I'm back
After a long hiatus, I am back. Over the past few months I have been working hard to finish my masters thesis, which has prevented me from blogging. I submitted the thesis at the end of February, and it was promptly accepted. Now that that is behind me I should have more time to blog, so stay tuned.
Since it has been nearly 7 months since my last post I suspect I may have lost some if not all of my readers. If there is anyone still out there reading this blog, please post a comment to this post so I know if I am wasting my time or not. While I do enjoy blogging, you, my faithful readers, are why I do it.
Living On The Edge
See? I wasn't fibbing. I really did stand on the edge. I have to tell you though, it was a little scary.
Yankee Tried To Kill Me!!!!
OK. Maybe that was a little dramatic. He may not have been trying to kill me, but he sure seemed to be out for pain! I'll let you decide for yourself.
Last month Yankee and I drove up to the Peak District to check out some quaint small towns/villages and do a little walking/hiking. Well, as it turns out the area where we wanted to hike really required proper hiking boots and I did not have any. We still had a good time exploring an old bookstore, where we found some great old books. We still wanted to do some hiking in the area so I bought some boots and we headed back up there the following weekend.
My first mistake was letting Yankee select the walk. He picked a 7 mile Baslow and Curbar Edges walk out of the Peak District Walks book. Here's the word-by-word description of the walk from the book:
A magnificent gritstone escarpment stretches along the eastern rim of the Derwent Valley from Birchen Edge northwards to Derwent Edge, providing both exhilarating walking and glorious views. This ramble traverses Baslow Edge and Curbar Edge, two of the finest sections of this long cliff, before plunging through thick woods to the banks of the Derwent and returning along the riverbank and across fields to Baslow.
Sounds pretty tame right? Well, maybe except for the "plunging through thick woods" part. Not to worry, we didn't do any "plunging through thick woods." Even though we had directions we missed the "not-so-obvious rocky path that doubled back steeply into the woods below." Not-so-obvious was an understatement to say the least. Anyway, we did wander through the woods, which were beautiful, but ended up at least a mile off course. Never fear though, we had our ordinance map with us and were able to get back on track. Of course that entailed walking along a two-lane road without a shoulder for quite a while. Oh, did I mention that it was a winding road with blind curves? Every time we heard a car coming we stepped off into the brush. My heart nearly stopped when a Ferrari zoomed past us - twice. Now that was exhilarating!
Unfortunately after this little detour we still had several miles to go. This 3 1/2 hour walk was looking more like 5 hours. And I'm not talking 5 hours of leisurely walking at an even grade either. We had to keep up a respectable pace, trudging through wooded areas, mucky fields, farms, etc. Yes, there are public footpaths that run through otherwise private properties. Very cool. We walked straight through the cow & horse barns on one farm and one of the workers just waived and said 'Hi'. Back home we might be run off with a shotgun if we walked through someone's property.
With about 1.5 miles to go, the directions said to follow Curbar Lane steeply uphill for 1/4 mile. This is where I really thought I might not make it. They weren't joking about the steep part, but the 1/4 mile was more like 1/2 mile. That is something I've noticed over here - oftentimes the distance stated in directions is grossly underestimated. Usually we're in the car and I could care less, but this time I was livid. I thought I might die right there on Curbar Lane. Thankfully I made it and the terrain wasn't too bad the rest of the way. However, it soon started drizzling and by the time we got to the car it was full on raining! Surprisingly, I wasn't too upset about the rain. I guess I was just so darn glad that we were finished walking that I didn't care.
Before we headed home we stopped by the Chatsworth Farm Shop where I rewarded my hard work with a snack. We also picked up some other goodies, including local herbed bison sausages. As the English would say they were 'gorgeous'. Very tasty. I sure am going to miss all of the local farm shops after we move back.
PHOTOS
Here I am in the parking lot where the 'Death Walk' began. Sweet hat huh? I was happy I had it when it started raining.
Here's Yankee as we start off down the public footpath.
This is me after maybe a mile or two. I hadn't begun to suspect Yankee's master plan at this point.
