Food and drink, Scottish style

By the time we finished the castle, we were tired, footsore and cold. So we headed back to the hotel. After a shower and a nap we headed out for a pint and to find some dinner. Steve found a nearby pub with real ale, so we headed over there for a drink. It was crowded and loud and everything you expect from a local hangout. We had a pair of very nice ales and went out to find some food.

There was a street fair down at the Princes street gardens. Games, rides, food stalls, all the proper fair things. We discussed going to find a sit down place to eat, but when we’d walked through the fair earlier we’d noticed a stand cooking up local heritage pork roasts over open coals. Yum. We decided that we wanted pork sandwiches for dinner. And they were so good. So very, very good.

I’m not really sure why so many people tell me British food is awful. I’ve been over at least half a dozen times in the last 10 years, and I’ve never had really bad food. Different than American food, sometimes just “meh” food, but never actively bad food. Maybe it’s because I’m with a native. Maybe it’s because we look for local food, not places catering to tourists. I don’t know, but I do know I look a bit sideways at people who tell me how horrible the food in England[sic] is… that’s just not my experience at all.

After some of the best roast pork, and cracklins! I’ve had, we wandered around the fair a bit, bought Steve a nice wool hat and headed back to curl up in our warm hotel room.

The next morning we got up, ate breakfast in the hotel and headed back up towards the castle. Near the castle was the Scotch Malt Whiskey Experience and Tartan mill tour that we wanted to visit. The tartan mill tour had some neat souviners and lovely wool cloth and clothing. We wandered through a bit, found a tea cozy for Steve’s mum, but didn’t buy very much.

We headed across the street to the Whiskey experience. They had a number of tours with the more expensive tours providing more tastes at the end. But when we tried to buy tickets to one of the tours that came with 3 or 4 tastes the clerk explained that today was one of the two “Distiller Days.” That meant there were representatives of distilling companies providing tastes upstairs. Four tastes came with each tour.

SCORE!

We bought our tickets and were herded into the next room. The best I can describe this bit of the tour is think of a cross between Disney and Alton Brown. We were loaded into a replica whiskey barrel for a ride through a model of the whiskey making process. Along the way, we had a narrator, who I can best describe as a Scottish John Cleese, explaining models that were straight out of Good Eats. It was silly and fun, and captured the whole process in a very Alton Brown sort of way.

After the ride was over, we were introduced to a tour guide, an actual human this time, who showed us a film explaining the 4 major styles/regions of whiskey. Then we got our first taste of whiskey that day and a chance to see the world’s largest collection of malt whiskeys. It was impressively large, thousands of bottles from different distilleries and years.

That was the end of the official tour and we were sent up to the tasting room where the distillers were. There were 6 different distilleries represented, most of which had 4 or 5 different whiskeys to taste.

Stonedean
Tomatin Distillers
Ian Macleod Distillers
Inver House Distillers
Burn Stewart Distillers
Ben Nevis

Stonedean was one of the more interesting ones. It wasn’t actually a single malt, it was a blend. But it was a blend resurrected from the owner’s grandfather’s notes. We talked with the distiller and he told us that his grandfather had dozens of different blends, but this was the one blend where all the ingredients were still available.

Tomatin has a number of really interesting whiskeys, and the distiller there was doing “flight” tastings of all of them. It was interesting to taste how a 12 year was different from a 15 year was different from an 18 year. They also had one called “decades” that was done by someone who had worked in the distillery for 50 years. He blended this whiskey using his favorite from each decade. Just as interesting was listening to people react to the different pours. Some folks liked one year, others liked another.

We also tried a whiskey liqueur from Inver House: Old Pultney. It was sweet and smooth and, oh boy do I want to see if we can find it in the states.

After all that, it was just gone noon. We still had hours to kill before collecting our torch and marching with the torch bearing mob.

 

Edinburgh castle

The one actually in Scotland, not the very nice pub in San Francisco.

The castle entrance.

Our first day in Edinburgh, we were up by 9 and headed out for a walk. We both wanted to see the castle. It was not only huge, there were a ton of things to do once you went in the castle. We randomly joined the first guided tour of the morning. The guide was a very scottish gentleman who clearly loved his job of telling stories to the tourists. We learned about sieges and strife and castle sackings and Ensign Ewart who captured the French regimental eagle at Waterloo.

I took a lot of photos. I’ve discovered I have a total fascination with castles. How they’re built for defense and structured so it’s really hard to take them over. The wall, the moats, the arrow slits, the cannons… all so totally foreign but incredibly awesome.

I am somewhat sad I didn’t get any pictures of the castle from the south, where it’s just a volcanic cliff. The weather gods were not cooperating with me for pictures from that angle, though.

We had a great day at the castle, and we did spend almost the entire day there and we didn’t quite see everything there was to see.

