Odds & Ends

So, If Only One In Eleven Persons in Britain Are Catholic……one does wonder why the Pope came by. The BBC called it a missionary visit. Well, then.

If you, too, live in an area of heathens, you might well get a Papal visit as well. Although I’m sure the Presbyterians, who make up the official Church of Scotland, are a bit baffled by this…

In any event, most Glaswegians couldn’t seem to care less one way or the other, although they do seem to take a dim view of anyone who manages to get the M8 closed at five minutes to five on a weekday! If you peer closely at the picture, you can see that, between a line of yellowy-blue police cars and backed by a yellowy-blue ambulance, there are only white vehicles on the overpass there in one direction, and the outer lanes are filled with carefully spaced parked cars, probably containing police and Home Office security personnel. The Papal convoy itself has no cars in color. Handy, we suppose, to keep track of one another on an empty freeway.

D. took this shot from the window at Skypark (work). This is as close to the madness as we wanted to get, although the Catholic chaplain at the University did send out an email to invite us to buy a £25 ticket to Mass.

On The Baking Front… Last week we discovered that there’s no such thing as date bars here. T. had cooked down figs and dates, added a bit of cinnamon and cardamon and then sandwiched the resulting sweet sludge between a bit of olive oil “butter,” rolled oats, flour, and sugar to make what we always thought were date bars. At least, that’s what they were when we were little. Since we made what must have been a triple recipe (and ended up with thirty-five squares), D. rescued us from T’s baking largess and took them to work. They were pounced on, pronounced, “gorgeous,” and scarfed. But there was bewilderment when D. called them date bars. “What? You mean the slice?”

Slice. Yes. Apparently we made date slice. Since it’s not actually… sliced, per se, we can’t figure out what makes some things slice and other things just… bars. Or cake. But anyway, it was so good and went so fast, we don’t even have pictures.

The strangely cool summer has given way to a wet and wild end, but a few sunnier days have finally prompted berries and such to ripen. Our friend A. shared a few currants from his garden.

Now, given a choice between currants and raisins, this household will always choose raisins, because they’re a familiar sweet, and don’t have stupid little seeds in them which get caught in one’s teeth. However, it seems most Brits prefer currants, so we thought we’d give them a shot. There are several kinds – this red variety is not the sort which is widely used for drying, as it is quite tart, but it works well in jams and jellies, having a gorgeous clear red color which clarifies in heat. Because we really only had a handful left after tasting them, we added plums from A’s tree, which are lovely and sweet, and made a currant plum sauce. (It would have been jam except a.) T. was bothered by the amount of sugar it would take something that tart to gel, and b.) added too little cornstarch.

Our sauce is quite, quite tasty. Unlike traditional Asian plum sauce, which has a very dark, complex flavor, based on being made with plums first cured in salt, this currant plum sauce is a lot like cranberry sauce – bright and fresh with shadings of tartness and bitterness from the skins contrasting well with the plum’s sweetness. It goes nicely with our seitan sausages.

The plan this weekend is to hop the train to Largs and then take a ferry to a nearby island. We’ll hike off the beaten path to the wild bits, and plunder the blackberries growing there. Wild blackberries are smaller than ones found in the store, but we hear the flavor is more intense. A. doesn’t think they’ll be useful for jam because “well, they’ve got all of those seeds,” but he’s obviously never heard of a strainer, and T. is well practiced from squishing the currants through a sieve last time. Stay tuned for pictures, and cross your fingers that it doesn’t rain – much.