This isn't the best photo, but the stone cross is The Wellington Monument on Baslow edge, standing high above the village of Baslow. It is dedicated to the Duke of Wellington and a celebration of his victory at the battle of Waterloo in 1815. It was erected by a local, Dr Wrench, who as an army man, felt the need to counterbalance the memorial dedicated to Admiral Nelson on nearby Birchen Edge.
It's difficult to tell from the below picture, but the Eagle Stone is massive in size. Situated high above the village of Baslow on Baslow Edge, is this interesting rock. In years gone by, the young men of Baslow used it to show off their prowess and fitness for marriage by climbing to the top. Now it is just one of the many interesting rock formations to be found in the Peak District National Park. When Googling Eagle Stone I found this picture from the New York Times. Interesting.
That's Yankee standing on the cliff along Curbar Edge. I wish I could have gotten this shot without the other guys in it, but it was a fairly busy day out there.
Don't laugh - it was actually a little scary even where I was standing. But I couldn't look like a big baby, so I ventured further out. Of course I can't seem to get the picture posted here. I'll put it in a separate post.
Nottingham Christmas Market
The German Christmas Market in Nottingham's Old Market Square has been going on for just over a week now. Yankee and I went down on opening day to check things out and had a German burger. Since we were there early in the day (and had lots of things to do that day) we didn't get to enjoy a nice mug of Gluwein (hot mulled red wine) or any German beer. After waiting all week, we finally made it down there again this afternoon. As you can see from the pictures it is a popular place to be, especially on the weekends.
Check out the mass of people around the Gluwein & beer garden.
There are stalls set up all down the streets, selling everything from crafts to handmade German sweets. Last week we tried some amazing chocolate covered gingerbread. They were little slices of German heaven!
Here's Yankee enjoying his Paulaner Dunkel Hefeweizen, which is a dark wheat beer. I went with the Gluwein since it was a bit cold out. But then I warmed up and had a 1/2 pint of pilsner, but only because I wanted the commemorative glass tankard. Likely story huh?
I was really happy with this shot of the Council House. The lights on the pillars continuously change color. It was just luck that some of them were pink, picking up the color in the clouds.
I am looking forward to checking out the Christmas Markets in Belgium, Germany and France on our upcoming holiday. Yankee was able to see the one in Berlin earlier this week during a business trip. He didn't take any pictures, but said it was like the one here, only on a much larger scale. Check back in January for more Christmas Market stories & photos.
~YG~
I know it's not nice to toot your own horn, but......
I'm going to do it anyway! About 2PM today I got a serious hankering (is that a real word?) for some meat. Red meat to be exact. I spent the next hour letting my mind wander over all of my options. My first thought was to head straight to Delilah's for a Bison Burger or maybe a Spanish Sausage sandwich. They are both darn good. Then I started drifting towards some homemade meatballs - never made those before. Nah, maybe I should try the Boerewors we made at our last cookery course (African Outdoor Cooking - more on that to come at a later date). I guess I should explain, Boerewors is a South African pork sausage. Good stuff. Then I noticed the recipe called for letting the sausage mixture sit overnight before making into patties and grilling. While time didn't allow this step at the cookery course, I figured if I was going to do it I wanted to do it right. Plus, pork isn't a red meat. So, time to come up with another idea. I finally settled on meatloaf. The only meatloaf I think I have ever made was using Heinz, or maybe it was Hunt's, Meatloaf Fixins in a can. Surprisingly it is pretty decent stuff, but it's not available over here, and I was in the mood to experiment anyway. I finally found a recipe on the Internet that sounded good, but decided to make a few modifications, such as using 1/2 pork and 1/2 beef instead of all beef. I also added some spices as the recipe only called for salt & pepper. Boring. Anyway, this turned out to be the absolute best meatloaf Yankee and I have ever had! I'm not exaggerating either. This stuff was amazing. So I'd like to share the recipe with everyone. Unfortunately, I'm not exactly into measuring, so you'll have to have a little confidence in yourself to wing it a bit, but I know you can do it. I'll try to give pretty good estimates to get you started.
