©Ashy Macbean 2003. All rights reserved.
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Cookbook 2003
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26 February
India diary 14 December 2002
- 16 February 2003
All updates in 2002
This will be the last update this year, so a merry Christmas and a happy New Year to those of you who celebrate that sort of thing. We're off to India on Saturday and the reason I've been so quiet lately is I've been working all month to pay for the trip.....Not something I enjoy doing but the result makes it worthwhile.
We'll be back around the end of February and I guess the next update will be shortly after that. While I'm away I'll be keeping a web-log (I've put a link on the front page). I'll try to write something every few days, although it probably won't all be related to vegetarian cooking.
New recipes
olive bread
spinach and bean shepherd's pie
courgette crumble
broccoli cheese salad
There are a few new recipes this time and a couple of cartoons and a story. I say this at the outset because, as usual, I'm going to rabbit on a bit and I'm aware that some people who click on the 'latest updates' link in a vegetarian recipe web site expect to be taken to a list of new recipes. The list is at the bottom of this entry. Now, on with the rabbiting....
I have several ways of counting visitors to my site and analyzing trends. The counter on my main page tells me how many people visit. For some reason Tuesday seems to be a popular day for looking at vegetarian recipes. The nice people who gave me my search facility also send me a weekly report on which words visitors type in. This is tells me what kind of things people are interested in and I can then put more relevant stuff on the site. Last week the guys at Topcities, who host my site, offered some further insight into visitor trends. They sent me an e-mail saying, 'Oi, Macbean! You're exceeding your bandwidth. It's about time you started paying for your web site hosting.'
The concept of 'Bandwidth' reflects the amount of digital information flying back and forth between my host server and visitors' computers. If two or three people are looking at my site at the same time, the bandwidth is wider than if only one person is visiting. And I thought it was just my mum notching up all the hits. How did I respond to the e-mail? I started paying for my site. It had to happen sometime, but being a Scotsman, with our natural tendency towards short arms and deep pockets, it was a little painful. Still, that's it done.
Once again, I'd like to thank you all for visiting, though it does feel odd to thank people for helping me spend money. I'm not going to make a habit of it.
The disappearance of the ads at the top of every page is a direct consequence of my new status as a paying client. From a design point of view it's an improvement. The ads were pushing all my stuff towards the bottom of the page. I have, however, decided to retain one little ad for Topcities on my home page because they really are the bizz. They're not paying me for it - they probably don't know it's there. They offer absolutely free hosting and a huge amount of storage space on their server. Their restriction on bandwidth for free sites is the only serious limitation. They also offer web building tutorials and links to free search engine submission services. If you're thinking of getting a site going, then I recommend Topcities.
I mentioned my mum earlier. She does visit my site and is very supportive, but I suspect she finds some of my recipes a bit strange. Many people do. She gave me a huge serving spoon the last time I saw her. For a travelling vegetarian cookbook writer that's a better gift than a set of pots and pans. Thanks, mum. The spoon has already come in very handy on several occasions.
New recipes
fried tofu slices with cashew
sauce
zapekanka (potato, walnut and bean bake)
Georgian-style salted cabbage
salted cabbage with white
wine
New stories
Slippers
New cartoons
Falling standards
On the bus
Last orders 2
New links to other sites
The
Green Terrace is an exclusively vegetarian/vegan bed and breakfast
in a stunning hillside location with panoramic sea views situated in Western
Crete on the unspoilt Drapanos peninsula.
Things are back on track with the recipes. I've managed to try out and write up quite a few good ones in the last week or two. I salted some cabbage this week using a couple of new recipes. I won't know the results for a week or two but I'll post a report in the next update and write up the new recipes if they come out well. I've also done a couple of new cartoons and I've got a few more up my sleeve for next time. The new stuff is listed at the bottom as usual.
I was thinking about my grandparents this week. I read a book about dialects and there were examples of words and phrases from Scotland. A lot of them reminded me of the way my granny spoke. I didn't ever think that her language was in any way unusual or significantly different. It was hers. It saddened me a little to see such language presented in the context of that book. Of course, such words and phrases are becoming less common, but I feel that the drive to preserve them only hastens their demise. Language is a living pool and romanticising certain items highlights them as quaint and archaic, so they ultimately become fossilised and sink to the bottom, to be retrieved only when we dredge for interesting artefacts from our past.
