Getting Planted Out

The weather her has been very good for a number of days, temperatures around 12-15 degrees C. So we have started our planting out with so far 200 onions, radish, lettuce, carrots and broad beans. Its a pleasure to be in the graden on days like this.

Thefts in the Borders

Since we came here we have felt very safe. We hardly lock our doors at night or our garden gate. But today I stopped to get eggs near Melrose at a small farm we frequent on the St Boswells to Selkirk road. The owner was there and he said he was packing up selling eggs, which he does like all small farmers in the Borders based on a honesty box. He told me that last week he lost over 100 pounds and the same the week before, people just coming and taking all his eggs and leaving no money, or worse raiding his box of petty cash. He told me that some Chinese fellas came and robbed him of half his chickens and that just this weekend he stopped a gang of Polish guys from Newcastle trying to steel his feeder troughs for scrap metal. They were caught by police at Carter Bar on the way home. I was totally shocked. I had heard of diesel fuel being stolen from farms who often have the tanks with a simple tap, but the scale of what he told me was shocking and is mostly down he claims to Eastern EWuropean immigrants from the Newscastle area. He said if he leaves his tractor out all night the next morning no diesel.

Its all in the Flour

I bake my own bread but I have never got close to the taste and quality of Fords of Berwick who I rate as the premier breadmaker in The Scottish Borders and North of England. However last time we visited Fords (the Norham branch) I bought a range of flour from them. The bread I have made with this flour is as good as their own bread, both white and brown.  Now I have used a wide range of flours before, from Allinsons strong bread to speciality mills, but nothing has the taste of this flour. I have come to the conclusion that as with baguette its all in the flour.  Fords sell a wide range of their own flours, another reason to visit them in Berwick upon Tweed or Norham

The Shore restaurant Leith

They saw my blog post and they wrote and apologised and have offered my wife and I a free meal next time we are in Edinburgh. Can't say fairer than that!

Netflix doesn't work up here

Seduced by the ads and wanting more choice for movies I tried Netflix. It is a very good experience all round, but the bandwidth provided bt BT for my area just can't cut it. You start a movie and it looks good and after about 4 minutes everything stops for 2-3 minutes while it catches up, then it was ok for another 5 minutes. Made watching a movie a joke. But I must say when I called them and explained they were very nice about it and cancelled my card immediately.

New Shanghai Restaurant - Ballater

While in the Highlands at Glenshee we stopped at this nice litle chinese in Ballater. We were fed up with rubbish Scottish restaurants (see my review on Fern) and decided hey a Chinese would work. We had Chow Mein and ate it in the car and it was all we wanted. Not the best Chinese at all, but wholesome and tasty and hit the spot for a quick lunch on the road.

The Fern Cottage restaurant, Pitlochry

A place to avoid I'm afraid. Lovely physical presence but the food vastly inferior. I had steak pie and it was all from a can or processed including the very poor pie crust. Plain boiled vegetables no flavour. We all tried to order mussels on their "daily special| menu only to be told "oh we didn't get any today"....so why are they on the daily special menu then???
My wife had ravioli so bad we complained and they took it off the bill, the mushroom filling was awful and we suspect the ravioli and the sauce were from Tesco.
My son had fish and chips which was not so bad as the rest, but they clearly don't cook fresh food and I wouldn't go again.