The tour walked us up from the portcullis, past the fireworks setup and the one o’clock gun to the highest level of the castle. At that level there were 3 different buildings to explore: the Scottish war memorial, the great hall and the Royal Palace. The war memorial was beautiful and moving. The great hall is one of the original buildings restored to a Victorian sensibility. The Royal Palace holds the treasures of Scotland, including the Stone of Scone and the Scottish crown jewels. There are also a number of rooms restored to the time of Mary Queen of Scots, including the room where she gave birth to King James VI / James I.

Once we’d finished seeing what we could see, it was raining so we ducked into a cafe and grabbed some lunch. We both had the venison and beef stew with hearty brown bread. Yum.

After lunch, we toured the dungeons. Prisoners of war have been kept in Edinburgh castle since before there were international conventions governing prisoners of war. This became an issue at one point, when the castle was full, but no one could be released because there weren’t ways to exchange POWs. Eventually, there was a prisoner exchange with France and other established nations. Prisoners from the War of American Independence (Revolutionary war) couldn’t be exchanged for political reasons, though.

One of the fascinating things about the prisoners is what they did with very little resources. Many of them took up straw weaving and made elaborate carvings and boxes from bones they saved from their food. They were allowed to sell these crafts to locals through the castle gates.

We watched the firing of the one o’clock cannon. This is a tradition from before the time of accurate clocks. The firing of the cannon gave the ships in the harbor an accurate time mark.

There are also at least 2 museums inside the castle: The National Military museum and the museum of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. A fascinating trip through the history of warfare and military might. Unfortunately, both museums were lit in a way as to not be conducive to photographs.

By the time we’d finished with the second museum, we were pretty tired, so we headed back to the hotel for a nap.

The castle is an amazing bit of history and architecture that towers over the city. And it’s not for show, it really is a fortress. People lived and died there defending their monarch and their country and their peers.

My name is Laura and I have a deep fascination with castles.

 

On to Edinburgh

After our visit to Portmeirion Chris and Mike took us out to dinner at The Bulls Head Inn in Beaumaris. Dinner was excellent and the company even better.

The next day we got up and packed and headed off to the train station for our trip to Edinburgh. I took a few pictures of the coast as we traveled up. I uploaded those shots, and a bunch of random landscape and rock photos to flickr. Also some of the pictures I took of Yet Another Castle from the train.

Speeding past the castle

Traveling by train in the UK was fun, reasonably fast and comfortable. We left Bangor around noon and reached Edinburg (with a single transfer at Crewe… I’m told everyone changes at Crewe) around 6:30. If I could high speed rail down to So Cal I’d do it much more often.

Portmeirion photo walkthrough

Christmas and boxing day were full of family, friends and food. I didn’t take many photos as we were too busy visiting. The day after boxing day, we took a trip to Portmeirion. This town is not far from Mum and Mike’s and is where The Prisoner was filmed.

It was grey and blustery, but was a very fun day out. I took a lot of photos. A bunch are going up as a walkthrough on my flickr page today. There are others that were more fascination with the decorations and architecture. Also, I indulged my penchant for taking pictures of flags. I’ll get those other shots up soon.

Welcome to 2012

Logging into the blog today tells me I didn’t manage to post anything during December. Thinking back, it was an even more than normal bit of crazy around here. Most of that is because we left for the UK on Dec 22, meaning a month’s worth of work was smashed into 3 weeks. I was a little surprised, I thought I had managed to get at least one post out here, but apparently not.

We had a great trip. We spent Christmas with Steve’s mum and Mike, then headed up to Edinburgh on the 28th. We spent an exciting week vacationing in Edinburgh. Lots of sightseeing was involved and I have some wonderful pictures of the town and the castles there.

We also took part in Hogmanay, which is a 3 day celebration of New Year’s. We started on Dec 30 as part of the torch bearing mob and procession through the streets. Then the 31, there was a giant street party with lots of fireworks. On the first there were city-wide games and visiting.

In addition to all the organized activities in Edinburgh, we visited the Scottish National Museum, some of the Edinburgh underground, Arthur’s seat, Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace, and the Scottish Parliament building. We survived a windstorm that shut down the city and much of the island. It was blowing so hard outside that our hotel was shaking. We took an sleeper train from Edinburgh to London Wednesday night, then spent Thursday playing at the London Science Museum.

Friday we got up early and headed home. I have 500 some-odd pictures which I’ll be uploading over the next few weeks.

I did the first set of Caernarfon castle in North Wales that I took Christmas eve. It was not sunny any of the days we were in Wales, but I was reasonably happy with the lighting for many of those shots. Somewhere I have a collection of pictures from an earlier trip when we toured the castle, I’m going to have to look for those.

Large vocabularies…

I’m reading Gene therapy can protect against HIV. DNA immunization was something a few of my colleagues were working on when I was in grad school and it’s awesome to see that it works.

I remember I actually have a Nature subscription and can read the article behind the paywall. That one has a slightly different title: Antibody-based protection against HIV infection by vectored immunoprophylaxis. I’m going through the introduction and I see the following sentence:

However, the efficacy of this prophylaxis was limited by an endogenous immune response directed against the immunoadhesin proteins.

