Another 4:30 start :-(

Almost 5:15 on Monday now and I’ve been up once more since 4:30, unable to sleep on such a fine morning, as the light pours through the closed venetian blind like water through a sieve. The blazing sunshine and clear blue sky forecast for Sunday never actually arrived, which was probably not a bad thing for I managed to get the second coat of paint on the roof of the house. The day stayed fine with the suns occasional appearance  keeping the batteries topped up to such an extent that wifey even baked a cake during the afternoon.

 

 

Coffee and cardamom cake with pistachio cream

 

Ingredients

For the cake

• 200g/7oz butter, softened, plus extra for greasing

• 200g/7oz caster sugar

• 4 free-range eggs

• 3 tbsp strong coffee

• 8 cardamom pods, seeds removed and ground

• 250g/9oz self-raising flour

For the filling

• 250g/9fl oz double cream

• 1 tbsp icing sugar

• 5 cardamom pods, seeds removed and ground

• 60g/2½oz pistachios, shells removed, roughly chopped

For the icing

• 110g/4oz icing sugar

• 1 tbsp warm coffee

It was a bizarre sounding affair, cardamom pods more normally associated with curries or removing the smell of garlic than with cakes, but top marks to the chef BBC – Food – Recipes : Coffee and cardamom cake with pistachio cream James Martin for coming up with it.

Simple rhubarb jam

And whilst I’m on the subject of food I’ll just pass on the recipe for ‘The Pursers rhubarb jam’. 

Saturday night and wifey is wanting to make ‘Pursers Jam’, this will be a rhubarb jam recipe that is so delicious yet incredibly easy to make that you wouldn’t believe and it come from my good friend ‘The Purser’ in Sleat. It’s so simple in fact that we forgot it, no problem says I, there’ll be a video on YouTube, there is a video on there for everything. Not a chance, there must be ten thousand videos for rhubarb and raspberry, strawberry, ginger, lemon, blah, blah, blah but not a single one that we could find for just rhubarb. No problem says I, we’ll ‘Google’ it, not a chance, same carry on, rhubarb with every other conceivable fruit but not on it’s own. I tried Googling ‘simple rhubarb’, only rhubarb, etc, etc, but all to no avail, so in the end I phoned my mate.

DELICIOUS RHUBARB ONLY JAM

Chop up rhubarb into a bowl and for every pound of rhubarb add one pound of sugar, leave overnight, boil for twenty minutes.

Have a stack of cold saucers ready and keep dropping a spoon full of the mixture onto the saucer which is held at 45 degrees.

If it runs off it needs boiling more and if it slides gently in a wrinkly  lump its ready.

I mean, what could be simpler, why do people have to complicate things????

Sunday

Well at least I managed to stay in bed, no doubt assisted by the fine bottle of Hardy’s given me by mum And guess what we had for breakfast, porridge with rhubarb jam of course

As previously mentioned, it was not the promised heat wave but nice enough and I managed to get a few jobs done, the lawn cut and the ‘Thomson Glenelg’ moved.

  Our trusty 1971 caravan has missed out on the ‘festival circuit’ this last couple of years due to the house building and I have to say that we’re all missing it. Cleaning the girl out I was just imagining myself sat at the table with a vodka and orange for breakfast in some muddy field at the Wickerman or Belladrum Well you have to have a ‘healthy drink’ to start the day don’t you, especially if your eating pot noodles for the rest of the weekend and not washing Whilst we may not be using it just yet, friends visiting next week are so I thought I’d give them ‘a room with a view’.

 

Due to the height of the Land Rover’s tow bar (I usually lower it for going away) I couldn’t pull it out so used the winch,

 

a ‘Warn 9.5XP’. The bonnet is up because I mounted the solenoid pack in the engine compartment, normally it’s outside near the winch itself and all the weather and mud associated with being stuck there. Under the bonnet it’s kept nice and dry, and you can of course close the bonnet once you’ve plugged in the remote control lead.

 

Once it was pulled out we hitched it up and towed it the 100m down the drive,

think I could fancy a holiday there myself

Monday

As I said when I started writing this some sixteen hours ago, I was up at ‘stupid o clock’ after a restless night and after lots of messing about I headed down the road just after 7:00am.

A calm Loch Arnish looking over to Torran with its many aspen trees clinging to places  inaccessible to deer and sheep. Most of what you see is birch but in the autumn their golden leaves stand out from the browner willow, hazel and birch, there are very few aspens at Arnish.

 

The south side of the loch with Holm island in the distance, below a mist shrouded Storr.

Loch na Bron’s ring of water lilies looked like it was starting to flower,

 

and to the north Fladda, Loch a Sgurr, Eilean Tighe and Rona looked amazing.

The cows grazed peacefully on fresh grass at a verdant Glam

 

and then I was at Oscaig just a mile or so from the ferry. The first and best part of my commute  to work almost done, from here on there would be that scary traffic to deal with!!!

The contrast with the weather in the Minch could not have been more abrupt, and this picture as we approach Lochmaddy is after the fog cleared

 

There is absolutely no point of taking a picture in fog, but suffice to say it was very thick in places and my ears are still ringing from the MV Hebrides’s fog horn, which is not very far from my cabin.

That was it really, the sun shone in Uig, it was pleasant in Tarbert, lovely in Lochmaddy and cold and damp in the middle bit. A fire on the car deck livened up the last sailing, drill of course

 

And as you can see, we were not alone,

Ferguson Transports Harvest Caroline II was berthed at the other side of the pier as we tied up for the night in Lochmaddy.

Meanwhile on the pig front

For anyone considering going into pigs Dave and Sarah of  http://skyeharvest.co.uk/ have two fine young Tamworth sows and our ex GOS sow Shona for sale, all of whom have delivered fine litters. They’re not ‘in pig’ but Rocky could soon sort that out if your interested. We too have just two seven week old Tamworth weaners left out of Ellie’s last litter,

not these two though. These wee beauties are from the same litter and are now enjoying a new life in Applecross, and if you look in the background you can see Raasay and the Storr on Skye. Many thanks to Marion for sending that, all they need to do now is get stuck into that bracken Only £40 each, wormed, ready to go with free delivery locally.

 

 

Anyway, that’s it, it’s 23:45 and the sun has just set here in Lochmaddy, so I’m off to bed.