Last week my brother N made an Iranian Biryani. He claims that this is where the dish originates, but I am not convinced of this as it says on Wikipedia that it comes from India. So on Thursday and Friday I prepared a south Asian version (Nadiya’s version from Bangladesh) – made with lamb rather […]

Tora has developed a definite obsession with watching movies made for cats on Youtube. He demonstrates this by sitting right in front of the monitor (about 2 inches away from it) such that you can’t see the screen to do anything else. Unfortunately for him he has not worked out that with R and my […]

Without a doubt this is the coldest year since we moved to Argyll. Yesterday it was -5 and today it is -6. The view over Beinn Bheula as the sun is coming up is quite spectacular as it slowly turns from white to pink. Particularly nice today as there is a clear half moon hanging […]

Yesterday I made a flaky pastry chicken pie for lunch. The reason it is a blast from the past is that the recipe comes from a cookery book which I won as the “Junior Drama Prize” in 1981 for my starring role as Oblong Fitz-Oblong in the school play. A lot of the recipes are […]

This is my Grandma’s Recipe book. She was born in 1898 so I guess this was created in the 1920s and 1930s. Funny to think you would now just do a quick lookup on the Internet rather than bothering with writing stuff out from clippings. Having said that – I can remember making a similar […]

This is Tora assisting with taking down the tinsel. Afterwards he seemed so exhausted that he was happy to settle down with his brother. Poor Schrodi was on the chair first and then Tora invaded it – this is after they have been fighting off and on for weeks as the weather has been so […]

Thank goodness that the Forestry Commission have posted some notices on the Donich Circular path forbidding the use of motor vehicles. Not only have there been trail bikes seen going up there – but the Dutch army actually took an armoured car up there. They have been told by the FC to repair the path […]

Woke up this morning on R’s birthday to heavy snow. We went out and labouriously cleared the 72m driveway – although I will be surprised if we get any deliveries today. The cats assisted us by running up and down complaining loudly. Here is me in the Lama hat which N and J brought me […]

I made a cake for R and I, one for my parents and a vegan one for my sister-in-law V. Ironically the vegan one looks the best of the three as it has raised the highest. I used the Mary Berry Recipe for all of them – but for the vegan one I substituted butter […]

Don’t know how he does it, but Schrodi has a real instinct to locate himself everywhere he finds brand new clean sheets, particularly if they have also been ironed. Here he is sleeping on the pillow in the spare room which is going to be used over Christmas.