Salivation Army in Scottish borders

Today is my first day in Dumfries–home of Robert Burns– and trove of Scots culinary treasure.

Singlespeed sister  Julie Cartner took me to Loch Arthur Farm, just outside of the town of BEESWING (attention Richard Thompson fans, this town is so fine you might miss it if you blink).

Up a hill and hesitantly through two farm gates–she’d never seen the place, but heard of the Farm for years–and we were in a farm courtyard.

Fresh green fava beans and tomatos heaped in humble boxes tempted me before I stepped through the hanging chains marking the entryway into the shop.

And oh, what a shop. The cheese cooler was full of local delicacies from nearby towns (Criffel, Crannog) as well as the prizewinning Loch Arthur farm cheese, both aged and fresh.  This last one is a type of cheddar ( tangy, salty, buttery).  The ewe’s milk cheese was ma-aa-aaarvelous. 

Julie sank a week’s wages into a box full of fresh breads, jam, apple balsamic vinegar, cream cheese and all the aforementioned ones, plus a unique elderflower beverage and some staples so I can make Rosemary Shortbread  (coals to Newcastle?)….then we roared off (oui, en voiture) to the Mabie Forest, one of the Seven Stanes (collect them all) 

Mabie is not vast. You can ride almost all of it in three hours if you are pretty fit and adept…but it’s the perfect forest for uncertain newbies as well.  There is a corral with skills stations where you can READ about how to do the trick and then perform it. Whether someone will watch you is anyone’s guess.

There are also menacingly tall whoop-de-dos and when I ride them, I keep my wheels firmly on the ground. 

 

 We met Luke Webber, a freelance cycling writer who had ridden there (no car! Yay!) who managed to write and post storiesabout the race (Ft. William WorldCHAMPION. I can’t imagine truly watching a race….I would want to be IN that race, not watching it.

 

But I digress. We raced home to prepare a vegetarian meal for Kenny Lamont our chocolate-designer friend (the Cocoa Bean Company).

It consisted of Attention Deficiet Disorder risotto –the kind where you toss the onions in the oil, turn on the stove and walk away to write a post…coming back to  blackened  onions and sadly browned arborio rice …(blame the electric range, not the fact that you try to write on the computer while cooking) .  THere was also a platter of roasted vegetables, and a wicked tasty “rocket” salad (arugula). Cheeses (see above).  Sweet potatoes, wine, we feasted…

A Bloggable Feast

Heidi Kuehne knows how to make good chow. Under her window in Leith, aromas beckoned alluringly. I didn’t even need to know the apartment number– I just followed my nose.

This singular, shaven-headed woman distinguished herself last week at the little antique shop Now & Then (friend had to show me this cool nook) by her American accent…

“Hey! You an American too?”

“Yes….” she smiled. I jumped up and down (can I really be this homesick?) then let her finish the purchase (seriously antique bicycle lamp).

Now & Then is so small (AND PACKED WITH FASCINATING THINGS) that a pair of Americans schmoozing is, well, a crowd.

Chris Hill had already noticed the Permanently Inked Chainring Marks on her right calf and was focusing his camera at ankle level.

Wow. A crazed, committed American biker. In this town!

“Why don’t you come Wednesday for dinner?” she asked me suddenly.

Wow. No wasted time. well…maybe she is like me in more ways yet to be discovered.

OK I’m supposed to write about food.

The meal: I have pix, and will show you sometime. Her friend Sinead Collins was along. Sinead is almost half our age, also a “post-doc” in evolutionary genetics, and possibly the fastest-witted (and swiftest speaking–200 wpm) youngster I’ve met in years. A perfect foil to a pair of ‘mature’ biker bon vivants . She is a book-binder (Japanese style) and also has a food blog: kitchendancing.blogspot.com

Starters: a wee dram of …er…nice whisky. In a laboratory beaker, the tiniest I’d ever seen.

