Hobbits In Rivendell

It was a good week for wandering. We met with a knitter friend for conversation and gigantic cups of chocolate and coffee and also found an organic market to supplement our CSA boxes.

We’ve got things sorted with the CSA people — now they know we’re vegetarians, they don’t put a single head of cabbage, some broccoli and cauliflower in a box and send it. Now we have — loads of stuff. We were amused to find that we got huge potatoes in addition to some ‘heritage’ or heirloom varieties which are quite small — mushrooms, the ubiquitous cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower, swiss chard, spinach greens, and more kale than we know what to do with.

We also have… parsnips. Turnips are tasty. Turnips we can eat raw. Parsnips… we’re trying to figure out what to do with. Once again, we are GOING to eat the local flora of this place and like it or else. But we’re a little stuck for ideas on what to do with parsnips… so, anyone with suggestions, we’re open. Thanks.

To distract us from thinking up parsnip recipes, we have thick leeks, muddy windfall apples, more filthy red-orange carrots, and beetroot. As the weather has turned seriously cold with a sullen drizzle, we expect to stay in, keep warm, and create a lot of goodness with roasted beets and tasty kale.

(And can we just rhapsodize about local Scottish cheeses? Trying out a bit of organic Highland Cromal cheese in some broccoli cauliflower soup was an amazingly tasty experience. Our next task is to try something called crowdie…)

One of the other little goodies from the CSA box was a surprise for T — elderflower cordial. If anyone remembers reading Anne of Green Gables as a kid, they might understand her glee at drinking cordial! This is non-alcoholic, and very subtly flavored and scented. There are recipes all over, and this is the perfect, sophisticated alternative to wine so that everyone at your table can hold a glass and feel like they’re part of the party.

I’m wondering if it’d be any good to try and make a ginger cordial…

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(“What do people eat there? This question was asked to us by T’s little sister; this post is a partial response to what Glaswegians eat. The short answer is: Glaswegians eat everything everyone else eats. The longer answer… well, it has to do with deep-fried Mars bars and haggis, and it’s full of clichés, and so it’s not something we’re going to go into…)

These are the spoils from our field trip to Grassroots, the organic market near Charing Cross, just under a mile (past the Mitchell Library and through some winding streets) from our flat. Apparently the use of -ly is something which appeals to a particular demographic? Perhaps … to those of us who don’t really want to eat something real, but who don’t want to eat something imitation, either? Perhaps, to those who want to eat something natural, yet which pretends to be something else? Hence, we get Oatley (oat milk) and Cheezly (imitation cheese, made from soy). Oh, the oddities.

The Oatley isn’t half bad, actually. It’s from Sweden, and though if you use it in muesli – which is largely made of oats — it sort of vanishes, it’s quite tasty, and easy to cook with — which is kind of surprising. According to their website, they make ice cream. (Hmmmm. Okay, that wasn’t something I needed to know!!!)

Cheezly is a product of the English company Redwood Foods, and it’s …startling. It’s soy based and made with vegetarian rennet, and it’s …fermented. Like cow’s milk cheese. The one we opened tasted enough like blue cheese that we decided it is to be used for baking only. It’s quite strong. Remarkably strong.

It was nice to find tofu in varying textures, and racks of organic, fair trade chocolate. That’s something else we didn’t need to know was around here!!!

Our CSA has continued to be a lot of fun. Grow Wild is a farm collective which gathers produce and dairy and meats from local Scottish farmers and ranchers and provides it to buyers in a weekly box. Now as we have switched our box to something in a more reasonable size than six items and a head of cabbage (As vegetarians, I guess we do eat more rabbit food than most people, though there is a joke that Glaswegians are vegetarians, since really they only eat Mars bars, lagers and crisps not a vegetable can be found) we can add one more -ly word to the ones we learned at Grassroots: quickly. One reason I hear a lot of people use for not having a weekly garden box is that fresh organic produce spoils. Not if you eat it — for every meal, every day. Immediately.

