The Kid Sister has risen at last.

Finally I've got a chance to write my blog...
A few weeks ago my friend and I had the pleasure of spending a week at the Viking Longship Zoo. It was great to see Mr. Viking Longship and Mrs. Longship again even though a certain stag week end and work problems meant Mr. Longships time with us was limited...
We had great fun cleaning out the pigs, taking The Big Tom for a walk and of course plenty of time spent shopping in the various towns and Oslo of course. One night however ended up being a bit of a extreme night out...
Mrs. Longship was on call that weekend but we decided it was time to check out the nearby night life and so it was planned we'd head out in tonsberg and should Mrs. Longship be called out then we'd be deserted until she could find us again. However this was not to be the case. A quick visit to the surgery was called for before our plans could get underway. This was all well and good until a phone call came about a very sick ferret. The ferret was brought into the surgery and since Mrs. Longship couldn't find the source of his problem she decided it was time to forgo our night out and operate. My friend was delighted to play nurse but unlike my big bro I decided it wasnt the thing for me so i sat out on that exercise. It was about 11p.m. by the time the poor wee might was all back together again and since we didnt fancy a night in the surgery and it wasn't fair for his owners to take him home in such a state we brought him home instead. Curious looks from Peggy and the cats were called for as we set up a cage for him in the master bedroom... Thankfully the ferret lived through the night and next morning we went back to the surgery to his owners. All of whome were delighted to see him looking perky again...

Culinary Uses for Marrows and courgettes #2

Chinese style crispy courgete sticks,

This time Mrs longship found this in one of our many cookbooks.

Simply mix an egg white with some cornflower to make a sort of batter, add some chinese five spice powder (or similar), coat you courgette sticks and deep fry until crisp.

Very tasty indeed, although I would advise making the sticks quite thin so that they crisp up and don't end up too soggy. The carrots that she did in the same style were also excellent.

Freedom, at last....

but not entirely welcome to begin with.

It seemed so easy. Finally we had an electric fence generator which worked. All we had to do was connect the fence up, add a temporary extention to the already built fence to create a fence "runway" from the barn to the pigs outdoor enclosure, plug the fencer in and open the door.

The above tasks were duly completed in the correct order, and hey presto....... Nothing. Against our expectations the pigs didn't seemed that bothered with the oppurtunity of running in the meadows which was presented to them. In fact, the idea of being out of ther humble pen seem daunting.

The first attempts of extraction involve coaxing with food, this got us about as far as the door. Then there was man handling, lifting the front legs and dragging the back, with much squeling (us and the pigs!!!) to boot. The result, pig gets to grass patch, pig runs straight back to pen containing compainion.

We got a little further on subsequent attempts, pig through fence and on the lawn, pig in barn on wrong side of fence and so on.

In the end, success was achieved by carrying both pigs, one back from another excursion to the lawn, and one from the barn in quick succession. When we finally had both in the right place at the same time, all was well and they began to look like they were going to enjoy the great outdoors.

Culinary Uses For Marrows and courgettes #1

It's that time of year again. We, no doubt in conjungtion with many other kitchen gardners, are experiencing a glut of marrows and courgette which requires some imagination to deal with without becoming fed up with the sight of marrows.

Being the public spirited person I am, I will proceed to share with you out there, the various ways we find to liven up this repetitive vegetable over the coming weeks. No idea how far this'll get, I expect to get to at least 10 recipes.....

So for a start, this was completely made up from what was available in the fridge/garden and turn out very good indeed.

Marrow stuffed with yellow curry mushrooms.

Fry up some mushroom slices, onions and carrots in butter, adding a couple of tablespoons of your favourite yellow curry paste after a little while, on this occassion I used a jar as I couldn't be bothered to start from sratch). No need to go tooo mad, just make sure that everything is softened and covered in the butter.

Cut slices of Marrow, about 1-2 inches thick. With a knife carefully remove the inner core/seed from each slice leaving the outside ring of flesh and skin.

Lay these slices in an oven proof dish (with a lid) and fill the insides with the yellow curry mix.

Bake in the oven (with the lid on) at 220c for about 25 mins or so.

The spicy flavours of the mushrooms complemented the marrow very nicely. We serve this with Salmon rooled in chilli, lemon grass and coriander flour, with a cocunt milk sauce. However, for you veggies out there, a couple of marrow slices is a meal on it's own.

Scottish hotels, Dunoon, Edinburgh and Prestwick

O.K. It's all been happening in the last couple of weeks, pigs, hay, woodworking, potato harvesting......, a stag weekend and a wedding. All in all lots to post about, so I best get started.

As a result of the stag weekend I had occurance to spend 3 sucessive nights in different Scottish hotels. All of which were note worthy not all for good reasons

Our choice of stag activities took us to Quadmania in Scotland, a full review of which can be found on more-power, the blog.

The Friday night saw us staying at The Cothouse Hotel. near Dunoon and only a couple of miles from Quadmania. This charming little hotel, was very welcoming, the food was excellent and it had a satisfactory wine list. I thoughroughly enjoyed the garlic mushrooms and the huge plate of haggis with a sauce of neat whisky. The large selection of Scotch Whiskys was also explored with great relish. The rooms were comfortable, and the breakfast was excellent. I asked for everything from the Cooked Breakfast options, and was duly treatened with the washing up if I didn't clear my plate. It was tough, but I rose to the challenge. The cothouse had that certain personal charm that only a small hotel can have, and large hotels never come near. Prices where very exceptable. If you are spending a night in the Dunoon area, I can highly recommend the cothouse.

