Food

Looks like I was lucky with my travel dates, missing the big initial disruption of the latest terror fuss. Hopefully things will have settled down by my flights back, and I'll be able to travel sanely.

The workshop started yesterday, and I gave my talk. I suppose it went okay; I had laptop problems, and my presentation wasn't as clear as it could have been, but there did seem to be considerable interest in the work, which is rather pleasing.

I managed to use the hotel gym this morning, which for a moment made me wonder whether it is such a good thing there is nice beer available... I've been eating really nice food since I got here. Of course the seafood is good, and I had some excellent buffalo fajitas last night (far too much food for not much money). To go with the food, I cannot resist sampling the great range of local beers, with microbrews being served in resturants and brewpubs. It's possible to find such things in Scotland, but I never stumbled upon so many so easily, and in such a range of styles.

Winter's coming.

There's been a frost most of this week. Doesn't seem to be melting during the day other than in sunny bits. I think the pond by Blackford Hill may be partly frozen over... And there's snow on hills up North. Looking forward to getting out there—we're off for a wander in the Pentlands tomorrow.

Accordingly I've been cooking lots of nice hot food. Casseroling. It seems like the thing to be doing. I've done a standard shepherd's pie, a pasta bake, a rather scrummy fish pie (my first), and a supposed goulash (very simple but tasty). Okay, and last week also a lovely cheesecake, but that doesn't quite fit the pattern, being baked but cold.

Mmm. Food.

The Guardian today has a piece about supermarket vegetable fascism (only the straightest most perfectly uniform cucumbers will do), which ends with this delectable line:

Women like cucumbers more than men, it seems. "Males of all ages under-index compared with total vegetables," Mr Ferguson added, somewhat obscurely.

Time passes. Oops.

So, last weekend nothing really happened. I don't remember doing much, but at some point (Sunday) we must have went to the market in Princes St gardens, had a pakora while glancing at people ice skating, and then ended up shopping. The results of this were two cookbooks, some clothes, and a teapot.

The upshot of this is drinking loose leaf tea, and a muffin quest. Before buying the cookbooks, dearg had tried to make chocolate chip muffins, and not quite got it. Then there were more chocolate muffins (better) from The Big Book of Bread, and I did some banananana muffins from The Classic 1000 Cakes and Bakes (a surprisingly good volume). I still think the chocolate muffins might be better with a recipe without yoghurt.

That really takes us through the week. In contrast, I had a busy and tiring weekend... On Friday night, I decided to head for the hills the next day, so rising well before the crack of dawn on Saturday I went up on the train to the Arrochar Alps. In about 5 hours I managed to go up Beinn Ime then Beinn Narnain, and arrive by the track back to the station just in time to miss the train by 10 or 20 minutes (if I ran).

So a little wander around the village, a couple of phone calls, and then time for about 4 hours sitting around waiting for a train in an unmanned station. I need a longer book next time.

No photographs, I didn't bring a camera, which was fairly sensible given the weather—not wet until the evening, but much low-lying. The impression from the top of Beinn Ime was rather spectacular though, as I emerged above the clouds at the summit, and found myself standing above a sea of cloud, with one or two of the higher surrounding peaks just poking through into visibility.

Oh, and Sunday was the climbing wall, for the first time in about a month, just to make sure that I feel excercised today.

I haven't really been in the mood to cook nice food for a week or two. Before that I was on an Italian kick (tried making my own tagliatelli, didn't turn out so great), but in the meantime I think we've been surviving on basic, easy (but often tasty) food. I am glad that I can actually rustle up a few basic sauces these days without having to think too much.

Anyway, food has been for stopping the hunger for a while. This week we decided we wanted to try a few things. Well, Sunday night was after climbing, so it was an easy option, turkey fajitas. I now know what spices etc. to put in to make tasty fajitas, although I'm still buying premade salsa. My last attempt was quite evil, and very much to be enjoyed in strict moderation, don't try this at home.

