Still Life/Good Food

Beebee Mod is hosting a Still life week on her blog and also on Flickr. I thought it would be a good opportunity to take even more pictures of food. I'm still smarting about the Lamb Mince in a Tin Tv show obviously.

I'm going away for a chill out holiday starting Friday so my Still Life week will only last four days. That still gives me a lot of scope for eating and talking photos. I'm starting with one of my favourite meals, as mentioned in the last rant/post. The recipe is very very simple.

Cheese and Biscuits

Biscuits - digestives or crackers are good. As a good Scot, I generally favour oatcakes.
Cheese - soft, cheddary, blue whatever floats your cheeseboat.

Add cheese to biscuits. You may also want to include some fruit, a pear or an apple maybe. Pickle can be a good thing. I've added some almonds too.

Tomorrow - leftover pasta. In order to follow this slightly tricker recipe you must already have boiled too much pasta while making macaroni cheese the night before.




Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Oh Delia!

There's a new TV show on the BBC called How to Cheat at Cooking. It's just wrong, all wrong. I'm hoping that there will be a revolution and a new show will start instead called How to Make Simple Tasty Things Without Using Frozen Mashed Potato and Tinned Mince. It would be a surefire hit especially if it included this signature dish from my vast repertoire of nosh.



Eggy Bread

Take some old bread and slice, you may have some already sliced.
Crack a couple of eggs into a little bowl and beat well and season.
Place egg in a shallow-ish bowl and add the bread.
Turn the bread so that the egg soaks in on both sides but not so much that it falls apart.

Put some butter or oil in a frying pan. Butter is tastiest.
Add eggy bread being careful to avoid disintegration.
Cook over gentle heat and turn over so that both sides brown and cook completely.
Eat with gusto, brown sauce or the condiment of your choosing.

Tune in next week for cheese and biscuits!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter from all at Mog Towers.

Smokies and Green Magnus.

The fish eaters of Scotland are in my newspaper this week, Arbroath Smokies, one of my areas most famous local delicacies has Protected Geographical Indication status which means that only fish smoked within a certain radius can be called Arbroath Smokies. It is the same legislation that protects the quality of Champagne and Parma Ham. There were some wonderful photos in the Guardian newspaper and you can find them here. I live about seven miles away from where the pictures were taken and it is my favourite spot for puffin watching in the summer.

A most amazing gift came into the Mog household this week, appropriately from a woman called Kit. A wee while ago we gave Kit and her son a computer that we no longer needed ( my mum had won us a new one. ) To say thank you Kit has carved us a Green Magnus from some Birch wood. You might be familiar with the idea of a Green Man but I can honestly say that no-one else will have a Green Magnus. A truly wonderful present!

I've been knitting away on the same nine balls of yarn for days now. I have some Rowan Aran and had planned to make a Placed Cable Aran from Interweave Knits but then realised that the jumper looked best in white or cream and my yarn is a winey sort of purple. I then tried a couple of things and estimated that I didn't have enough yarn for any of them. Finally I settled on Fitzmaurice from Noro Unlimited. Having finished the back and measured myself and other clothes to work out how long the thing would be I decided that I would suit a cardigan much more than the jumper I was actually knitting. Undeterred, I divided the front instructions in two, fiddled around a bit with decreases and necklines and now I only have the sleeves to do. There is still an element of finger crossing going on but by next blog post, I should have something to show for all of my labouring.

Mirror Mirror

Baxterknits was intrigued by the mirror-like thing in the tapestry I wrote about last week but along with everyone else was not exactly sure if it was a mirror or some other medieval implement . I decided to go to the experts and put out a plea on the Medieval Textiles group on Ravelry. Ravelry never lets a person down.

Theresab ( that's her Rav name ) very kindly passed on this little nugget of information. Many many thanks!


Decorative Visions.com:

This tapestry represents a lady and its ‘Demoiselle’ of company in a thousand flowers garden. The mistress embroides days of its youth while, her servant tends her mirror. The youth of these two figures have well been rendered by the painteress. Also exhibited at the Cluny Museum in Paris.

I've been here.......

It was holiday time again last week and I was back in France staying with some lovely chums who live a twenty minute train ride away from Paris so we had a combination of city walks and museums as well as the peace and quiet of the village.

Highlights? Has to be the Musee de Cluny which specialises in medieval art, especially tapestry. The world famous Lady and The Unicorn set of hangings is there and it was breathtaking. Luckily one of our number ( thank you Graeme ) is a medieval historian which meant that we had our own personal guide to explain things.

Much food was eaten and I am now living proof of the French Paradox - the ability to eat fatty cheeses, butter, cakes, gallons of wine and coffee - yet still come home lighter than I was when we left!

Magnus was not invited on the trip and he was very glad to see us when we returned, as was his cat sitter/lion tamer who had the scars to show for a week of caring for the beast. Now I'm home again, spring is just beginning to show her face, I have seeds to plant and gardening to plan.