Incidentally, after all of our worry about the turnips last week, we remembered that it is parsnips we don’t like — we enjoyed the turnips raw and in gratins with potatoes, and we’ve saved out one to see if it will grow us tasty greens. This week …well, it’s parsnips, two huge fat ones we have to figure out how to like. I expect that, like with the turnips, we might be surprised. Pleasantly. (Any suggestions on the parsnips – let’s hear ’em!

Next time we hope to answer some of the questions we’ve been getting about healthcare in Scotland, the weather (cold rain followed by periods of warmer rain) and more. Hopefully this weekend we can also take a few discreet pictures of the stained glass windows in the very old and stately Presbyterian church we’ve visited, too.

Subtly,

– D & T

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Next semester, D. will be taking Moral Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion.

As many of our UK friends have offered us the information that they are atheists (Apparently being Americans means that we demand that information be offered up voluntarily?) D. expects his courses next term to be quite… contentious. Friday’s guest lecture was a warm up to the topic, where a senior fumbled through a presentation on Soteriological theory, getting derailed by hoots of derision from the audience, and scowling a lot. (In defense [?] of the voluble scoffing, she theorized that God chose the Earth – out of other worlds – to maximize the number of people saved while still allowing free will. Um. Must read up on the theory a bit further…). While trying to puzzle through her presentation, D. discovered a guy in the audience wearing the accompanying image on a t-shirt.

Boy, howdy, next semester’s going to be some fun.

Yours in cheerful expectation,

– D & T

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(Oh, all right, all RIGHT! The picture is of a TURNIP, not a Swede. Swedes are bigger. And darker. I know, I know. But could YOU pass up such a cool blog post title? I THOUGHT not.)

T’s sister asked her for a recipe using butternut and acorn squashes, because she’s being overrun. She then read to us what came in John Muir’s CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box this week, and we were hit with pangs of longing. Butternut and Acorn squash, apples, pears, pomegranates, fingerling potatoes, tomatoes, peppers…And then we took a peek at what we would have been receiving from our CSA, if we were still in the U.S. — heirloom tomatoes. Honeydew. Eggplant. Peppers. “New world” foods. Oh, the longing. Oh, the sighs. (Sigh.)

PLEASE do not misunderstand: all of these lovely and beautiful vegetables and more are available to us in abundance here in the United Kingdoms of Great Britain. Some are even organically grown. Most of them are not locally grown, however. And that’s a difference we’re trying to live. Last year the paper printed a piece on “The Oil in Your Oatmeal,” which talked about the globalization of food, and the impact that has on the environment in the number of miles your organic, hand-picked, shade grown frou-frou arugula travels to get to your artisan-made hand-planed table. (Okay, we’re exaggerating wildly, but we’re from California — we know us.) Basically we were reminded that there’s not much profit in crowing that your oatmeal is organic if it’s flown five thousand miles from Ireland in time for breakfast. So, that led us to rethink what we ate, take the ‘Locavore Challenge’ and become even more annoyingly Californian while interacting with small farm growers and feeling the earth wherein our beets were grown, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Point: we try to eat within a 100 mile radius of where we are, no matter where we are. When we moved, we thought it would be even easier to do the same thing.

As mentioned, we found the gorgeous produce here, and were unsurprised that what the major grocery chains had was from far, far away — our oranges, for instance, came not from Spain but from South Africa. But even going to green grocers in the neighborhood we found green beens from Egypt, snow peas from Zambia, chives and rosemary from Israeland squash from Zimbabwe. We found an agricultural cooperative, and requested a UK produce box. What we have in the kitchen now is what is here and what is seasonally grown in the United Kingdoms. We have gorgeous curly red kale. We have potatoes and windfall apples. We have the largest head of cabbage this side of the sea, and massive, filthy dark orange carrots. And we also have — swedes! (Oh, okay, turnips. We just like the word ‘Swede’ better, because it gives us a giggle.) And we have less than no idea what to do with them.