The Best Meatloaf Ever
Ingredients:
*2 Eggs (hard not to measure those suckers)
*1/2 Cup or so Milk
*3 Slices White Bread - try something a little on the heavy side - none of that Wonder Bread crap
*Spices (see below)
*400g each ground pork and ground beef (not exactly sure what the conversion to lb. is, but if you are able to find this blog on the internet you can definitely find an online conversion calculator)
*1 finely chopped yellow onion
*1 grated carrot - no kidding
*1/2 Cup shredded cheese - again no kidding, (the original recipe called for cheddar, but I sused Double Gloucester since that's what we happened to have)
*About 1 - 1 1/2 C. of Sauce (see below)
In a large bowl, beat the eggs and then add the milk, bread & spices. Mix until bread is disintegrated. Add the meat, onion, carrot & cheese and mix well. I don't like to stick my hands down in a bowl of raw meat, so I wear latex gloves. Walgreens sells a box of 50 for $4.99 and they come in size Small which I love. These also come in handy for chopping onions, chili peppers or other stinky things. Pat down into a baking dish. Any dish will do. I used a covered round Le Creuset dutch oven, but then again I'm the one that made a square pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving last year. Bake at about 350 for roughly 1 hour or until nearly done. Drain off the grease. Spread sauce on top and return to oven, uncovered, for about 15 minutes to finish. Serve with mashed potatoes (scratch - don't even think of using instant) and green beans.
Spices:
I'll tell you what I used, but I definitely can't tell you how much of what. Just use what you like and try to end up with about 2-3 Tbsp. total.
*Mustard Seeds (I didn't use too much of these)
*Coriander Seeds
*Cumin Seeds
*1 dried chili pepper (I used a small red one)
*Mixed Peppercorns
*Rock or Sea Salt
*Whole Cloves (only use 4 or 5 of these)
*Italian Herb Seasoning
*Italian Seasoning (yes, there's a difference - just found this today at the grocery - a mixture of red pepper, sea salt, basil, thyme, oregano, white pepper, rosemary, onion & garlic)
Using a mortar & pestle, grind all the spices together. I'm sure you could just as easily use ground versions of all the spices, but Yankee bought a mortar & pestle several weeks ago and has been dying to try it out.
Sauce
*Equal parts ketchup and brown sugar
*Prepared Mustard (I just quickly grabbed a jar of Colemans yellow mustard at the store today. I didn't notice until I opened it that it was English mustard, which evidently means mustard with a bunch of horseradish in it. I was pleasantly surprised how good it was in the sauce, but I only needed about a 1/2-3/4 tsp. of this stuff - a little goes a long way!)
Below is a picture of the finished product, minus the big chunk that we ate.
More Donington Park Pictures
It was pretty cool to see an Indianapolis Motor Speedway display less than an hour away from our home in England.
I believe this was a replica Bugatti, but still quite impressive.
An equally impressive Alfa Romeo.
OK - that's about all I have time to post for now. I'm going to try my best to get caught up on here real soon. Hopefully Yankee can find some time to entertain you as well. :o)
~YG~
Maybe it won't be so bad getting to Donington...
The day after our journey to Belvoir Castle, we decided give the bus another try and head to the Donington Race Park to see the Donington Grand Prix Collection, the world's largest collection of grand prix cars. I could tell by the bus map that there was a stop very close to the track. When we got on the bus I asked the driver if that was the best stop and he said yes and he'd let us know when to get off. Great. Good to know we won't be having any 'adventures' this outing I thought to myself. Wrong. We proceeded to the back of the bus as we had the past two trips. Well, that would turn out to be a big mistake. There were quite a few stops and at each stop more people got on the bus than got off the bus. The bus was so full there were people standing all along the aisle. People were commenting that they had never seen so many people on the bus. Lucky us. We tried to make our way to the front of the bus well before our stop, but of course we weren't successful. I pushed the 'stop' button but the driver apparently didn't hear. As soon as we made our way up there and told him we were going to the track (something he must have forgotten as soon as we pulled out of the bus station) he pulled over and pointed us in the right direction. After walking along the motorway for more than a mile and some fence jumping (see picture below), we arrived at the track.
Here are a couple of pictures taken inside the race museum. I've got more, but Blogger is again being an uncooperative pain in the arse. I'll just put them in a new post.
