gastrobeach.com
Gastrobeach: Covered
http://www.gastrobeach.com/2015/02/covered.html
Life and seafood by the beach on a Scottish island. Monday, 2 February 2015. Snowflakes are coming straight down now. The north wind that yesterday had whipped them up in dancing eddies, plastering them to the glass, has died away. Sporadically, branches on next door’s apple tree move a little, but only due to their bending and recoil from the snow bearing down on them. As a slab fractures away and avalanches from the roof. It’s been happening all night. Th. Sudden commotions in the midst of such.
gastrobeach.com
Gastrobeach: Salted Venison
http://www.gastrobeach.com/2013/06/salted-venison.html
Life and seafood by the beach on a Scottish island. Saturday, 22 June 2013. It’s dreich and midgey – the worst kind of Highland summer weather. Dreich i.e. overcast, drizzling and as dead still as a Raasay Sunday; midgey i.e. swarming with clouds of Culicoides impunctatus. You don’t get used to them, even when you have lived here your whole life. Some of the local red deer ( Cervus elaphus. They are certainly graceful animals. And they’re welcome to the shore, where they pose so elegantly on th...
gastrobeach.com
Gastrobeach: January 2012
http://www.gastrobeach.com/2012_01_01_archive.html
Life and seafood by the beach on a Scottish island. Thursday, 26 January 2012. Guvec Kind of Love. We took a short break away in Inverness at the weekend, just to dissect the bleak and incessant-feeling month of January into manageable chunks. The sales, it seems, are still in full swing (not that we're much interested in them) with desperate, flagging chain stores hawking their miserable generic wares. I ordered Kalamar Tava. Deep fried squid rings) and my wife chose Gumus Tava. Deep fried whitebait) fo...
gastrobeach.com
Gastrobeach: March 2012
http://www.gastrobeach.com/2012_03_01_archive.html
Life and seafood by the beach on a Scottish island. Monday, 26 March 2012. I learned a valuable lesson from my wee nephew this sunny weekend: It is possible to push a skewer through an inflated balloon without bursting it. The fact that he took off half way down the garden as I started to push the skewer in didn't inspire confidence but, despite the fact that he had only 'seen it on telly' it did, in fact, work. An enormous chunk of polystyrene was pressed into service as a ship, complete with stick mast...
gastrobeach.com
Gastrobeach: February 2015
http://www.gastrobeach.com/2015_02_01_archive.html
Life and seafood by the beach on a Scottish island. Monday, 2 February 2015. Snowflakes are coming straight down now. The north wind that yesterday had whipped them up in dancing eddies, plastering them to the glass, has died away. Sporadically, branches on next door’s apple tree move a little, but only due to their bending and recoil from the snow bearing down on them. As a slab fractures away and avalanches from the roof. It’s been happening all night. Th. Sudden commotions in the midst of such.
gastrobeach.com
Gastrobeach: Whitebaited Breath
http://www.gastrobeach.com/2012/10/whitebaited-breath.html
Life and seafood by the beach on a Scottish island. Tuesday, 2 October 2012. Don't you just love October? The summer is still a warm, barbecue-flavoured memory; September has lulled you into a false sense of security; and then, all of a sudden, October batters in with hailstorms and getting-up-in-the-dark blear. The closest I've got to collecting seafood recently is stealing lovely crispy-coated whitebait off my wife's plate at The West End Hotel. Another reason that these mussels met with my approval wa...
gastrobeach.com
Gastrobeach: A Gander at Goose Barnacles
http://www.gastrobeach.com/2012/08/a-gander-at-goose-barnacles.html
Life and seafood by the beach on a Scottish island. Saturday, 25 August 2012. A Gander at Goose Barnacles. The fascinating organisms pictured, are goose barnacles. We found them, while on holiday, washed up on the otherwise uniformly empty and sandy shore of Boyndie bay. Fetch premium prices in their bustling fish markets. It looks like the ones we found were the pelagic gooseneck barnacle. I have just read, with some incredulity, that goose barnacles are so-called because it was thought in the (I hope d...
gastrobeach.com
Gastrobeach: December 2011
http://www.gastrobeach.com/2011_12_01_archive.html
Life and seafood by the beach on a Scottish island. Monday, 12 December 2011. Bawbag-battered Beachfront, Gourock. It could only happen in Scotland: we get a great big storm; some Glasgow wit christens it #HurricaneBawbag; it goes viral on Twitter; some US news networks think it's an official name and report it as such. Gastrobeach was scarily spectacular in the storm. Great white sheets of spindrift whipped across the bay, obliterating the view across to the mainland. Our front windows are now c...There...
gastrobeach.com
Gastrobeach: October 2012
http://www.gastrobeach.com/2012_10_01_archive.html
Life and seafood by the beach on a Scottish island. Tuesday, 2 October 2012. Don't you just love October? The summer is still a warm, barbecue-flavoured memory; September has lulled you into a false sense of security; and then, all of a sudden, October batters in with hailstorms and getting-up-in-the-dark blear. The closest I've got to collecting seafood recently is stealing lovely crispy-coated whitebait off my wife's plate at The West End Hotel. Another reason that these mussels met with my approval wa...
gastrobeach.com
Gastrobeach: January 2013
http://www.gastrobeach.com/2013_01_01_archive.html
Life and seafood by the beach on a Scottish island. Monday, 7 January 2013. The ever-expanding array of Christmas decorations may be packed away in the loft until next year, but I'm not ready to kill the lights just yet. As I have no religious inclinations I celebrate Christmas in the ancient way - as a time for family, fun, feasting (and a little drinking), but also in the other old sense of being a time to light up the winter darkness. On a more serious note - winter darkness can have a serious impact ...
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