Tag: caravan living

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Gaelic singers, fires and venison

Our first island Christmas.

Last night we attended an outdoor meal with friends around a fire, with local musicians and Gaelic singers. They sang traditional carols but also songs that we didn’t know, hauntingly beautiful in the open air and the darkness of the night.

It was a cold night but we honestly didn’t feel it. Such a lovely introduction to Christmas here.

We returned home smelling of woodsmoke and with heads full of new melodies and happy memories.

This morning, Christmas Day, and it was a day alone for us. The wind howled around the caravan and we sat in front of the fire with big socks on and shared a zoom call with the boys in Manchester.

We ate venison and drank red wine and enjoyed the feeling of peacefulness and nothing that we absolutely had to do.

It’s been a very unusal and quiet Christmas, but a good one for all that. It’s made us remember what’s important and has made us look forward to next year’s celebration with family (and a proper kitchen!) all the more.

Merry Christmas to you all. From the fireside of the caravan on the windswept hillside of the croft I’m sending you all good wishes for health and happiness, wherever you are.

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Festive thoughts from the croft

Like many people in these troubled times, Christmas for us this year will not be as it usually is.

Apart from the fact that we’ll be spending it in an ancient caravan perched on the side of a rain-swept hill, we will also not have the kids with us. It will just be husband and myself on the day.

We’re conscious that they are many others who don’t have a roof over their heads, good health, or enough to eat this Christmas. We’re very blessed that we don’t fall into any of these categories.

We will be together. We’ll be warm and dry with enough to eat. Our loved ones are safe, and we’ll be able to share calls with them on the day.

The house build is progressing, albeit slowly, and stands there, a promise to come and the culmination of many years of planning and hard work. We awake to this promise, along with some incredible sunrises, every day.

During the bizarre awfulness which 2020 has been, I count this all as success.

Wishing you all a peaceful, happy Christmas.

See you on the other side.

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Atholl Brose

It’s that time of year again. I’ve made homemade Atholl Brose.

A wee glass of this in the evening to warm us up is a necessity, I think.

Whisky, honey, oats and cream. Lasts for a week in the fridge – if you can make it last that long 😊.

Recipe here for anyone that fancies giving it a go. Note I only use a half bottle of whisky, just a blended one too, and it’s delicious.

https://foodanddrink.scotsman.com/drink/how-to-make-your-very-own-atholl-brose/

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Highland Coos next door

In our village there lives a crofter called Angus who keeps Highland cows. These are small, long-horned, shaggy-coated cows of neolithic origin, the archetypal Scottish cow.

Hardy and good natured, as well as very intelligent, these cows are escape artists. Often the call goes out around the village that there is a cow in the road, and it’s invariably one belonging to Angus.

This week Angus has been grazing them in the top field which is adjacent to our croft. One morning we tugged back the curtains in the static to find three large cows staring back at us from a few metres away on the other side of the hedge.

They are curious beasts. As the day progressed, whenever they spotted us out on the croft they’d migrate towards us, shaggy heads shaking and mooing, in anticipation of a feed, I suspect.

I’m very taken by them. Much more so than with the sheep.

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Snowy hills & soul food

The weather turned very cold last night, down to an overnight temperature of a few degrees. We awoke to snow on the high peaks around us and an internal caravan temperature of four degrees C.

To say that getting out of the warmth of the quilt was a struggle this morning would be an understatement..

Slowly building supplies are arriving for the next stage of the house build.

We need to block gaps and start the insulating foil on the walls before we start the underfloor heating, but we await more foil, staples and other materials. With any luck everything will arrive in the next week and we can get started.

In the meantime, without a working oven, I’m relying on our local stores to bake delicious, savoury, carb-rich loveliness to keep us motivated in the form of bacon and cheese scones.

We need extra energy in this cold to stay warm and working. I don’t feel guilty at all for the large bowl of tomato soup and two of these beauties warmed and spread with butter for supper.

Soul food.

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Irres Cran

We love good bread. We eat a lot of it, especially seeded, malted grain bread.

So it was with great excitement that whilst shopping in our local Co Op on the island I spotted that they’d just put out a selection of speciality breads.

I read the ingredients. Irres Cran, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds. What the heck was irres cran?