A number of things went through my head.

• right.
• wow. that is a lot of big words
• 15 years out of immunology and I still understand all those big words
• that’s a very clear sentence conveying a lot of concepts in a few, big words
• i could never write a sentence using that kinds of vocabulary in my current job
• *sigh* I miss science

Of course at least a few of those statements are wrong. I do understand that sentence and the big words. I am quite amazed at how much of a picture that creates in my head, even 15+ years out. But, I do actually write like that in my current job, then I go through and edit out a lot of the words of more than one syllable. Then I add in 3 intervening sentences to detail the steps from concept A to concept B.

Different audiences, different communication styles.

But, man, I miss the uber specialized language of science.

Someone is wrong on the internet

A long time ago, when I was deep in my research career, I spent a lot of time answering biology and physiology questions online in some of the pet newsgroups. I was somewhat naïve and still believed people would always make rational choices when presented with facts.

(Stop laughing. I still believe it. I just know it’s more about how I want the world to work rather than how the world actually works. The facts say I’m wrong that people are always rational actors.)

I learned, though, that there were a lot of people who didn’t want facts. They wanted their biases confirmed and their choices validated. It taught me a lot about online arguing. Sometimes it wasn’t worth arguing with people, it wasn’t worth confronting their errors and biases because they weren’t in a place to hear the facts.

There was one case, though, where I didn’t speak up. And someone lost a beloved pet because I didn’t choose to confront the woo. It didn’t mean I confronted woo more often, but it did mean that I would address bad or poor biology.

I’m currently watching a online friend drive down a road where she is buying into a lot of bad biology. It’s clearly desperation. She isn’t a rational actor because she’s been dealing with this illness for years. I am struggling with interfering. I don’t think what she’s doing is actively harmful, and it’s clear medicine doesn’t have an answer for the problem.

I don’t want to increase her pain or her stress. She’s doing the best she can do. I don’t think this will result in permanent damage. But what if I’m wrong? What if a quiet word about how she shouldn’t trust this website to solve all her problems will prevent harm? Is challenging her conceptions themselves harmful to where she is now?

If only people actually were rational. Then providing facts would not be such a confrontation.

Chicken and pasta

Last night we made braised chicken with vegetables over fresh pasta. I still had some fresh stock from earlier this week that we used as the braising liquid. I also got to play with my new food mill.

One thing Steve suggested is making a lemon parsley butter for the finish. I think that would be a win.

Overall it was a very yummy meal. Definitely going to make it again.

I’m pleased I seem to finally be getting the knack of fresh pasta. The recipe I have makes enough for 2 of us for 4 meals, so I froze 3 6 oz portions. The rest I rolled and cut into wide noodles.

A very successful dinner overall.

Comfort food and chicken soup

This morning I awoke to the announcement that J.D. had passed away. I wrote a little about it at the work blog, including a set of links from various memorials. It’s been a sad day where it’s deeply difficult to think about email. J.D. was a legend in the anti-spam arena when I started (13+ years ago), and he’s had such a hand in defining email. Many people have probably never heard of him, but he has absolutely affected what’s in your inbox.

It’s cold and grey here in the bay area today, and between the chill in the air and the sadness around here, I decided to make chicken stock. I’m still not sure what we’re having for dinner, but it’s probably going to involve tons of vegetables and the fresh stock. It’s making the house smell good, but my creativity is broken.

6 weeks?

It has been a while since I’ve posted. No excuses or justifications, it’s just been busy and I’ve not been able to focus enough to put more than a few sentences down. That means I’m more likely to post to twitter or FB, not here.

The weather has finally changed here. Finally had to turn the heat on a few days ago. I’ve started looking for long sleeved clothing, too.

The good bit about the weather change is soup and warm bread. Yum.

I did a really good sausage and bean soup a few days ago. We’ve started getting greens in the veggie box, and had leftover collards and bacon. I was thinking about what to do with them, and thought soup.

I first made a broth out of some smoked pork necks we had in the freezer. I simmered the necks, a pair of carrots, half an onion and a stalk of celery in water for a few hours. Then I tossed all the solids, skimmed the fat and used that as the liquid for the sausage soup.

The soup came together easily. I cooked up 2 hot italian sausages after removing them from their casings. Once the sausage was cooked, I added 2 1/2 – 3 cups of diced onions, one stalked of diced celery and 2 sliced carrots. I let the vegetables soften in the sausage fat until they were translucent. Then I added a handful of oregano, some salt and pepper and maybe some other seasonings. Then I poured on the ham stock and a can of black beans and let it all simmer. About 20 minutes before eating, I dumped in the leftover greens and the remaining pot liquor.

We ate it for 2 nights and I finished off the last little bit yesterday. It was one of my better soups, if I do say so myself. We’re definitely making both the collards and the soup again.