So... We got a (half) shoulder of lamb at the weekend, and I tried some things from Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible. A Sumatran Lamb Curry with a spiced cauliflower thing and thai fragrant rice (out of basmati). Well well well. Hacking up a huge lump of meat on the bone into chunks is fun, but hard work. Particularly with a not overly sharp chef's knife; I think maybe a cleaver could be useful. Or fun.

The lamb curry was basically lamb, coconut milk, onion, garlic, ginger and a bunch of dried spices, particularly coriander and paprika. Fry a spice paste for a while then add cubed lamb, cook for a while then add the coconut milk and simmer for an hour or so. Hence ever so tender lamb. Mmm.

The cauliflower might be worth doing again, although I want to try the other recipe in the book first. It was of course another (generous) bunch of dried spices, including of course the fun of mustard seeds (bang! bang!), and ginger (we used galangal, having finished the ginger in the above), and some tomatoes. Unfortunately the fragrant rice was rather forgotton in all this fun, and I suspect not having being forked at the right time didn't help it's non-fluffy texture. I wonder if fragrant rice is more sensitive to cook.

My oh my. I have just eaten a quantity of crusty bread with the aforementioned cheeses and salami. Gorgeous! I am now back in serious cheese appreciation mode. And I'm now a fan of blue cheeses, it seems. Even better, I think I've only ever had three varieties (Blue Stilton, Dolchelata, Gorgonzola), so lots of experimentation ahead! :)

Food is nice. Must cook nice stuff sometime. Like cheese in breadcrumbs...

Suddenly it's December...

Just come back from Sainsbury's, laden with exotic fruits and cheese. I now have dolchelata, blue stilton, applewood smoked chedder, german black-pepper coated salami, mango, paw-paw, sharon fruit and a canteline melon, among other things. Oh, and scotch bonnet chillis, which look funky. Should be a nice week on the gastronomic front...

Active uni stuff sort of finishing for the term, giving my last lecture thingy tomorrow on intuitionist logic (mainly semantics and the Curry-Howard correspondence I guess). Means I get to do reading on interesting things now I have time. My supervisor told me a bit more about game semantics yesterday, which was really quite interesting, so I'm looking forward to things. Reading up on that, category theory and type theory, maybe some more concrete language design things too. Should be fun.

I wonder what audience I'm writing for.

Food

Well, the Thai thing turned out to be rather extravagent. A great deal of fresh ingredients and various dried herbs bought. Thursday was a nutty chicken and pepper dish (slightly let down by my lack of rice noodles, and perhaps not a strong enough nutty flavour). Unfortunately I had to chuck the first batch of rice I made, and rather forgetfully failed to wash then overcooked.

Friday was a green chilli chicken from green curry paste lovingly made by my own two hands, followed by a mango parfait.

Saturday was a sandwich and reheated leftovers :). Not sure what I'm doing tonight, something with chicken.

Study

Now, on Friday afternoon I had a meeting with my Ph.D. Supervisor, feel better for having done so. I have a list of the taught theory postgraduate courses that are running this term, and the knowledge that I need to pay particular attention (as in mucho further reading) to category theory. I have a book and need to borrow books from the library.

Nice term starting again, feels somehow comforting. Oh, and I'm looking forward to learning things, of course.

Shiny Things

In a hopefully unrelated note, aquired Warcraft III off my flatmate yesterday. He bought it on Friday but it was crashing on his computer. So now I've completed the first (human) campaign. It's okay, spiffy graphics of course. As always there is a tradeoff between games that look good and have depth to them, but it doesn't fare too badly in comparison to Warcraft II. The system of hero units is interesting, and I think I like that. Basically it's a lot of fun, but I also want something in the empire-building arena, it's always a shame to leave your painfully constructed base behind.

Been playing Vice City quite a bit recently. Is fun. Great soundtrack. Is great game. Must... resist....

Few errands to run today, a reception too. Then to Sainsbury's to get some nice ingredients for a couple of dishes. Thinking of doing some Thai stuff today.