Intrigued, but assuming that it was some sort of ancient Scottish grain, like Emmer wheat, I popped it in the trolley and brought it home.

I tried googling irres cran but nothing came up. There was nothing left but to try it.

It was cranberry bread.. 😂.

The bread range is called Irresistible and they’d clearly abbreviated the label to fit all the ingredients on.

Irresistible Cranberry. Irres Cran.

Priceless.

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Eating our local deer

The news spread that the local village store had some estate venison for sale this week, so I hot-footed it over to see what was available.

I picked up a 500g pack of diced venison (no haunch of venison for us as we have no way of roasting it right now 😕) and decided to make a venison ragu for dinner in the slow cooker.

Deer are a problem here on the island. They no longer have any natural predators and as such their numbers are out of control. There is talk of reintroducing lynx to the Highlands after many hundreds of years of extinction through over hunting, but nothing has yet come of it because of farmers concerns for their sheep.

What there is in place is a selective culling programme across most estates, and when that happens Clan Venison appears in the local outlets.

It’s cheaper than Highland beef, totally free range and organic, almost fat-free and very tasty. And every deer we eat is one less to eat our baby trees when we plant them next year. What’s not to love?

I cooked the venison with red wine, red onions, chopped tomatoes, peppers, garlic, juniper berries and a sloosh of balsamic vinegar. Four hours in the slow cooker. I forgot to add the chestnut mushrooms that I’d bought.

Divine.

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Hurrah for Hot Water!

This is a very short post to mark the momentous occasion, after two weeks of caravan life, of the connection of hot water.

Going for a weekly hot shower in Kyle was fine, but a 25 mile round trip meant it wasn’t really feasible much more frequently than that.

And with the wind and rain whipping around us daily, we get muddier and dirtier than I thought possible.

Husband connected up the pipes and installed a new boiler over the last few days, and after a break in the weather this morning completed the last bits of the connection.

We now have a working toilet, a shower and a hot water tap in the kitchen. Doing my happy dance.

Isn’t it amazing how we take things like this for granted.

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Once around the slow cooker

Two chicken breasts, a pepper, and a non-working oven? No problem as long as you have store cupboard staples and a slow cooker.

Spicy chicken with tomato and peppers cooked in the slow cooker for four hours with basmati rice to the rescue for dinner.

Husband brought in the box with my kitchen spices today for unpacking.

As I unpacked I added in a generous scoop of dried chilli flakes, a tin of chopped tomatoes, smoked paprika, onion, far too much garlic to be sociable, smoked salt flakes and a little sugar.

Luckily he didn’t bring in the canned goods box or I might have been tempted to chuck in some tinned pineapple. Maybe that would have been a step too far.. 😏 A tin of borlotti or butter beans would however have been a worthy addition.

The slow cooker did the rest.

Served with a spoonful of Greek yoghurt as a balm to the heat, it was one of those ‘once around the cupboard’ dinners that went down well after a long day.

I can’t wait to source some local venison to make a venison stew soon. I’m sure that there is a bottle of port in the boxes somewhere found at the back of one of the London kitchen cupboards before we moved. I’m thinking beef bourgignon but with venison. And mashed potatoes.

We are eating out of bowls most of the time now, like four year olds. It’s just easier.

Just don’t ask me for chicken dippers.

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Launderette Tales

I haven’t used a launderette for decades, so it was with some trepidation and a bag full of coins that we sallied forth to the Community Facilities at Kyle of Lochalsh to do our washing like the ex hippy teenagers that we are.

With no water in the caravan and having been on the road for ten days we’d both completely run out of clean clothes.

I’m amazed we lasted this long, to be honest. We used to do a clothes washing almost every day in London.

But that was in our old life. We’ve learned to embrace the muddier and scruffier side of being now.

The side benefit of this was a trip to the hot showers at the same place, designed for visiting yachtspeople, with plenty of space to hang wet outer clothes whilst getting clean.

And it would have been rude not to make a wee visit across the harbour carpark to Hector’s Bothy for lunch whilst the clothes were tumble drying.

We sat in a booth overlooking the sound, blinking in bright November sunshine and enjoying the sensation of being clean again, and ate our butties.

Today was a good day.