Jan 06

National Shortbread Day – YUM!

Shortbread is a classic Scottish dessert  traditionally made with:

  • 1 part white sugar (I use powdered)
  • 2 parts butter
  • 3 parts flour (I usually use rice flour)
    And a bit of salt

Shortbread is so named because of its crumbly texture which is caused by its high-fat content, provided by the butter.   “Shortening” is its related word that refers to any fat that may be added to produce a “short” (crumbly) texture.

Prepared often during the 12th century, shortbread is credited to Mary, Queen of Scots in the 16th century.  As it was expensive to make, the sweet cookie was reserved as a luxury for special occasions.

Note on the video – I “rejected” most because they have all kinds of weird ingredients like cranberries, nuts, maple syrup.  Yuck!

 

A bit of a memory adapted from https://maryoblog.com/2015/09/16/scotland-edinburgh/

After sitting and resting for a while, we headed back down the castle hill, the Royal Mile and down the street towards our hotel.

On the way back, a hoodie outside a store caught my eye. While we were looking at it, a guy asked if he could help find my size. He had just been walking up the street but he was the shop owner. We went in and found something even better, with a matching one for Tom. I ended up also buying a cap and some other stuff. While I was looking around, I realized this was the same store where we’d bought the junk food for dinner the night before. I had been so tired/hungry that night I hadn’t even noticed that they sold hoodies, tshirts and stuff.

The shopkeeper spent a lot of time with us, looking in the back for the matching sweatshirts in the correct sizes. When he was done, he threw in a package of Walker’s shortbread for free! I wish I could remember the name of this shop so I could give it a good review on Trip Advisor. We save all our receipts, so hopefully I can find that name.

We continued on our way and a guy with sequined gold dress came running out of a doorway. I sure hope he was part of the Fringe Festival!

We got back to the Edinburgh City Hotel to get our car and I found I’d become mayor. 🙂

mayor-edinburgh

 

So, that really made my day. LOL

The drive back was pretty uneventful. We had some of the shortbread and I have to say it wasn’t nearly as good as mine.

When we got back to our place, I found out why.

We saw those tent people by the side of the road again. Gypsies? I couldn’t get a picture again. I’ll have one more time to try this on Saturday. They’ve been there at least 5 days. Surely, the police have seen them.

Back to our place!

It turns out that Walker’s uses whole wheat flour and I use rice. They use sugar, I use confectioner’s sugar. Other than that, the ingredients are the same. The flour, butter, confectioner’s sugar and a bit of salt.

Walker’s is definitely not bad, just different.

shortbread

My shortbread mold

Shortbread used to be my standard Christmas gift for local people but they mostly can’t eat shortbread anymore due to the butter, the sugar and the salt. <sigh>

When I was a kid, my dad’s congregation had a lot of Scottish members. One of the worst insults that could said was “She makes her shortbread with margarine“. What an epithet!

Jan 01

Happy 2019!

happy-new-year-ani

Dec 31

First Foot

 

In Scottish folklore, the first-foot is the first person to enter the home of a household on New Year’s Day and a bringer of good fortune for the coming year.

Although it is acceptable in many places for the first-footer to be a resident of the house, they must not be in the house at the stroke of midnight in order to first-foot (thus going out of the house after midnight and then coming back into the same house is not considered to be first-footing).

 

It is said to be desirable for the first-foot to be a tall, dark-haired male. A female or fair-haired male are in some places regarded as unlucky.

The first-foot usually brings several gifts, including perhaps a coin (silver is considered good luck), bread, salt, coal, or a drink (usually whiskey), which represent financial prosperity, food, flavor, warmth, and good cheer respectively.

 

 

 

Dec 31

Hogmanay Fireballs!

 

Hogmanay is the Scots word for the last day of the year and is synonymous with the celebration of the New Year (Gregorian calendar) in the Scottish manner. It is normally followed by further celebration on the morning of New Year’s Day (1 January) or, in some cases, 2 January—a Scottish bank holiday.

The origins of Hogmanay are unclear, but may be derived from Norse and Gaelic observances. Customs vary throughout Scotland, and usually include gift-giving and visiting the homes of friends and neighbors, with special attention given to the first-foot, the first guest of the new year.