Then, fresh baby tomatoes salted with smoked “jail salt” (an inside joke, about what Sinead would smuggle in if Heidi is ever incarcerated for being Too Original), and napped in olive oil, then dusted with the finest powder of fresh pepper–thanks to an antique pepper mill our hostess has dragged along with her for the last 20 years….hmm…another shared trait: requires proper pepper, regardless of inconvenience, weight of device, etc. This too deserves its own picture. Imagine a shiny brass cylinder incised with designs and sporting the strangest but oddly ergonomic accordionesque handle.

And the main dish: Mujadarra (aka lentils with caramelized onions)

equal amts red lentils and water (3/4 cup of the dry lentils will feed three hungry people)

Slightly more than half that amount (1/2 cup) of basmati rice

1.5 cups chopped onions in good olive oil (1/4 cup), cooked in a heavy pan (be sure to stir) until darkly sticky

Combine cooked lentils + rice with the onions. Laugh at how easy and cheap it is….

Saute some okra to go along with it.
Serve with red wine,

and follow with fresh walnuts, chocolate, and very large, sweet dates.

Pull out banjos (Heidi has one, a Mike Ramsey!) and play until dead-tired.

Ride home singing.

Get invited in for tea by downstairs resident in Grove St.

Fall asleep in own bed, again…not in Kansas anymore…..

Caboc, Oatcake, and Tea

Happiness is discovering local foods, local specialties, local ways.

My four year habit of not buying food (preferring to scavenge, cultivate and steal) left my shopping chakra ….flaccid . Atrophied “Errand Faculties” are satisfied with mere Minstrels (M&M’s on steroids) and Hobnobs (delicious digestive crackers with a chocolate top).

Enter LongshanksBigLeggy, a woman with a knack for Just The Right Thing.

She pedaled across town the other day, and came into Helen’s swinging an orange plastic sack.

“I couldn’t help picking up a few treats for you” she said, pulling out bananas, clementines, and a pair of mysterious boxes. One said “Nairn’s” and the other said “Caboc“. To me, Nairn is the town where I sent a fan-mail to Tilda Swinton. Caboc, well, didn’t ring a bell.

Caboc was the find of the day…possibly the oldest cheese made in Scotland (invented by a chieftain’s clever daughter, if you’re to believe the wiki), a silky, buttery white cloud that melts into the dry herby crumb of the oatcake (that was the Nairn’s thing…a dry dry round of crunchy oaten goodness (well, I love oats). To my tongue’s lipidometer, it felt like a double cream. The little Caboc log of cow’s milk cheese was rolled in oats like a christmas log.

Nairn’s oatcakes are splendid, but please don’t eat them dry, and especially not while lying down reading. You’ll aspirate a vicious crumb and die a horrible death.

Which brings us to the tea. Leggy’s selection included a fine Kenya tea that reminded her of her Malawi childhood and a rose pouchong that reminded me of the gallica roses lining the cycle path to Portobello.

A pot of each, plus the cheese, Nairn’s, and some oranges….the core of the unpretentious Scottish palate. Only whisky was missing, but I have to wait until Tom Morton turns me onto that…I require expert advice in these matters.

The Embarrassing Muchness of Plenitude

Can’t believe it’s a month since I scribbled down any food (or chamagne) related words of fizzdom.
Let’s see…arrange my chefette’s smock…look around the kitchen and realize that I’m going away for two months and had better throw all that great provender away.

This is in direct conflict with my Clean Plate Club upbringing.

But since I don’t want the very last thing I’m doing here at home to be :

hurling Perfectly Good Produce into the compost.

I’m doing it now, so the last thing I do in Marin will be ‘run around hunting for my passport’.

Trying to pack for 2 months,  keep it below 20 kg, of which nearly half of the weight is my home-cured olives…

Whenever I go anywhere, now more than ever, I pack food along partly for my friends and partly for myself. Our airlines provide food at shockingly high prices so having a lavish on-board picnic is the Gleaner’s Way. My choices for fare:

–Kettle chips (twice fried, twice the calories, very loud crunch. good for de-fusing the tension associated with flying, even though I adore flying somehow there’s tension)

–Strange Japanese peanut cookies (bet they’re more like candy, wrapped in edible rice paper)

–Several tins of fishy stuff: sardines, tuna, and best of all, a Portuguese fish paste, a delicious pate really, that I discovered in Portugal when racing there in 04. Great on

Crackers, only slightly over their pull date.