Saturday night took us to Edingburgh, an exceptional city for a night out, it must be said. However, exceptional is not one word that applies to the Edinburgh Holiday Inn. This displayed the typical impersonality of a large hotel with a good helping of incompetance and high prices to boot. When we requested a shower curtain, which was missing from the bathroom, the porter told us that "Shower curtains were out" leaving us to soak the bathroom floor each time we had a shower. Reception was chaos both at check in and check out and the main doors, seemed to trigger themselves to open before they had finished closing, making a very irritating, repetitive noise for the crowds waiting for the incompetance of reception to turn it's attention to them. Next time, we will book early and avail of one of the countless other, cheaper, and no doubt better hotels in the Edinburgh area.

Sunday left me on my own in Prestwick before my RyanAir flight to Oslo Torp. My hosts were the "North Beach Hotel". Perfectly acceptable, very good food, and excellent if you play golf. Prices reasonable. Recommended, if you are travelling out from Glasgow Prestwick Airport in the morning as it is right beside the train station which is 1 stop and 2 minutes away from the airport.

Birds of Prey

During the last few weeks I have seen a large bird of prey in the area around the bottom of the lane.

On one occasion sitting on a road sign as I drove past and on another flying over the car at low level. During a discussion with the real farmers dad, I asked what was the largest bird of prey in the area, this he replied was a "Musvåk" which translated is a "common buzzard"

Now, during our time in Cumbria we say plenty of birds of prey, but I don't remember seeing such a large beast close up, although I believe Cumbria also has a population of buzzards. I would guess that this birds wingspan is between 1.25 and 1.5 Metres and it's body is a similar size to a small goose.

Can any of you out there enlighten if this sounds like a Buzzard and if so give me some glues as to how I can identify it better should I see it again. I would say that I will endeavour to obtain a photo, but I think this is unlikely.

All in all, a bit of a worry for future plans of keeping chickens, reckon that a fully enclosed run will be required.

Ice Exports

I figure that I had best complete the journal of our previous visitors stay before our next visitor, "Kid Sister" arrives this evening.

This post is inspired and partly written for "the good cumbrian general practioner" (tgcgp) who came to trace the steps of his ancestry prior to our moving in party in May. It seems that tgcgp's Grandfather made his living exporting Glacial Ice from Søgnfjord to the British isles. Now, you may wonder how all of this relates to the visit of the thoughtful Scotsman..... I can explain.

During the course of our house warming party, tgcgp found himself chatting to an attractive young Norwegian lady, the golf course owners Daughter. One who he was infact already aquainted with (as well as her sister), although he may or may not remember (new years eve, waltzing in the kitchen, pianola and all that......). After his exciting travels he was obviously keen to share his ancestry with those present (ed. verbally, of course).

During our vist to the golf course and their farm, we were shown to the "Stabbur" (little building for food storage and meat curing). This now served as a museum of items from the long history of the farm. Private museums are something quite common, it seems, in Norwegian farms, this is not the first we have seen. It was a great privelage to rummage through the small upstairs room, finding all sorts of things including weaving machines, ancient ski's, tools, bags etc. Remembering the conversation with tgcgp, we were informed of the prescense of a couple of Ice Saws. The photo of one of which is enclosed, with a couple of "golf goons" for scaling purposes!!!

When you've stopped looking at our legs, you will see that this saw was obviously designed to shear of huge chunks of Ice before the were packed in Sawdust and wood shavings for transport to the UK (and presumably other destinations). I am informed that using this packing technique the blocks of ice would keep for "a good time"....

Can those of you who may be seeing tgcgp in the pub tonight, pass on news of this post and tell him how to get to it....

Book Review #1

One of the few advantages of using public transport is that you have a little "quiet time" to enjoy some high quality (or otherwise) literature.
On this occasion I decided that I would read the few books that have been sitting on the bookshelf for years and that we have transported accros the sea although I hadn't yet read them.

The first being, "Terminal Man" by Micheal Crichton, Acceptable but so umemorable that I only realised that I had read it before when I was half way through. Certainly wasn't worth reading a second time.

The second being Joseph Wambaugh, "Lines and Shadows". Now, it is quite commen for me to read sentences more than once to attempt to extract some hidden meaning or to digest the ramifications of what I have just read. With this, however, I ended up reading sentences and even paragraphs multiple times just to extract meaning, which when finally grasped seemed disjointed and often meaningless within the context. After 2 Chapters and many headaches I gave up. For me this was simply unreadable, but realising that you can't just take my word for it, I turned to 2 other intelligent creatures for independant opinions. As you can see they only needed to read the first page before deciding that there was better ways to amuse themselves with this book than read it!!!!

The third (and possibly last for a little while as it is difficult to read books whilst riding a bike (alternative to bus)) was "Stalking Horse" by Terence Strong. This came with a single glowing reference from the "Yorkshire Times". It seems that Yorkshire men are indeed to be trusted and this proved to be quite unputdownable. Not the best book that I have ever read, but the short time that the 500 odd pages were consumed (not quite lit. like the last book though!!!) was an indication of the desire to know more and find out what happens in the end.