Our friend, a Mrs. Fleckenstein-Busich is the only person we know in the United States who eats turnips. (No, wait. We are informed those were parsnips. Our friend is from a Midwestern State, though, and people eat completely different things there.) Anyway, she made them up with cheese and it looked like potatoes and cheese until we tasted it. And then it was like… cauliflower? With anise. It might have been nicer if it wasn’t a thorough surprise. (No. Again, We are informed, they would have been foul in any event.) Part of the regional haggis meal is “tatties and neeps,” which translates loosely to potatoes and turnips. (Turnips were originally called “neeps,” from the Latin word for turnip, napus, which also gave rise to the French word navet. The prefix ‘turn’ refers to their spherical shape.) We’re not sure still how neeps and tatties are ingested. Goethe said that turnips were good mixed with chestnuts… so you’ll have to watch and see what we do with these things. We don’t have any real ideas yet, but we’ll tell you: we’re going to LOVE THEM. We just ARE. Because we said so. (If you love them, we’re open to suggestions on how to love them as well…)

The unpacking goes apace! Since, as friend Canadian Jackie wisely pointed out, it didn’t take us a single day to pack it, we have to be patient with the process of unpacking things. Mainly we’re fine with the slight …er, disarray in the household. The largest issue is what to leave packed. Deadlines are coming up and D. is applying for fellowships. And yes — the sad news. We are going to move again. We didn’t really realize that coming in, but he’s hoping to specialize narrowly in a particular area of philosophy, so will need to be at a school which is more tailored to his specialty… which means that it’s just as well that our lease here is only for six months. We will be vacating by summertime, hopefully (prayerfully!) further north to St. Andrews. Our main concern before then is to get the house in company order to return the favor for the many meals we’ve shared with the denizens of Lauchope Lodge. The Moffat-eers have been very gracious, and we’re hoping to at least be able to offer them a meal if they’re in the city for shopping or business. Now that we’ve found our knives that looks like more of a possibility. (Nope, Laura, no Scrabble yet – we know where the box is, but it’s still half full… Bet on it – when we unearth it, we’ll send up a flare!)

Some of you have wondered about the weather. We’ve had some gorgeous gilded days and clear, crispy cold nights. This past week we’ve had a cold mist rising during the day, and it finally started raining again, an endless cold drizzle that leaves the streets mostly deserted. As it has gotten colder, the biggest question has been whether or not to leave the comforters packed — so far, so good. It is so wet that we find ourselves overheating when we try and bundle up, so we’re even saving our knitwear until it gets really cold — after all, it’s ONLY October. There is more yet to come. Still, there’s something to be said for the added exertion of walking — we may be wet, but we’re warm.

Yours in constant adventure,

– D & T

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If you try and define the phrase ‘pub culture’ you come up with a lot of answers. According to the BBC, it’s something Britons prefer to exercising. If you look in various travel guides, it’s the ultimate in human interaction, a place to observe the culture, a place for quiz nights, karaoke, a place to bring your children since there’s now a smoking ban inside. For we Hobbits, pub culture has been… a bit of a shock.

Coming from California, it’s not as if we didn’t know people who drank. But with five thousand pubs in the country and at least half of them here in Glasgow, we find we don’t know people who don’t. And boy, howdy do WE stick out.

Our… difference is made more apparent by the fact that the pub is the pulse of the university. The entire Philosophy department goes to a small pub nightly after classes; on Wednesdays after the guest speaker speaks, it’s almost mandatory to attend a post-lecture discussion there. D. has been looked at askance for not going, the department director gave him a little chat about making good connections in school, and so has begun to attend. People stand him drinks constantly — assuming that he can’t afford one. He drinks a steady stream of Diet Coke, and comes home agreeably caffeinated and cheerful. (And yes – he returns the favors, knowing well the etiquette on that one.)

It’s a little different for T., having grown up with adult children of alcoholics. The ensuing emotional drama and narrow judgment surrounding alcohol make it harder to be easygoing about it, and drunk people make her flat out nervous. Which means a lot of Glasgow makes her nervous on a Friday night! The almost compulsory nature of the pub scene is difficult (Hobbits being those regrettable beings who hate being told what to do), so, T doesn’t go. And do you know what? She has NO friends.

(Hah. Didn’t see that coming, did you? Did you think there was going to be some miraculous save where staying home with her tea and her novels made her the most popular girl on the block? You need to widen your reading choices, then.)

