Scotland

 

Scotland is gloomy, full of mist and low lying clouds. The buildings are old, some going back to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The food, for the most part, is pretty basic. A lot of root crops like carrots, parsnips, turnips. Peas on almost all the plates, very much like we have potatoes on our plates at home. It is basically a cool climate so they can grow them all summer. Not like at home. If we don't get our spring crops planted by late March or early April is gets too hot for them.
Our first full day in Scotland needs to be spent preparing for our next seven days so we're off to find a grocery store to stock up.  Off to the town of Perth.  Since we have no food in the house other than some nice treats our hosts have left for us, we decide the first and foremost thing we need to do is find a place to eat.  We find a nice pub and once again I have the fish and chips.  Nice and safe.  Not so for my husband.  He has determined that since he is in Scotland he will have the haggis.  I ask him how he liked it.  His reply, 'well, I didn't like it enough to ever order it again or dislike it enough to wish I hadn't ordered it in the first place.  As for me, it's enough just to watch him eat his.  
Next thing is off to the grocery store.  Oh, what an adventure!  Carrots the likes of which this southern American girl has never seen.  Oh, so sweet and delicious.  Absolutely love the vegetables.   Bought way too many, but that's alright....I couldn't find the parsnips so I asked a sweet young girl who was also shopping if she knew where they were.  She left her cart and came with me to help me find them.  I could not believe how accommodating and helpful these people were.  They would not necessarily start a conversation with you, but if you asked them for assistance in anything, they would go out of their way to help.  Oh yes, I'm liking Scotland.
I was pushing a shopping cart and not watching where I was going. I was looking at the veggies, trying to decide which ones I wanted, and I nearly ran over this man. I apologized and told him I was from America, therefore I didn't know how to drive in Scotland. He laughed at me and said that's because you folks drive on the wrong side of the road. So it seems they have the same viewpoint as we do when it comes to which side of the road is the 'right' side. 
I bought a baking hen and I am going to cook that with an assortment of these wonderful local vegetables... 
We spent quite a bit of time today in Perth walking around in an old cemetery. It was amazing how young most of the people were when they died, many in their twenties or early thirties. And how many children were lost, sometimes several in the same family. A lot of the grave markers were so old you couldn't read the dates, but I did see a few in the seventeen hundreds.
Earl made a picture of some of our food finds today.
All in all, it was a lovely day. And I must say I love the sky and the air and the rivers and the flowers.  Oh yes, Scotland rocks so far.