Cowans' Culinary Companion

Simple living needn't take lots of gadgets. One tool can do many things. In my recent travels I have learned to make good toast with hair straighteners (browns both sides simultaneously) I have neatly chopped a large onion with my nail scissors for soup and I have always been able to fry an egg in an empty shoe polish tin by holding it over a burning almond. (Blame the girl guides for that one.) It needs to be a tin of Kiwi polish and you need to eat it out the tin as it sticks. I have also managed to make a clootie duff in a pair of clean boxer shorts. If you don't want to be found out remember to put the mark made by the seam underneath. when you serve it. I have rolled pastry with the cling film roll and I have shrink wrapped the mast of the boat with what was left of the cling film, although that wasn't strictly culinary more chandlery! Despite all this I wish I had the contents of my loft.

Be the first to see this new book when it comes out on Saturday! The history of the Westray Baptist Church has been written by my mother to coincide with the bi-centenary celebrations this weekend. We published it for her but things were a little fraught for a couple of weeks when she was admitted to hospital for an emergency appendicectomy! Thankfully the appendices for the book had been done in advance and heartfelt thanks to everybody who helped with proof reading and enabled us to get it to the printers at the 11th hour. If you can't find a copy the ISBN number is - 9780955464409 or let us know if you want a copy! It is £12 with profits to the Kirk refurbishment fund.

(Blatant misuse of a blog to advertise eh?)

Here comes the bride..

In a county where every second car is a Bentley how do brides choose to get to their weddings? Well two of the options we saw today were stretch Range Rover and stretch Jeep. When I think that I went to church with 7 of us in a clapped out Hackney Cab stinking of diesel thinking I was posh?!

Stately home from home!

Here we are to the manor born! Well borne to the manor I suppose in a fully packed Volkswagon Passat. The butler looked on in disbelief as we unloaded Saxophone, Guitar and Flute followed by varuoius crates of random things we had packed in as we could think of nowhere else in the house to stick them!
We are getting settled and meeting other new candidates on the course - one great thing is that all the Korean people here know our Korean Kiwi friends so we can share news on their exploits at Eastwest and feel we are among friends already. That is the easy cultural aspect of the course however the English Culture may take more getting used to. Watch this space!

Worlds meet..

Funny how worlds meet when you see people out of context - firstly Emilie and her family who were down in the Borders, rather than in Stromness and Ted & Avis who were in Buckinghamshire rather than Hamilton New Zealand.








We spent a great day with both of them enjoying some late summer sun in a Kelso garden and in a Windsor pub, introducing Kiwis to the Baked Tattie... perfectly washed down by an ale called Bonker's Conkers !
We have been watching squirrels do acrobatics today and hope to see a live badger before we leave here. Seasonal colours are changing daily and it is good to see. Their are lilies out on the ponds and it is funny that we last had autumn 6 months ago but in another hemisphere... actually I am in the mood for another summer.. any suggestions?

Here come the boys!

So here is Son One showing the sites of Edinburgh to Son Two - hopefully the body piercing studio isn't the first port of call! They still get on well and we are so pleased that they are in the same city and both loving it!

Donald is in his first week of Social Sciences at Edinburgh Napier and Andrew is in his final year of English and Philosphy at Edinburgh.

We had a good weekend with them both en route south and both fed us good food in their various flats - we had nothing to offer so reciprocated courtesy of Jimmy Chung!

It's a new day!

Here is the sun rising on a new day as we pack up and leave our balcony view and head off into the sunrise! We set off on Sunday morning to deliver Donald to Napier University and then have our Psychological Assessments before arriving at Bulstrode to see if WEC can rumble us during the three months of Candidates Orientation. If we are accepted this will be the last time we waken to sunrise over the Bay of Firth - certainly for the forseeable future and probably for the unforseeable future too! End of an era, library emptied and sold with all our CDs, (don't worry there are plenty of 78s in the loft if MP3 players become unsustainable and wind ups come back in) boys both off to pastures new and even the parents flown the nest. Scary.