Vacation Food Wrapup

Well, folks, it’s been a busy week for us over here, as I’m sure you can tell from the fact that we’ve barely managed to put together a post. What have we been doing? Well, head on over to Hobbits Abroad to get the details, but basically we’ve been running all over the Midlands of Scotland for the week. We’ve averaged around 2 miles of walking a day, with several days in there getting as many as 7.

We’ve seen a huge portion of the city of Dundee (thank you Holler and Graham!), the inside of two major castles (Edinburgh and Stirling), the outside of another (Dumbarton), the Argyll Residence, Kelvingrove Museum, the Glasgow Botanical Gardens, Finnieston Quay, bits of Glasgow University … and I’m sure there’s something I’ve forgotten to list just here.

Along the way, there has been food. Oh, has there been food. We’ve done homemade quite a bit, of course, because we always came back to our flat early enough in the evening to do so, but we’ve discovered the true benefit of being in a European country: they know how to make real tapas! We’d tried the Mexican restaurant a few months back, and won’t repeat that experience again – ever – but we’ve found a real gem with Cafe Andaluz. And since our friend brought us a 25lb sack of pinto beans, we’ll be making our own Mexican food.

Having a guest over has not only meant that we’ve traveled around to see things and to eat out – it’s meant that we’ve tried things like haggis. Well … not quite haggis: vegetarian haggis. We like it. A lot. We’ve had it twice in the past week, along with traditional ‘tatties’ (mashed potatoes). We’ve one more in the fridge, and we’ll be picking up more very soon. We’re sorry that you all can’t have it, but we’ll try not to rub it in too much.

Our guest’s last evening with us was spent listening to us in the Glasgow University Choral Society give a performance of John Rutter’s Requiem and Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. Here’s what the program had to say about it:

“The Psalms and the first movement in particular are noted among performers for their musical difficulty, with the opening section of the first movement often considered one of the hardest passages for choral tenors ever written, owing to the range of the piece, its rhythmic complexity and the consistent presence of the strange and difficult-to-maintain interval of a major 7th between the tenor and bass… also the first movement is written in the 7/4 meter, and the third in 10/4.”

If you’re at all interested in listening to a poor recording of the performance (recorded using a hand-held mp3 recorder), I’ve posted them: part 1, part 2. Next time I’m going to have to track down something better to record with, as these recordings don’t give any idea of the sheer energy of the pieces, although you do get an idea of how load we were, as several times we overwhelm the little microphone in the recorder.

Today will be a day of recovery, doing little other than reading and writing papers, and then we’ll get back to the routine, and have more interesting things to write about here – perhaps making our own vegetarian haggis instead of MacSween’s.

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