D. frets that T. is isolated, but she’s happy enough, as she could some days put the ‘t’ in introvert all by herself. At any rate, this is how it’s been explained: many people in the United States have an easygoing, open-hearted nature on the surface, are quite friendly and make noises about inviting people to their homes but rarely actually do so. People in the UK take longer to warm to strangers to the level of inviting them home, but that’s maybe more honest – and in any event most in the UK are glad to take anyone to a pub (or meet them for tea, and since Glasgow has a gorgeous art deco teahouse, that’s a nice experience!). You can take that explanation or leave it. T. will likely make a few close friends slowly, and be just fine. Or not. At any rate, she’s getting a lot of writing done.

True Colors

We have started seeing posts at Reuters and CNN and other online news sources not only for the wild fires in Southern Cal., but also referring to a statement by the U.S. government saying that Iran was an obstacle to peace. Referring to another country – to someplace else – to someone else – as an obstacle to peace carries with it a heavy irony. We are not intending to start a political discussion but to read speeches that are clearly saber rattling – meant to terrify and intimidate and come on the heels of the President suggesting the possibility of World War III – well it has been a sobering heads up for us.

The first week we arrived, we had people telling us to be careful not to rent from Pakistani landlords. The neighbor here warned us not to leave our bikes out in the foyer, as “we’ve had trouble with the Poles.” A taxi driver pulled out a newspaper with screaming headlines (while he was in TRAFFIC, no less) and pointed to a story about a Chess Psycho Killer – whom he thought was American until he re-read the piece [Said ‘killer’ is alleged to be Russian, but I doubt there is one at all. This paper also looked to carry stories of alien babies.] We were told to be mindful of people wearing hats — because the Italian mafia is also here. We’ve heard deprecations about the Welsh, and then there’s the usual aggravation with the English… There is an atmosphere of uncertainty and nervousness all over. We think it just goes with the territory, of being 577,689 people in one densely populated burgh. But it also reflects a larger global uneasiness. People we know in the U.S. (though not on the West Coast but in the South) have even told us to be careful of the Muslims. This makes us grumpy. We feel threatened here by no one whom we’ve meet on the street (we have to admit, even the drunks aren’t all that threatening – most of them will only pontificate, provoke or puke). No one. If we’re supposed to be watching out for the Polish, the Pakistani, the Indian, the Italians and the Muslims, how will we recognize something actually dangerous when we see it?

– D & T

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We were quitters today, total quitters. We completely abandoned the unpacking to sleep, listen to music, treat ourselves to bowls of buttery sweet butternut squash (cooked down to make a soup, but it never got there), and walk along the River Clyde. Sunrise this morning was at 7:56am, and the sun set at 6:05pm. It was deeply overcast today, the sky a cool slate gray, and the scant light made the day seem unbelievably short. (If you’re from around here, that will make you laugh.)

Thursday, we dropped into a little Thai restaurant we’ve discovered, and a man and his date interviewed us (while the fifteen tables closest to us hushed to listen. That was kind of amusing. Sort of.) “You do know it’s going to be dark here twenty-four hours a day very, very soon, dontcha?” the man asked genially, rolling his ‘r’s. Yes. We know. We know. Our mental health expert has reminded us to get outside every dry day we can.

We are losing light here at a rate of fifteen minutes per week. Next weekend the sun will rise at 8:10 a.m. and set at 5:49. That weekend, Daylight Saving Time will end so that people don’t panic that the sun rises at 8:12. Still, by mid-November, we will have six and a half hours of light. Not quite twenty-four hours of darkness, but closer to that than we’ve lived in before.

But Glasgow looks good in the dark. Glaswegians are of hearty stock; they don’t bother cursing the dark, they just ignore it, and most don’t let a little darkness stop the party. Tonight we walked home and saw the most gorgeous colored lights. Americans seem to save their pretties for Christmas, using the elegance of white lights to make a quiet statement during the summer months and saving anything else until after Halloween, but here, color flows. The Squinty Bridge is glowing purple, the Kelvingrove Gallery glows warm reds and blues. (We will eventually take pictures with something better than the camera phone, but just took these as we happened upon them.) There is a yearly Radiance festival in Glasgow, where for three nights, the city is bathed in colored lights, there are fireworks in this city at the drop of a hat, there seems to be all manner of good excuses for people to be out and about, striding along (generally without coats or hats, whereas we are horribly overdressed and perspiring) enjoying themselves while the pulse of the city throbs on.

