Angel Cat needs your help!

My old friend Miss Frugality has made it to the finals of the Softie Awards with this beautiful beastie, Angel Cat. Please vote for her by clicking the link below and maybe that will help restore my karma after the dreadful bird incident. Julia, can you make me an Angel Pigeon?!

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB227R5A4JBAQ

A Pigeon Post.

Phone calls you hoped you'd never have to make #1.



Me: Hello, is that the Scottish Homing Pigeon Society?

Nice Lady: Yes.

Me: I'd like to report a dead pigeon. I have the reference from the ring on it's little leg.

Nice Lady: Thank you for taking the time to phone us. Do you have any idea how it died?

Me: Um, well, you see, there was this cat...........

For me?

Brian our postie has just left a very exciting parcel on our doorstep. You might remember that I signed up to the PIF exchange. Luckily for me there is a long deadline of 365 days to create something after signing up. I'm on the case, PIFs are being planned and adresses sought
( Mary Jane and Leslie I still need yours.... )

Jaqui has gone one better - not only is she one of my PIF recipients, she has also decided to PIB - Pay It Back. Today my PIB arrived with a sheepy card, notions, yarn and a home made bag. What a treat. I'm also really pleased that Jaqui trusts me enough to send me a package before receiving one from me!

So today, the sun is shining, the lad and I are going out for an anniversary lunch ( three long years) and I've just had a box of friendship delivered to my door. Lots of good things.

The beet my heart skipped

Home from our holiday in the Highlands to find out that everybody else had more snow than we did. Except for my brother, but even he phoned to say that my folks had lots of snow in Angus. Tom, the big brother has just moved to Berkeley with his partner and their apartment looks fantastic. There will be scrimping and saving in the Mog household till we have saved enough money for a pair of tickets over to sunny CA.

Our little holiday cottage was great, there was a pair of birdfeeders outside the lounge window and they were our main source of entertainment. Siskins, Blue Tits, Chaffinches and best of all, a woodpecker all came for meals at our diner. We knew that there would be limited food buying opportunities due to the remoteness of the cottage so we bought a huge chicken and lots of veg from our local farm shop and packed flour and yeast. A holiday first for Archie - he learned how to make bread from scratch and he turned out to be a champion kneader. We could have lived on bread and jam quite easily for the whole week, it was that good.

Knitting occurred, another of the long term log cabin squares was finished and one more started. I brought another project, a little child's sweater, to work on but forgot to pack a tape measure. The log cabin was mindless easy knitting anyway, just right for a holiday.

Things are still a bit chilly at home but the garden was needing some tidying up. The perpetual spinach, aka beet, has bravely survived the worst of the weather so as a reward I cut all of it's leaves off and boiled them. The beet should grow new, smaller, sweeter leaves and the old more bitter winter leaves will be pureed and added to soup or possibly curry. The fruit bushes are showing signs of flowering and there are seedlings in the greenhouse. All we need now is a little sun.

Strange Days Indeed

Still Life Week.

It's been a wierd couple of days - the first time I've ever been near a murder inquiry. Our wee village is right in the middle of Angus and on Tuesday two children found a woman's head in a plastic bag on Arbroath beach, about seven miles away from us, a pair of hands were found later on. Today we were driving in Brechin and saw TV cameras and familiar faces from the news programmes. An hour or so later as we were on the way home, we passed along the same street and saw lines of police tape and and police cars parked by a block of flats. Turns out that the woman had been identified and traced to a flat in that block. Now the news says that even more body parts have appeared on another local beach in Carnoustie. It is very odd to see local landmarks on the national news. I just wish it wasn't for something quite so gruesome.

Today's photo is a decription of what I did this morning. The sun was shining and I sat in my chair listening to Barry Adamson. We went to see him in Glasgow last night and he was wonderful. The little brown leaves in the picture were found in the chair when I took it out of the shed for the first time this year. They must be last year's Beech leaves, I remember them falling on me in the autumn.

The Joy of Eggs.

Still Life Week Number 3.


Not sure if this needs a recipe - this was my lunch today in the beautiful spring sunshine.

Free Range Eggs from my local farm shop and some home sprouted sprouts - fenugreek and quinoa. I admit that the sprouts don't really count as simple food because they have to be soaked, rinsed and looked after for a few days. Good fun though, like keeping a pet but you can eat them later. Fenugreek by the way, makes your armpits smell funny for ages.

Still Pasta

Still Life Week. Picture number two.

Leftover Pasta

The night before, boil too much pasta in the making of macaroni cheese. Whatever is left over, (without sauce, just naked pasta ), put in a bowl and mix in a little bit of olive oil to stop the little fellows sticking together. Place them gently in the fridge.

Next day, remove the pasta from the fridge. Add a bit more oil - I used some leftover chilli oil from a jar of spicy olives but any oil that you fancy will do. Then some vinegar or lemon juice for sharpness. Add some grated cheese. I think that parmesan or pecorino is best. However, if all you can get is the funny parmesan that's already grated in a little cardboard drum, don't buy it. It isn't cheese, it's pure evil. Get some cheddar or another hard cheese instead and grate it yourself. Then something really tasty like sun dried tomatoes, olives, cold meat, or in my case some marinated mushrooms. Mix everything together with salt and pepper. Put in a nice bowl and eat with a glass of wine.

I thought I'd post a picture of what I had to do to get enough light to take the still life - next time I'll make pasta in the daylight.