My grandad was something of a guru for me. He was the first to stir the desire to travel in me, with his descriptions of the Scottish Highlands and rural Ireland where he wandered extensively as a young man. He taught me a lot about birds and animals, too. One of my earliest memories of time spent with my grandparents was when we were preparing bread for feeding the birds. My granddad would cut up bread into different sized pieces for the different birds. The seagulls got the largest and the sparrows the smallest. We would first go to the river-side to throw bread at the gulls, then to the park to feed the pigeons and sparrows. Sometimes we put butter on the bread when the weather was very cold. My grandad had wealth of interesting stories which he used to repeat but I never tired of hearing them. He was a bit of a moralist and taught me the importance of being fair and honest and treating other people the way I would like them to treat me. He also described how to make several rudimentary explosive devices which he assured me would be good fun in the school playground.
Here's the list of new stuff...
New recipes
vegetable bake with red
wine
aubergine dhal
aubergine toast
shortbread with pears and red wine
apple, tofu and sunflower seed
cutlets
basic cutlet gravy
marrow caviar
drianiki (Belorussian potato cakes)
New cartoons
Centipedes
Last orders
New stories
The cow, the hay and the crash helmet
I survived September with nothing more than a mild cold. A new washing machine now sits in place in our kitchen and it's doing what it's supposed to do rather well. I put new lino on the floor, too. I haven't painted the ceiling yet, nor installed the new sink , but they can wait. I think I was being a little too enthusiastic. I didn't buy a new cooker either. The washing machine broke the bank, but that's okay. I don't know if I'm ready yet for a cooker that works properly.
I got a new Kazak visa. It didn't take long. We only spent three days in Kyrgyzstan - just enough time to have a look round the capital. Food in Kyrgyzstan is like Kazak food - lots of meat. Probably very tasty if you like that sort of thing but a few times my choice was limited to tea and buns. Finding veg food was difficult but, if anyone is thinking of visiting Bishkek, I can recommend the Indus Valley restaurant. The food is Pakistani and North Indian and there is a good vegetarian selection. They have a very good cook, the service is great and the prices are reasonable. I was inspired to write up recipes for potato chat and onion salad when I got home, although they're not quite the same as the dishes served in the Indus Valley. As I say, I was 'inspired' but I've got my own way of doing things.
I was reading back through the up-date pages and I realised that I'm always making excuses for not puting up many recipes. I'm going to stop doing that. There are only five new recipes this time. That's it. I'm not going to offer any justification for this paltry number.
I also noticed that I mentioned doing my Russian exam. I got the result recently and I passed. I've signed up for the second part next June. I think it will be a lot more difficult.
New recipes
peppers stuffed with tofu nuts
and cauliflower
potato chat
onion salad
stuffed lavash
aubergine cutlets with green pepper
sauce
New Cartoons
The caring airline 2
New recipe category pages
Stuffed vegetable recipes
The end of August and September has always been a bad time for me. On several occasions in the past it has been really terrible. When I was younger, I often suffered serious depression and bad health around this time. The last couple of years things haven't been so bad and this year, early though it is, has been better than previous ones. I long ago realised it was worse trying to fight it and nowadays when things get crazy, I just go with the flow. Lately, I must admit, this has meant being pissed a fair bit of the time but I haven't actually done much damage. I've even been quite creative. My 'fantasy pictures' do suggest that the September thing isn't completely under control. Any other time of the year I'd be worried that I was going mad.
Work on the recipes has been slow but satisfying. Balsalmic vinegar - now there's a thing. I still don't know if it was worth what I paid for it but I must say it is delicious stuff. I used it in my stuffed beetroot recipe and the final dish came out rather well. Work on the recipes, however, will be suspended for a couple of weeks for two reasons. The first is that I'm doing a complete overhaul of my kitchen. It started with a broken washing machine but has now spread to include new lino on the floor, a new sink, a fresh coat of paint on the ceiling and a new work surface. Who knows, it might even stretch as far as a new cooker. Now that would be something.