 

 

And then, there are the fireballs…

Stonehaven’s Fireball ceremony at Hogmanay is one of the more memorable. It consists of mainly local people of all ages swinging flaming wire cages, around their heads. Each cage is filled with combustible material (each swinger has their own recipe) and has a wire handle two or three feet long, this keeps the flames well away from the swinger, but spectators can be vulnerable! The event starts at midnight, lasts twenty-five minutes and is watched by thousands. The idea behind the ceremony is to burn off the bad spirits left from the old year so that the spirits of the New Year can come in clean and fresh.

 

 

 

Dec 21

Lockerbie

The Lockerbie Cairn, through its 270 blocks of red Scottish sandstone, memorializes the 270 lives lost in the terrorist attack on the United States when Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed Dec. 21, 1988, over Lockerbie, Scotland. It is a gift of the people of Scotland to the people of the United States, financed entirely through private donations. The ill-fated flight was enroute from Frankfurt, Germany, to New York via London’s Heathrow Airport. Twenty-seven minutes after leaving London, at 7:02 p.m. the plane exploded, raining fragments on the city of Lockerbie, including an entire wing and engines. Eleven of the 270 dead were on the ground. The passengers and crew included people from 22 countries. Among them were 189 Americans, including 15 active duty military and 10 veterans.

Senate Joint Resolution 129 designating Arlington National Cemetery as the site of the Cairn was unanimously passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in November 1993. A groundbreaking ceremony was held Dec. 21, 1993, the fifth anniversary of the disaster, and the cairn was dedicated on Nov. 3, 1995.

A cairn, the traditional Scottish monument honoring the dead, can be an informal heap of stones or may take a more orderly construction. In this instance, the 270 stones fit together to form a circular tower eight feet wide at the base and tapering to a height of eleven feet.

The blocks of standstone come from Corsehill Quarry of Annan, Scotland, about eight miles southeast of Lockerbie and in the flight path of Flight 103. Corsehill Quarry, operating since 1820, has acquired a world-wide reputation for producing sandstone of superb quality. Stones from this quarry are used in many buildings in the United States, most notably, the base of the Statue of Liberty.

The following words are engraved on the base:

On 21 December 1988, a terrorist bomb destroyed 
Pan American Airlines Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, 
killing all on board and 11 on the ground. 
The 270 Scottish stones which compose this memorial cairn 
commemorate those who lost their lives in 
this attack against America.

A bronze plaque on the side of the cairn reads:

In Remembrance Of
The Two Hundred Seventy People Killed In The Terrorist Bombing Of Pan
American Airways
Flight 103 Over Lockerbie, Scotland 21 December 1988
Presented By The Lockerbie Air Disaster Trust
To The United States Of America

In more recent history, today was the 25th anniversary of Pan Am Flight 103, the plane that was destroyed by a terrorist bomb in its flight over Lockerbie Scotland. The clip shows many of the people who assemble each year to mark this event, including the Director of the FBI who took office at the time of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack at the World Trade Center. He retired last month. Although Pan Am is gone, the plane was painstakingly reassembled and based on forensic analysis and other diligent work the bomber was apprehended, tried and convicted. Each year a wide ranging group including relatives of those who died, high ranking officials, law enforcement, military personnel and choirs from Pender Methodist Church assembles at Arlington National Cemetery to mark the event and toll the bell.

From https://tomoconnorgroupblog.com/2013/12/22/some-positive-ideas-and-some-history/

Today is the 30th anniversary of the Pan Am/Lockerbie bombing and I’m so sad that my church choir will not be singing due to new regulations at the cemetery.

The FBI is still investigating: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/remembering-pan-am-flight-103-30-years-later-121418?fbclid=IwAR0Kg0_DuPNE5eiDtmXpxKHmmrKmqLB-81ZCx6hO0WIlIa7vhcyNJzIipqo

Our choir is singing in this snippet from the 25 year anniversary. I’m the last woman on the right front at 48 seconds,

Nov 30

Happy St. Andrew’s Day!

standrews-day

 

In Scotland, and many countries with Scottish connections, St Andrew’s Day is marked with a celebration of Scottish culture with traditional Scottish food, music and dance. Schools across Scotland hold special St Andrew’s Day events and activities including art shows, Scottish country dancing, lunchtime Ceilidhs, dance festivals, storytelling, reciting and writing poems, writing tall tales, cooking traditional Scottish meals, and bagpipe-playing.