Ramen, organic. This is for my German friend Georges..

Yesterday the fridge and the pantry got the Ruthless Treatment, and the worms that flourish in the compost are having their best meal yet…You have to bury this sort of stuff (whole camembert cheeses, eggs, etc) very deep and surround with worms…whaddya mean this isn’t a food blog….maybe it should be a food for worms blog,eh?

No, really, this is my food blog.

I’m so panicky busy prepping for eight weeks of being gone (and no dumpsters to chow out of, SOB!)

that I ‘m forgetting to EAT. That really means something.

Food writing, write about food for people ya eedjit!

Yes: we made a stupendous luncheon for her royal Momjesty the mother in love, Mrs. Cunningham (Carol, newly rechristened Remy pronounced RAY mie):
Moroccan chicken

Perfect jasmine rice

Potato salad

Tomato salad

Death by Chocolate cupcakes

Really excellent green tea.

It was a feast.

Mumm’s the word

Sorry I can’t figure out how to flip my pix around.
For this once, it’s OK.
The bottle (which has lain for years on its side) is resting in peace…and my kitchen is 90 degrees off….
I found t it about a year or two ago in an over-filled residential dumpster on Sais Avenue, San Anselmo.
Someone had cleaned out a house where an old person lived and died. She or he left behind a few seemingly nice bottles of booze…the kind you put aside for a special occasion.

Only it never came!….Evidence that life is indeed too short.
Having dessert first–and perhaps even Champagne for breakfast in ones’ later years wouldn’t be completely off the mark…

I dug further and found some 1970s port, expensive vodka, and a few reds. No bottles had shattered.

All were hot from laying in the summer sun.

I sped back to the Taj Mahovel Recovery Room (the crawl space under the house).

Since then, I enjoyed each from that trove, fabricating limoncello, risotto, Irish cream liqueur, even just swallowed a couple neat… save one.

Until now I was too scared to try the Mumm’s.

I ‘d never heard of ‘antique’ Champagne, and like your average person, understood that super-young was the only way to have it. Crispy, light, dry with very little fruit discernible.

Turns out that the stuff can age, as long as its laying on its side (”on the lees”) in a carefully controlled environment free from light or vibration.
While Champagne makers have an economic interest in selling more wine by convincing us it’s best consumed within the year, much Champagne improves with some [cork] aging.

Jancis Robinson notes that some Champagnes can become significantly more complex with aging on the cork–”if they are properly stored”.

I imagined the jolt inflicted on the stiff-upper-lipped Mumm’s, hurled over the dumpster’s edge and coming to rest atop sofa-cushions, baling wire, wood chips, shoe boxes, golf clubs, plastic flowers, dishware, shoes and other junk.
That bottle was meant for me, and intended to be enjoyed despite its sketchy background.

For the slimmest of reasons I decided to open it up today: as a budget tribute to the great and ever so humble, complex and intense Sheldon Brown.

Ian (”evolnollidge”) and I had ridding earlier in the afternoon, though we attracted no other ‘Sheldonysians”.
His four year old, Kai, braved the rude winds and entertained himself in the back seat of dad’s Dutch bike by doing a reasonable imitation of our prattle.

I like to think Sheldon would have appreciated the toasty “maderized’ notes in the bottle I literally broke into.

A crumbling broken cork meant no dramatic pop; the color was a dark amber with superfine bubbles racing in thin lines up the glass. A candy aroma hovered over the surface and I realized I was going to be amazed with my ‘find’. I got to experience what “maderization” is, and how a Maillard reaction can improve what’s left during the years on the cork.

For once Charlie didn’t make a face after one tiny sip. I can offer no greater accolade from a non-drinker to whom everything one imbibes and ingests must have a Nutrititve Purpose.

Burnt bread, raisins and even some brandy flavor dwelled in the light-red brown liquor.

It was a revelation….complex and rewarding.

Heaven knows the price was right…here’s Mumm’s in your eye, Sheldon!