Reason number two - visa capers are on the horizon again. I have to be out of Kazakhstan by the end of next week. I managed to get hold of a year's multiple entry visa for Kyrgyzstan recently, so that will make a convenient base for applying for a new Kazakh visa. It's getting more difficult these days. I might only get a three month visa, but by the time that expires I'll have my Indian visa sorted for my winter migration, so it won't be so bad.
recipes
solyanka - red pepper, black olive and salted cucumber
soup
courgette and potato bake
stuffed beetroot
Greek salad
courgettes in nutty sauce
Indian salad
cashew nut potatoes
New cartoons
The caring airline
When is lunchtime?
Butterflies
New stories
Tashkent
Three vegetarians
New photo pages
Fantasy Photos
New links to other sites
Vegetarian
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It's been a while, hasn't it? Sveta and I have been travelling a lot lately. We spent some time in the Netherlands, mostly in Amsterdam, although we went to the beach too. We spent even more time in Scotland visiting my family and travelling around a lot with our little tent. It was great fun. I did very little cooking apart from boiling water and throwing in instant noodles and we tried not to do too much of that. Most of the new recipes below are from the back-log on my computer. The exceptions are the pasta bake and the coleslaw recipes. I made the pasta bake, or one version of it, at my mum and dad's house and that prompted me to do the recipe. I did the coleslaw recipe after Sveta had a bad experience with a tub of factory-produced stuff which convinced her that the British really don't understand anything about good food. I pointed out that not all British people eat such food and further pointed out that she was the one who bought and tried the coleslaw. I didn't touch it. I made her a batch of fresh stuff to prove that without all the preservatives and things, it can actually be quite a nice salad.
I went to visit my friend Dave who is a bit of a computer buff and we discussed the merits of mouse-pens. As I mentioned a few months ago, I was planning on buying one with a view to improving the quality of my drawings. His comments left me rather disappointed as he basically said only the really expensive pens were any good. I had been eyeing up a cheapo Chinese pen-and-pad set in our local computer supply shop. It turns out however, that things aren't as bad as I thought.
When I returned home I had another reason to visit the computer shop when my mouse died. I should have mentioned that I finally found a full length copy of 'Hexen 2'. I discovered it in a pile of second-hand CD games at a car boot sale in Scotland. I got it for two pounds and both Sveta and I were really excited as we played the demo years ago and really enjoyed it and we've been looking for the full-length version ever since. Anyway, as I was saying, the mouse died. It was already old and a bit sick and I guess the extra strain of two crazed game lunatics playing into the night finally killed it off. My new mouse is an optical one. Instead of a ball, it has a little red light, which looks spooky in the dark and it is a lot more sensitive that anything I've owned before. As a result, I think the quality of my drawing has improved a bit. It's certainly a lot easier to draw on my computer now. Witness the amount of new cartoons I've knocked out since I got back. It's just a pity there's no electronic gadget to improve the quality of my jokes.
Here's what I've done lately...
New recipes
Thai-style aubergine and coconut curry
cauliflower with sour-cream and walnuts
Malai kofta
vegetable pasta bake
pasta with pine nuts, lemon
and olive oil
coleslaw
New cartoons
A quick bite
More goldfish
Fly parental advice
Nostalgic fly
Cat tales
Fighting hedgehog
Looking forward to the festive season
I just got back from Atyrau on the Northern shore of the Caspian Sea. I didn't do anything very interesting, so there's not much to write about. The mosquitoes there are probably quite interesting from an entomological point of view. They seem to be of a particularly large, violent and agressive strain.
At the moment, my mind is on my forthcoming trip to Europe. During my trip to Atyrau, I was in fact in Europe for about an hour and a half. I had a couple of beers then wandered back, via the bridge over the Ural River, into Asia. I'm hoping my next trip will be a little more exciting. We leave on Sunday morning so this update is, as has become the norm recently, a bit rushed.
We'll be back in about a month. See ya!
New recipes
spicy cucumber and yoghurt soup
orange and olive salad
Frank's low fat, low carb diet soup
pickled green chillies
sun-dried red chillies
New recipe links pages
chilli recipes
New cartoons
the morning after the night before..
I've just returned from a short visit to Tashkent. On the road to Samarkand... Except that I think the direction of the 'road' in the poem was probably from west to east. I travelled from east to west, but I didn't make it as far as Samarkand. That's the second time it's happened, so next time I really must try to go all the way. I did make a new friend on this trip who is from Samarkand and he invited me to visit him there sometime. I feel I'm getting nearer.