One funny little thing we’ve seen in Glasgow are signs that say “Let Glasgow Flourish!” The phrase sounds like a typical city PR program, and we had no idea it was anything historical, until we happened across a paean by the poet William McGonagal, often remembered as the writer of the worst poetry in the English language. The poem is fairly long, with stanzas and choruses, and the first line alone makes you grin. (Beautiful city of Glasgow, with your streets so neat and clean… Neat and CLEAN? An industrial city in Victorian times?) And then there is the lovely chorus:

Then away to the West–to the beautiful West!

To the fair city of Glasgow that I like the best,

Where the river Clyde rolls on to the sea,

And the lark and the blackbird whistle with glee.

‘Tis beautiful to see the ships passing to and fro,

Laden with goods for the high and the low;

So let the beautiful city of Glasgow flourish,

And may the inhabitants always find food their bodies to nourish.

Lovely, isn’t it?

We enjoyed our ramble along the river today, and though we didn’t really get to see the science center or the Tall Ship, we have lots of time.

– D & T

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Stages of a disaster…the further joys of unpacking.

Most of this exercise has been a matter of shuffling things out of the way long enough to sort through things & tuck them somewhere else … so that we can unpack another box. It’s rather like trying to change clothes in an airport bathroom when one doesn’t wish to touch the floor (D. provides this analogy, as he is still somewhat scarred at having had to change into a business suit in a bathroom in the Newark, New Jersey, airport.) It’s a bit cramped, but we’re making it.

As you can see from the post: we now have desks! Our two bookcases also came flat-packed, and were assembled quickly, since we were VERY careful about where all the pieces belonged. Some of you have expressed horror about the number of boxes in our little flat — many of them are clothes but most of them are books! We gave away loads of books before we packed, but thought that some of these we could not do without — now, having been without them for two solid months? Well, we now understand what we can do without a bit better. We’ve already contacted a librarian, and are in the process of the Great Giveaway. This is part of a process of simplifying that is really very good for us on many levels.

Aside from the earlier reported broken glass and now the base of our cake tray, nothing has been broken, which is a flat out miracle. The glass … well, we’re down to 3, and we started (13 years ago) with 8, so it’s not as if breakage wasn’t expected, although we have loved the cobalt blue glass. The cake plate has always looked precarious, and the hollow ceramic base neatly snapped from the platter, so we figure we’ve acquired a vase of sorts in the process, and now like our cake plate all the better.

In a flat this size, storage is at a bit of a premium, as you can see when you notice that there are all manner of things stacked above the kitchen cabinets. We don’t hold out much hope for this resolving any time soon, as more foodstuffs will need to come into the house, now that we have a good accounting of what we had shipped (Yes – we’re odd. We shipped things like whole oats, rye, and barley, as well as dried fruit, spices, tea, nuts and seeds – we’d just gone shopping when we found out we were moving – it seemed like a good idea at the time to just pack it up. Anyway, in some cases it turns out that our “oddness” was a Very Good Thing, as we are finding it difficult to procure some items we like to have, and we’ll be asking family members for a few Care Packages soonish anyway).

We also have a good idea of what we should have left home (a cutting board or two, florist supplies [??] and some very thin cotton shorts which we likely won’t ever wear here), but we have found true happiness in using our own stainless steel pots & pans again. It was blissful this morning to cook in a frying pan which was both large enough, and which had a thick enough bottom to adequately distribute heat to all parts of the pan!

Our goal is to have everything settled by next weekend (being realistic – and that may still not include having pictures and artwork hung) and to have things settled so that D. can ride his bike to classes next week – meaning we have found everything but the bike helmets. We’re hoping that we didn’t leave them back in California somewhere…

 

    “Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a fashion!” said Bilbo.
    “Of course!” said Gandalf. “And why should not they prove true? Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”
    “Thank goodness!” said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

– D & T

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