Grasp the Nettle

Lunchtime came at three. Overshot the usual hour by staring at screen and typing in the zone, very consuming.

Charlie needed my computer to do a treatise on crank-pulling, and sometimes this is the only thing that pries me off my seat, so away I go.

Time to forage in the yard and up into the ’steppes’.
Result: a fine mature leek!
I cut it flat to the ground. You can get away with ’shaving’ at least once, and those robust roots do good work sending up strong new fronds.
So much easier than babying the tiny threads of King What’s His Name (the variety) to a size where they would not be flattened by a drop of water .

Other greens: nettles transplanted from Bolinas lagoon.
We used to have to ride 30 miles–3,000 foot elevation–round trip just to get them until
it dawned on me that simply pilfing a few roots, replanting and keeping them watered would keep them alive, and we could get away with far less riding…
(Don’t tell my bike blog readers…)
I don’t mind handling nettles–now that I know what is happening and how long it will go, the stinging is just a Fascinating Sensation.
It lasts a short while–unless you picked a lot– in which case the tingle will remain into the night.

Generating dreams of ants building roadways in your body.
It’s rather interesting.

Then there’s reliable, painless ol’ chard.

It’s the most giving vegetable of all: it refuses to die.
In a drought, the tough old stems just wait it out.
Also gathered rocket, kale, & parsley.
Chopped everything all together , sauteed for five minutes and piled the pasta from last night on, dotting with whole olives.
Forgot to drink tea, beer or water.
So maybe girl scout cookies for dessert at six.
With Scottish Blend.
Still fixated on the notion of goin’ to the land of leeks-on-the-coins.

Olive Paste

Mouli–the wonderful, cheap food mill which can turn forty olives into a jar full of delicious black goo (no pits!) that is spread like pauper’s caviar on everything.
Bread.
Crackers.
Well, not on lady fingers.
It also combines well with fresh white cheeses but turns them a dismaying mauve.
Maybe in this case segregation is a good idea, since the purple-black looks great next to the white goat cheese, cream cheese or whatevr else smiles at you from the cheese store.
Plain pasta becomes inky, add chopped fresh parseley, chives and a bit of butter. Salt and peppah.
Mmmm.
I plan to give some to my most rabid olive loving friends.

Sjuk

Still sick, only thing to do is do something that can be accomplished with a pounding headache.
Two days ago I thought I’d shaken the flu, and visited Leoland to get some sewing done.

There’s an element of magick about their little three-house scene, surrounded by a sweet-scented garden.

The Daphne odora (a.k.a.”what is IN BLOOM?”) bush seduces a visitor the instant the gate’s pushed open…. across the mossy brick walk, a massive navel orange tree and a minor Meyer lemon tree dangle bushels of ripe (all at the same time, of course) fruit.

It’s a yellow, orange and green riot, especially in the rain.

Pick a week’s worth for Pat & Gary (”I’m waterproof”), and take four citrus for myself, for later.

Inquire if this is a good day for sewing. Pat’s a clothing designer since she was young, and I love watching her knowing hands command textiles into garments (usually medieval, from her own patterns) for the Renn Faire crowd.
In ten minutes she’s whipped up a case for my down sofa-pillow, using fabric that is at least seventy years old, from an old theatre company yard sale…fabric that has haunted my shelves for oh, 20 of those years.

One has to hold one’s breath while observing because she is prone to argue with the ‘culprit’ if the stripes don’t line up.
An unreformed Perfectionist.
I try to remind her I’m an “Approximatarian” and that a little slope to the stripes in that velvet pillow case won’t bug me one bit.
Back home with my prize and panniers drooping with the citrus, I decide to put off marmalade til I’m better.
Never happens. Computer work? Only you.
Kitchen stuff always helps, and the tasty marmalade (aided by a sploosh of whisky) comes out OK after all.
By tomorrow it will have hardened and stand proud on the toast.
Assuming this raw throat grows a layer of skin to handle both acid and crunchy bread.

Ghost in The Garden

Being indoors on a fine spring day feels almost criminal.

Having coughed up and spit out every ounce of what’s substantial inside me, I coax what’s left outdoors, into the sun.