The long journey to Belvoir Castle
Prior to my family's visit, we had never used public transportation in Nottingham, simply because we never had the need. However, with only one vehicle, which Yankee was using for work, we had no choice if we wanted to venture outside the City Centre. Our first experience taking the bus was uneventful. The five of us went to the Denby Pottery Factory, where the bus dropped us off right across the street from the entrance. Piece of cake. So we decided to take the bus to Belvoir Castle the next day.
I consulted a bus schedule/map and, while there wasn't a stop right at the castle, there appeared to be two or three right by it. I figured I would just tell the bus driver we were going to the castle and ask him what the best stop was. I thought it was a realistic expectation that the bus driver who spends the day driving that route over and over would be of some assistance. Nope. He wasn't really sure, but thought the first stop in that area would be the closest. So we got off at The Unicorns Head pub in Langar. As soon as the bus pulled away I got this sinking feeling that we had made a mistake. We walked into the pub, which wasn't even open yet for the day, and found a staff member to ask for directions. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him we didn't have a car, that we had taken the bus. Come to find out we were a good 10 miles from the castle. Luckily I had a cell phone with me that day (which is unusual) and we were able to call a taxi. We did find out that we probably couldn't have gotten any closer to the castle by bus anyway, which made me feel better. In the end all of the trouble getting there and back was definitely worth it. The castle and gardens were absolutely beautiful. After touring the gardens and castle, we had a nice lunch at the castle's restaurant, Steward's. Funny story. After our rough time getting there I decided I wanted to enjoy a beer with my lunch. So I asked the waitress if the local brew was good. She said yes, but that it was a rather large bottle for a lady. Needless to say, I proceeded to order one and my Dad and Brother-in-law followed suit. It was really good too!
Below are some pictures of the castle and gardens. We even saw a peacock when we were walking around the gardens!
Amsterdam wasn't our only adventure....
Although Amsterdam was probably the highlight of my family's trip, it wasn't our only adventure. While Yankee was working (don't know why he would want to go back to work and not hang with us every day???) we had quite a bit of fun in/around Nottingham. One day we took the Crime & Punishment tour at the Galleries of Justice. My sister & I were both chosen to take part in a mock trial - she as the judge and I as the accused. Sounds about right huh? Apparently I played a big part of burning down a silk mill in Beeston during the Reform Bill riots. Not surprisingly, she found me guilty and I was sentenced to hang. Here are some pictures of the trial and the museum. I don't know why she got to wear a nifty costume and I didn't. Maybe I just looked the part without one?
After the museum we headed to the nearby Pitcher & Piano bar for beverages. Now, the Pitcher isn't any ordinary bar. The first time Yankee and I saw it we didn't even know it was a bar. That could have had something to do with the fact that it is a Church turned into a bar. Yep, that's right. A bar in a church. Seems wrong, but that didn't stop us from checking it out. I wish I could post some pictures, but I can't seem to find them at the moment. You can check out their website or this other link for some pictures. I'm sure I can twist Yankee's arm to go there this weekend and take some pics - for the sake of the blog of course. :) Anyway, back to the story. We all went inside to check out the bar and order our drinks and then headed outside to sit and enjoy the nice day. As soon as we sat down my Dad excused himself to take a walk down the street to enjoy a cancer stick. Well, my brother-in-law & I had nearly drained our Hoegaarden pints and he still wasn't back so I went looking for him. I looked everywhere with no luck. By the time I got back to the bar he reappeared. It seems he had walked down some steps to a courtyard and made a friend. Mind you, I walked down the same steps while looking for him, but turned back when it started to get a little too secluded for my taste. Well, it seems he met this guy down there and got to talking with him. He learned the guy was originally from Portugal and would like to visit the US someday, but didn't think he would be able to because he had been in jail. I wander what the guy did that was so bad he didn't think he we be able to get in the US? Needless to say, we kept a careful eye on my Dad after that.
Another day we took a tour of the City of Caves. Yankee and I had not taken the tour because to be quite honest the entrance, which is inside Broadmarsh shopping centre, looks really cheesy. But the tour isn't cheesy at all. It's really quite fantastic. The only negative is having to wear a hardhat during the tour. It was amazing to walk through the underground caves and hear stories about their history. The tannery was especially fascinating. You can read all about it on their website. I'm guessing I'll be going back with Yankee one of these days.
