none of our family, or previous inhabitants of Drumbuidhe, or maps of this area mention this name, he has decided to use it to demonstrate his familiarity with the area and his bond with nature.  I pointed out that the name of the point was oitir as in 'shallows' in the native language rather than otter as in 'recently-sentimentalised-mammal' in a foreign language but to no avail.  He kept using 'otter point' and I kept feeling a rustle as the people of Morvern shifted in their graves.

Crikey he was relentless:  The fresh wild garlic makes for great fritattas (aka spanish omlette or tortilla).  As I served this the boyfriend gave a wee lecture to his sons about how I could cook this because I'd spent time in Spain.  Needless to say this is rubbish - I didn't have to go to Seville to recognise good food.  It was delicious as I'm sure the many Glaswegians of Italian descent would have agreed.

Wild Garlic Fritatta
(serves four adults and two children)
generous slug of oil
3 leeks - sliced
10 cherry tomatoes cut into quarters
8 medium potatoes cooked, peeled and chopped into chunks
6 eggs
grated cheese
large handful wild garlic, chopped fine
salt and pepper

* heat the oil in the largest all-metal frying pan you have
* fry the leeks over a moderate heat 'til they've just started to brown
* add the tomatoes and potatoes and fry for a couple of minutes
* mix the eggs with the grated cheese, wild garlic, salt and pepper
* pour the egg mixture into the frying pan, moving the vegetables gently aside so the egg mixture is evenly distributed but taking care not to scramble it
* turn the grill up to maximum and put the pan under the grill to cook the top of the mixture (I have to do a bit of twisting and turning to get the top evenly cooked)
* if you're serving to children, check that it's cooked through
* slice and serve

This recipe includes the vegetables I had available and my personal inclinations (I do like the alium and tomato mixture).  I've yet to try the emergency version which uses crisps instead of cooked potatoes.

crofting chic

I'm not sure what triggers it (interest rates? the weather? disruptions to the earth's magnetic field?)but every three years or so a section of metropolitan types discover the joys of smallholding and wax lyrical about the joys of growing your own vegetables and waking up to find deer grazing outside one's window.  Obviously I could rant for some considerable time about deer and their base, evil natures but instead here's a chance to wax lyrical about the joys of metropolitan areas.

I was invited to a birthday party down on the South Downs which are blessed with easy walking, great views and a lovely youth hostel.  The complexities of rail tickets meant that I had a day of wandering in Brighton before heading north.  There had been another series of storms battering the south coast a couple of days previously which provided perfect conditions for beachcombing.  Brighton is a great city with food joints such as Bill's that are so hip it hurts but there's an edge of menace that it'll never quite shake with a forceful sea on its doorstep.  It's hard to maintain a sense of elegance when everything on the seafront rusts as you look at it.  The sea had thrown up contrasting white chalk and black wood (remnants from the last burning of the west pier) pebbles, both honeycombed by sea creatures.  There was also a tangle of mermaid's purses and starfish limbs and then a random stack of goose barnacles who'd been uprooted alongside their wooden home.

Last summer we had great volunteer from Asturia staying at Drumbuidhe.  His English wasn't great but, with the aid of Alan Davidson's North Atlantic Seafood, we established that goose barnacles fetch 100 euros a kilo in midwinter when it becomes worthwhile harvesting the difficult wee sods.  I'm afraid I had a 3 day journey north ahead of me so I had to resist the temptation to see what all the fuss is about them.

The journey north took in such wonders as steak and chips at Relais de Venise and Kate Tempest at West Yorkshire Playhouse ending up finally in Glasgow where I had a last burst of sophistication cooking polenta before heading north.  The reasoning behind polenta instead of potato is that I'm still eating my way through last year's anya potatoes and can't bring myself to pay for potatoes in the shops.

Grilled Polenta
1 cup cornmeal (significantly cheaper than stuff labelled 'polenta')
3 cups water
very large knob butter
2 tsp vegetable stock powder
very large knob cheese (chopped)
handful of parsley chopped

mix one cup of cornmeal and one cup water
bring the remaining two cups water, butter and veg powder to boil
tip in the damp polenta and simmer for about 15 minutes 'til very thick
remove from the heat and stir in the cheese and parsley
pour into a small tray and leave 'til cool
cup into chunky chip pieces and grill on two sides 'til browned
serve with garlic mayonnaise or ragu sauce

best laid plans

As the rain rains incessantly, with only a bit of blustering for light relief, there's very little to do in these dog days of the year.  My mother, hardened by many years of Scottish winters, took up tapestry and it was only her untimely death that saved us all from slow suffocation by cushions.  I've experimented with knitting but there's a (very low) limit to the number of dropped stitches I can accommodate before my frustration at my lack of basic womanly skills becomes too much.  So, once the final episode of 'The Bridge' has finished I'm stuck with reading, plotting and eating.

The reading has been dealt with by Neal Ascherson's Stone Voices from the London Library which starts off with lyrical descriptions of Dalriada sparked by Kilmartin Glen.  I too placed my foot in the carving on Dunadd hill when I visited just, you know, in case.  When the sun hangs low you can see the marks that those before us have made in the shadows.  Just a week of winter burning threw up this collection of ironmongery.

The book does get rather bogged down in its central portion where Neal Ascherson personally saves civilisation but these are interesting times and he's seen a fair bit of them.  I've got heavier reading to come when the quasi white paper of Independence arrives next week.  I was down in Plymouth (but still registered to vote in Edinburgh) during the devolution referendum.  I was proud to be the only person who ordered the white paper from Plymouth's Waterstones and I felt the weight of history as I sat down to my postal vote.  This time I feel obligation rather than excitement but at least Mr Ascherson's warmed me up.

The plotting is confined to heady plans for the coming year: gabion reinforcements on the track! six varieties of potatoes! rearranging the fank kitchen! death to all deer! but hasn't got as practical as a funding application for Drimnin cinema.  I'm hoping the shame of taking over a year to out public licensing costs will spur me to finish it.  We now have Sam Firth in residence with her fab film Stay The Same and if I don't get on with it sharpish we'll end up with a film festival and no damn cinema.

 The eating is going well despite the fact that 'turnip' is cited as one of the highlights of February in my seasonal vegetable guide.  Although the damn deer have eaten all the cavolo nero planted last summer there's plenty of kale around and I'm not too proud to buy it.  My life has been improved enormously by the discovery that kale chips are not as worthy as they sound although this may have a bit to do with the amount of salt I use.

Kale Chips

kale leaves, chopped into bite size pieces and with ribs removed
olive oil
salt

* preheat the oven to 300F, 150C, gas mark 3 (it's more of a drying than a roasting thing)
* coat the kale with the oil (I end up having to use my hands for curly kale) using as little as possible
* lay the pieces on a baking sheet in one layer not touching each other - I have to do them in several batches and this is the only bit of hassle
* sprinkle generously with salt
* bake 'til they just start browning, about 10 minutes

Cold beer, kale chips and a decent fire makes even the dampest February tolerable.