 

The day is also seen as the start of a season of Scottish winter festivals encompassing St Andrew’s Day, Hogmanay and Burns Night.

In Edinburgh, there is a week of celebrations, concentrating on musical entertainment and traditional ceilidh dancing. A ceilidh is a social event with couples dancing in circles or sets (groups of eight people).

In Glasgow city centre, a large shindig, or party, with traditional music and a ceilidh are held. In Dumfries, songs are performed in the Burn’s night tradition.

 

In Barbados Saint Andrew’s Day is celebrated as the national day of Independence in Barbados. As the patron saint of Barbados, Saint Andrew is celebrated in a number of Barbadian symbols including the cross formation of the Barbadian Coat of Arms, and the country’s national honours system which styles persons as Knights or Dames of St. Andrew.

 

st-andrews-day-google

Nov 23

Who Am I?

facebook-words

 

This was from one of those things on Facebook that many people like to post on their timeline. I clicked on it and the site analyzed my most used words over some period of time. I hate having these sites share on my timeline (I’m funny that way!) so I’m posting it here.

The words are pretty accurate and they mention words that fit all 4 of my jobs – but you’ll find very little about me there.

Interesting.

Nov 22

Happy Thanksgiving!

happy-thanksgiving

 

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated in Canada and the United States as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. It is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. Several other places around the world observe similar celebrations. Thanksgiving has its historical roots in religious and cultural traditions and has long been celebrated in a secular manner as well.

Nov 12

Day 27: 40 Days of Thankfulness

 

Last Thursday, I had occasion to be very thankful for helpers, one of whom extricated my finger from the door of my car and others who supplied band-aids and Tylenol.

I’ll probably write more about this later on my medical blog but it’s hard to type with a broken finger 🙁

 

 

Nov 11

Day 26: 40 Days of Thankfulness

Giving thanks to our Veterans today

 

veterans-day

I’m not sure how Veterans Day turned into a holiday and a day to sell stuff, but then, most every holiday has turned into a day for stores to run “sales”.  Possibly, the original intent was to give our veterans a break but it has sure morphed away from that.

Veterans Day is supposed to be a day to thank those who have served.

From the Constitution:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations;…

 

But I digress.  This year, today is also Remembrance Day in the UK – including Scotland where my grandfather was a soldier in the Black Watch.

remembrance

 

I never met my grandfather.  He had died in Peshawar, India, fighting for the Black Watch during World War l.  Peshawar was on the northern frontier of British India, near the Khyber Pass.

In 1947, Peshawar became part of the newly independent state of Pakistan after politicians approved the merger into the state that had just been carved from British India.

peshawar

We have a trunk of his belongings, though, and it’s very interesting to recreate his life.

My dad was born in Scotland in 1913.

In 1914, my grandfather was involved in this:

On the outbreak of war there were seven Black Watch battalions – for in addition to the Regular 1st and 2nd Battalions and 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion there were a further four Territorial ones which had become part of the Regiment in 1908. They were the 4th Dundee [Mary O’Note: I’m pretty sure this was his, since that’s where my dad was born], 5th Angus, 6th Perthshire and the 7th Battalion from Fife. The 1st Battalion was in action at the very start of the war taking part in the Retreat from Mons before turning on the Germans at the River Marne and the subsequent advance to the Aisne. Trench warfare then set in and the 2nd Battalion arrived from India, both battalions taking part in the Battle of Givenchy. Meanwhile the Territorial battalions had been mobilised at the start of the war but only the 5th was in action in 1914.

From http://www.theblackwatch.co.uk/index/first-world-war

black watch

 

Black_Watch2

I guess this is why I love the Pipes and Drums of the Black Watch so much.

blackwatch-pipers

Thanks, Grandpa!

The Edinburgh Tattoo had been on my bucket list for a long time since my grandfather was in the Black Watch and I just love to hear bagpipes. Even my cellphone ringtone is Scotland, the Brave.

 

My mom says that my Grandfather’s name is inscribed as a war hero in Edinburgh Castle, where the Tattoo is held.  You know, I’ll find that!

 

Thanks so much Tom and Frank and everyone who served the US and Europe.

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