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| Bustling downtown Glasgow |
Glasgow
We spent just one night in Glasgow, our main purpose being
to catch our flight home from Glasgow Airport the following day. Glasgow is
Scotland’s largest city and very different from Edinburgh with much more hustle
and bustle. We liked what little we saw and want to come back some day.
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| Veggies are more like a garnish |
Foodie Talk
We always have comments on the indigenous foods of a country
we visit, and Scotland deserves that same respect. Scotland is not known as a
foodie paradise, but we found the foods to be excellent in most cases but, as
with all places, some were not to our liking.
In general, the veggies and fruits are in short supply on
the menu here in Scotland and were the least to our liking – and we DO love
veggies and fruit. Most of the time, what you get is a handful of peas and a few carrots. The plant life always seemed a bit less than fresh, and
sometimes scarce or even non-existent.
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| Hot house farm for fruits and veggies |
We assumed it was probably because the
growing season is short this far north and close to the Arctic Circle. Outside of
the towns and cities, we confirmed this theory as we found fields with beaucoup hothouses. Our tour guide pointed out that the edible plant life for the people
of Scotland is mostly grown on these hothouse farms. We saw the same situation
in Iceland last year – much of the vegetation of that country too was hothouse
grown, minimizing the need to import.
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| The ubiquitous fish and chips |
One stock meal on practically every menu in Scotland is some
form of fish and chips. The fish is usually
a breaded white fish such as pollock, cod, haddock, or skate, while the chips
are simply French fries. But uniquely good
fries at that! Excellent for a quick (and
somewhat) nutritious meal, and it’s good comfort food too. We were introduced
to dousing our chips with malt vinegar instead of the usual ketchup we use back
home. Unique flavor, and we liked it uniquely!!
Speaking of potatoes, this is potato country. Just like it
is in Ireland, if you have a problem with potatoes, Scotland food will not be
for you. Potatoes seem to grow well here, and we enjoyed them all over
Scotland. We love potatoes in any form, but our faves were the boiled
mini-potatoes and the creamy mashed potatoes. Both are available everywhere as standard
side dishes that never disappoint.
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| Haggis with Neeps and Tatties |
And of course, the infamous haggis is another staple of this
country. Basically, haggis is a mélange of sheep parts: heart, liver, lungs, and
blood cooked with onions, spices, oatmeal, and salt in a sheep’s stomach (sounds
bizarre, but it works pretty much like an oven cooking bag). Haggis is almost always served with Neeps
(mashed turnips) and Tatties (mashed potatoes). We had heard all the horror
stories about haggis, but we actually liked it. It is very tasty, but very
rich. A small amount was just right. We don’t think that most newcomers (like us!) to this special dish could eat a
large portion unless they had been weaned on it.
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Ted ponders his first taste of Haggis. "What the hell
was I thinking?" |
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Frank goes for the Haggis too.
If Ted can do it, so can I. |
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| Local farm-raised Scottish salmon |
Our foodie tour in Edinburgh was excellent. Not only did we
taste some great food, we also strolled through some neat neighborhoods of the city. Salmon
is a big food product here in Scotland, since they have salmon farms in the oceans
both near the mainland and in the surrounding islands. So, it was fitting that salmon
and quail egg were two of our 1
st forays into the world of Scottish
eating!
Next, we downed a small piece of ox cheek with potatoes and
black pudding. The cheek is supposed to be the most tender and best cut of meat
on any animal.
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| The decadent dessert called cranachan ! |
Of course, we also got to try some Scottish whisky and beer.
And the big finale of the tour was a dessert called “cranachan” – a creamy
cupcake with a piece of shortbread on top smeared with dribbles of raspberry
syrup. Good tasting at about 1000
calories a bite!
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| Remains of the irresistible STP ! |
But our all-time favorite was a dessert called “STP” –
Sticky Toffee Pudding. This was a rich moist cake (almost like gingerbread)
saturated in toffee and usually served with a small ball of vanilla ice cream.
It’s everywhere on menus thru out Scotland, and we had it several times on this
trip! Never a let down. But we never got a picture of the whole
dessert. Yea, any thoughts of taking a picture of this scathingly wonderful
dessert were totally forgotten in our eagerness to start eating the damn thing as
soon as it arrived at our table! So, the best we could do is this picture of
STP that was already ¾ eaten. Sorry folks,
we got a bit greedy and forgetful about the picture-taking when the waiters
handed us the STP goodies. All we can say is, it was THAT good! You’ll just have to
go to Scotland and try some for yourself!
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| One of many windmill farms in windy Scotland |
Other Thoughts on
Scotland
We noted that Scotland is very “green” with specific government
goals to reduce greenhouse gases and move to renewable sources of energy.
Almost half of their electricity comes from renewable sources, and the windmill
farms here in Scotland are proliferating. Big windmills are everywhere and
growing in numbers, picking up the slack by feeding the grid with their naturally
renewable energy source of wind power. Rural Scotland is one windy place as
we’ve noted in our travels over the past two weeks, and this natural resource
seems a perfect fit for supplementing their electrical energy.
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Gas is 1.20 British Pounds
per liter |
If you are thinking of complaining about our gas prices here
in America, think again. We did some rough calculations, and it turns out that
gasoline for cars in Scotland is about $6.00 (U.S. dollars) per gallon – more
than twice what we pay in America!
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| Visiting a distillery |
Every country has its share of paradoxes, but Scotland
really confounded us when it came to measuring systems since they tend to mix
English and metric systems. For example, distance is measured in miles, yards,
feet, and inches, but gas at the pump is always in liters. Mountain heights are
in meters, and body weight is measured in something called "stones" (there are about 14
pounds to a stone). We kind of like the stone idea – would make us feel like
lightweights!
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