2012

Happy 2012, everyone!

They say what you do on New Year's Eve is what you'll be doing for the year ahead, and if that is the case, then Andy and I will be doing a lot of cooking, a lot of eating, a lot of reading, some movie-watching, and just a little bit of drinking.

Here are some of the things we ate, over the course of an afternoon and evening, on the last day of 2011.

Candy cane slice.


Crackers & Dip. I find champagne goes really well with sharp flavours, like this basil and olive dip.


We also had some cheese & crackers - smoked cheddar sheese, to be exact, which I received as part of a package swap with Susan (which I will post about soon).  This is really yummy, nicely textured vegan cheese.



I made sushi! It was my first time making it, and it really wasn't as daunting as I expected. My only tip is to have wet hands, so the sushi rice doesn't stick so much.  I made my sushi with brown rice, following the recipe from Celebrate Vegan by Dynise Balcavage, except filling it with zucchini and tofu.


The results were a bit bland, in both colour and flavour, and next time I will have zippier fillings. But, I can make sushi!


The best part of the night was easily when we ate ice cream sundaes. I bought some Soyatoo! Whipped Cream on my birthday, back in November. Because it was so freaking expensive, I wanted to use it on only the most perfect dessert. I decided, more than a month ago, that it had to be an ice cream sundae. But it was only this week that the right confluence of ingredients found themselves in our home. Some vanilla spice ice cream in the freezer.  Some Macho Fudge Sauce (from Urban Vegan by Dynise Balcavage) in the fridge. Some sprinkles in the pantry. And the result was everything I expected, and more. So, so good.



That wasn't all we cooked on New Year's Eve, though. We also made some preparations for breakfast the next morning.  I made these parsley breakfast sausages in the frying pan, because I couldn't be bothered steaming them.


And we made some tattie scones. These are essentially mashed potato flat breads, which we ate every day for breakfast in Scotland. And they are easy to make!


So with a bit of reheating, opening a tin, picking some spinach, and chopping some mushrooms (including this well-endowed specimen)...


We had our first meal of 2012.  It was good.


My "resolutions", if you want to call them that, are simple. I plan to wear gloves when I was dishes, to make my own laundry detergent, and to keep my Flickr account up to date. I'll add a brief promise for the next week or so to this: I will post a recipe for fig & pecan stuffing, and for mango granola, because Hannah has asked for them.  Remind me if I forget.

Whisky, Heylan' Coos, and Haggis

Now we leap back in time once again as I continue to regale you with tales from our Round the World trip.  When I last left you, Andy and I had climbed Alps, eaten chocolate, and seen a cow parade in Switzerland. After only 90 minutes in the air, we found ourselves in the UK. A night in Manchester, a train ride, and - tada! - we were in Edinburgh.

Now, the plan, when we originally conceptualised our trip, was to spend a few days in Edinburgh, before moving on to Aberdeen, where Andy had to present at a conference.  Though the conference started Monday, we thought the chances of him being scheduled on the first day were slim.  Well, would you believe that he was scheduled for the very first session on the very first day?  As a result, we got a bit less than 24 hours in Edinburgh.  But didn't we make the most of it!

Edinburgh was the most tourist-iest place we'd been. Red double-decker tour buses, wall to wall people, camera flashes everywhere you turned... (Not that I can complain too much, seeing how we both contributed to the mass of tourists.)

Because we had such a short visit, we didn't bother spending money to go into the things - our logic is that if you have to pay for it, you want to spend lots of time to make it value for money.  And we didn't have lots of time.  So we went to the gates of Edinburgh Castle and admired from outside.

We looked around a church. An old church. Where, like, lots of important people have sat. And lots of important weddings and funerals and stuff have been held. 

Peeked at the Castle of the Holyrood - the Queen's official residence in Scotland.

And ate dinner at the fabulously amazing Henderson's Bistro. There was seriously not a thing on this menu that I wouldn't have happily devoured.  We began the meal with a Hot Toddy, since it was bloody freezing. I couldn't say no to veggie haggis with neeps and tatties, since we were in Scotland for goodness sake!  Andy had, I believe, the Nut Burger.  For dessert, we each had cherry pie with soya cream.  All food was delicious, and I wish we had more time in Edinburgh just to come back to this restaurant.

This isn't where we ate. This is the Scottish Parliament, and some impressive bluffs nearby.

In fact, Edinburgh was the home of good food for us - our two meals both turned out to be delicious. Breakfast on Monday morning was at our accommodation, the Claymore Vegetarian Guest House. This place was comfortable, adorable, and Cathy was very friendly.  And, most importantly, breakfast was huge, and really good - quality food, and lots of it, is a winning combination.

This isn't where we stayed, but check out the blue door!

But sadly, we had to head off quickly to Aberdeen. Andy presented his paper. Then we wandered around the small city, looking at the gray, granite houses.

And the gray, granite buildings.

And the gray sky.

And William Wallace.

The food at our guest house in Aberdeen was not so good. They said 'sure we can do vegan breakfast!' when we made our booking, and then forgot about it. By the second morning they had bought soymilk, and the fruit salad was good. But basically, I ate a lot of tattie scones and baked beans.

This isn't where we stayed. This is the library.

Then, the best part of the trip: whisky. We hired a car, drove 2 hours into the heart of "Speyside", and paid a visit to a friend-of-a-friend at Glenfarclas, a family-run whisky distillery. 

We toured the place, watching barley turn into what was essentially beer.

And then into the copper stills where it becomes whisky.

Then they dump it into wooden casks, and put it in the shed for a decade, or lots of decades.  All the while, it soaks up some yummy burnt-oak flavours from the cask, and sooty-looking lichen grows on the outside of the buildings, feeding on the alcohol fumes and getting drunk.

We tasted some delicious whisky: a 10 year old, a 40 year old, and a 1961 cask strength. At about 60% alcohol, the last one needed watering down, but the 40 year old was like drinking butterscotch. We ate a giant baguette and a whole container of hummus between us afterwards, to soak up some booziness.

And then we drove down the road to Speyside Cooperage to watch some guys repair casks - not barrels, though, since they're a smaller size. These are, I think, 'hogs head' sized casks.

And we learnt lots of  fun facts about barrels. Like, did you know they can only use American oak trees, because they grow the straightest with the least knots? And they only use second-hand barrels for scotch whisky - the flavours from the sherry or bourbon goes into the flavours of the whisky and gives it a certain somethin' somethin'.  And, casks are deceptively difficult to make, but Andy and I conquered the display model anyways.

We had a quick look at Bonlivet Castle.

But I was distracted by the furry cows.

I fed this one some good grass from our side of the fence, and was rewarded with a sloppy lick.

And that was the end of our surprisingly short visit to Scotland. Definitely a place I'd like to go back to!