I've only had time to put up a few recipes, as I seem to have been busy since I got back and now I'm preparing for another trip in a few days time. The 'spicy cabbage and tomato' and 'spinach dhal' are recipes I've been meaning to write up for a while. I got the recipe for the 'Grand Orzu eggless omlette' in Tashkent, at the retaurant in the Grand Orzu Hotel, hence the name. That's the only recipe that's properly from Tashkent, although the 'salad Amelia' is too, sort of. If you have a look you'll see what I mean. I've been a bit light on the introductory comments on these recipes. Some people might think that's for the better. I would like to say that I'll add more when I have time but I probably won't. The inspiration has come and gone and those recipes are written now. Instead, when I have more time, I'll write new recipes with fuller introductions. The recipes look so bare without them - almost like a real cookbook.
In a few days, I'm going to Atyrau on the Caspian Sea for a week. A week or so after that, Sveta and I are heading for the Netherlands and then to Scotland, to relax for a bit. We'll take our tent and hiking boots and do some outdoor pursuit type things. I'm sure we'll spent a lot of time just lying around outside the tent making cups of tea or sitting on the nearest beach or river bank.
Updates will continue to be sporadic for the forseable future, but I will endeavour to always put up something, sometime. Cheers for now, everybody.
New recipes
spicy cabbage and tomato
spinach dhal
Grand Orzu eggless omlette
salad Amelia
New photo pages
towns and villages
Once again I promised an update in two weeks but didn't do it. My apologies for procrastinating but I really have been busy lately. Whenever I've had time to work on the recipes, I've chosen to sleep instead.
My birdwatching guests have gone but another lot have arrived to replace them. I took the birders on some nice trips and they seemed to enjoy themselves. I certainly did. We saw most of the species they had anticipated plus a few surprises. The weather was good most of the time, although we caught a severe storm on our last night out on the steppe. One of the tents completely disintegrated .
I took a lot of photos while we were travelling. Most of them are for a new web-site on birding in Kazakhstan that my friends are putting together, but I took some nice pictures of flowers which I've already put on a new photo page. I also took some photos of mountains and I'll add a couple to the 'mountains' page when I get time.
I had my GCE AS level exam in Russian a few days ago. It wasn't difficult to do but I don't know if I did it right. I won't know my grade until August (or later, if the guys in charge get caught fiddling the results again).
I'm off to Uzbekistan for a few days at the end of June but it really is a flying visit - in and out, no messing about. I'd like to stay longer but I have to go over to the west of Kazakhstan afterwards. I think what I'm trying to say is that my updates may be a little erratic for the next while. I won't promise a date for the next one but hopefully I'll pick up some new ideas on the road.
New recipes
quick spicy potatoes
seaweed and peanut salad
tofu stuffed cabbage
New cartoons
Why be a vegetarian?
New photo pages
flowers
sunsets
New links to other sites
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Not a lot of recipes this time. I've had guests the past couple of weeks and I've been playing safe and cooking things I'm sure about. I like having guests, which is, I suppose, just as well because we usually have a lot in summer. Apparently, it's always been a tradition for people from Siberia or other cold northern areas to pop down to Almaty for a summer break and crash with whoever they can find. As Sveta pointed out, it's not as if it's like the seaside where you can rent out rooms. It's usually your relatives who turn up, or those of someone you know. Either way they don't expect to have to pay money. Sometimes people curse each other by saying 'May you have guests the whole summer'.
As I said, I like having guests, but we've got a big flat. I suppose if you only have a room and kitchen it could get a bit hectic. For me there's also the bonus of having a supply of captive recipe-testers. They can't really be too negative if they're crashing on your floor, can they?
What else is new? I've put up a couple more new cartoons. As you can see, I've been thinking about bears. There are also a few new links to other sites. I'm trying to encourage people to exchange links with me as it's mutually beneficial for our search engine rankings, but I'm being quite selective about who I ask. I don't want to list dodgy or irrelevant sites and of course, there's also the fact that people I write to will also be applying their own criteria and might not agree to an exchange with me. I'll probably have two or three new sites each update from now on.
The next update will be, as usual, in about two weeks time, but I probably won't have a lot of recipes then either, as I'll be off wandering for the next three or four weeks. I have some more guests coming who are keen birders and that's all the excuse I need. We'll be spending a lot of time camping high in the mountains and out in the desert, looking for regional ornithological specialities. There are lots of them.