Trying to forget nothing, since two trips would tire me out. A blanket’s draped over one arm, dragging in the dirt. A pile of cookies, a china cup and a top heavy thermos teeter thrillingly on the breakfast tray I’m gripping. The newspaper is clamped securely under the other arm.

I pick my line oh-so-carefully, lifting and placing each foot zen-style, negotiating the freshly mole-tunneled path.

Ease the clattering tray onto the stump-table.

Yank the cushion from its vertical (foiling felines far and near) repose and create my asylum for one.

It sez in the International Herald Tribune that as a Marin County resident, I use up 27 acres of precious land with all my wasteful practices. Hmm. Must go on a carbon-footprint diet.

Tomorrow.

Right now, it’s read, drink hot-hot black tea, chow on left over cookies, and marvel at the tiny little lacy sphereshiding under the dead tomatillo vine. Survey my twenty seven aches and pains
and resolve to somehow get a Marin Ladie’s and Children’s clothing swap going.

Going green…it’s a cliche. Here, it just means ‘keep shopping, but more obsessively’.

This of course means spending more time in the car!

The very Earth’s hacking up her own sickening green sputum, the earthquakes, tsunamis and fires all natural fling-off-the-invader style fever paroxysms.

Or am I just hallucinating, maybe I’d better get better before trying to blog…

Right Ingredients

The big test is coming…and we’d better prepare….Or we’ll flunk the final!!

The Scottish Government has begun a discussion with a campaign called
Choosing The Right Ingredients: The Future for Food In Scotland.
I get regular news from that country because I was there last summer and it seems I’m still unpacking my impressions of the land, the people and yes the provender. My shortbread supply is low, but it’s there.

The brochure uses the friendly first person:
“I would encourage everyone in Scotland to be part of this discussion. (I WAS in Scotland, does that mean tourists can have a say?) How do we guarantee a future for Scotland where our food is wholesome, healthy and produced in an environmentally and welfare-friendly way? (Gasp! They’re using ‘welfare’ in a positive context!!!)
Then he tosses out the buzzwords: Wealthier, healthier, fairer, safer, greener, stronger.
I look forward to developing Scotland’s first National Food Policy in partnership with you all.”
RICHARD LOCHHEAD, MSP
Cabinet Sect’y for Rural Affairs and the Environment
This is how their politicians talk?
Will Mr. Lochhead really listen?

(A cynical thought: here in Marin County, the authorities like the Municipal Water District have sessions for citizens to pour out their needs for the way the open lands are used and enjoyed, only to ignore them. They realize that people are ‘happier’ if they feel like they are ‘heard’ even when their needs are ignored).

Blanish those negative thoughts. Maybe these bonnie Lies are not over the ocean.
As Marion Nestle (food guru, gadfly, goddess) puts it, “why can’t we have something like this?”
I wanna know how come there’s no mention of exercise in the brochure, since fuel and movement go together, hand in mouth…?
I looked on the web to see what our country is doing to get the conversation going…
Oh, look, our Food & Drug Administration is asking for…”comments on the best way to calculate the percent daily value (DV), and on what nutrients get displayed.”
Sounds comprehensive, huh? A little more info on the wrapper. Great.

Look a little further…we have a “North American National Food Policy Council”…it just doesn’t have the same feel to it (see for yourself).
Maybe it’s a case of smaller is better: you get to know your constituency…and our country pits its citizens against one another in the most petty of squabbles, so there’s little energy or time for the bigger tasks.
Which suits big biz just fine.
After all, if your citizens are ‘healthier, wealthier, greener, stronger’…who is going to provide welfare for the hospital /drug industrial complex? And the building industry, hell, the business of ‘growth’ in general?
YOU CAN’T MAKE HUGE PROFIT WITH SUSTAINABILITY.
And your attention span has to be longer than a few minutes.
Heaven help us.
OK, I’m not finishing on an up note.
For me the up note is: I’m going to write more, think more about food politics, and perhaps see an opportunity to make connections in Fairfax grower’s groups (if they exist yet). See if the Transition Town concept is being considered in Marin.