So, I don't think I'll have any new recipes other than the half-written ones that are currently sitting on my desktop, but I might have some good photos and who knows what else. I might even get round to replacing the mug-shot on the front page with something better. My daughter is back from India on holiday and she said she would take a few pictures of me cooking, or messing about with food. We'll see.
New recipes
vegan tropical muesli
courgette and coconut curry
radish and cucumber salad
Hunza apricot custard
New cartoons
polar bears
the three bears
New links to other sites
Let's Talk About Vegetarianism! The Definition, the Reasons and the Benefits of vegetarianism. Tips on How to Start a Vegetarian Diet. Specially for new vegetarians or people who have the intention to be one.
The mushrooms are back. We have two seasons in Kazakhstan, steppe mushrooms in the spring and forest mushrooms in the autumn. At the moment there are a lot of St. George's mushrooms, only here they are called white steppe mushrooms. Tonight I made pasta with mushrooms and sour cream, using St. George's mushrooms. It was delicious. There are aslo field blewits around. They have pretty, violet-coloured stalks which, unfortunately, lose their colour on cooking. They are, nevertheless one of the better sorts of wild mushrooms and I used them to cook Thai mushroom soup. It's a new recipe and the link is in the list below.
I've been messing around with Thai recipes lately. My friend Tanya just returned from Thailand where she was learning about Thai cooking and we put some of our ideas together to come up with vegetarian Thai-style recipes.
New recipes
Thai-style pumpkin and coconut pudding
stir-fried noodles with tofu, peanuts
and radishes
lovers' salad
potato and leek salad
fried tofu with peanuts
Thai-style mushroom soup
pasta with pumpkin, sage and
walnuts
New cartoons
The tale of the wide-mouth frog
Silly monkey?
New links to other sites
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First a message for Brady in New York - Hi Brady, and thanks for writing. I got your email but when I went back to my inbox to send you a reply, your email was gone. Don't ask me how. These things happen in my house. Gremlins. I suspect the sauce is made using mint - either fresh or as mint sauce. It could also be coriander (cilantro) - but it's usually mint. Mint sauce already contains sugar and vinegar. If fresh mint is used, sugar and vinegar (or lemon juice) are usually added along with, perhaps, some chilli powder and other spices, chopped onion and maybe yoghurt. I could be totally wrong, of course. As for the song, I've never heard it. Best wishes, Ashy.
Things are looking up this week. The new toilet is in place, looking good and fully operational. I finally got the photos out of my camera, too. I put some up on a page which you can reach through the link below.
Recipe-wise I've been a bit conservative lately, except perhaps for the rice pudding with carrots. Last week we had some lovely spring T-shirt weather but it's been raining and snowing heavily over the last few days and I didn't get to the bazaar to stock up on fresh veg until today. I bought some lettuce and tomatoes and I made a nice, simple green salad to treat our withdrawal symptoms. I've written up the recipe for that plus the dressing. Such salads are very useful for brightening up stodgy winter dishes and also add a few extra vitamins. I know it's not winter any more but it looks like it from our window. It was minus 10 last night.
I've been using the time stuck indoors to do some serious spring cleaning. After the business with the toilet there was dust everywhere - even more than usual. I vacuumed the plants, my computer and all the books on the shelves in my study/office/den. I took bags of rubbish to the dump. Any day now I'll discover that I've thrown out something vitally important.
Now that spring is coming, Sveta and I have been discussing our travel options for the near future. We were planning to go south east in May - maybe to China - but that doesn't seem to be such a good idea now with the threat of SARS all over the region. We'll wait a while and see what happens. We were also thinking of a short visit to the Emirates but with the situation in Iraq, most of the Middle East is out too, for the moment. Maybe we could head north east to Siberia or west to Europe in summer. Soon, our daughter is coming from India for two months holiday, so we'll definitely be doing a bit of travelling with her around Kazakhstan and probably Khyrgyzstan, too. It's funny how you see more of your home country when you live outside it. I've seen more of Scotland from showing Sveta and Oxana round it than I ever did when I lived there. That's our rough plans anyway, but I'm sure something unforseen will pop up to provide some travel opportunities.
New recipes
macaroni cheese
Russian sorrel soup
rice pudding with carrots and cardamom
cauliflower cheese and potato
pie
mushroom plov
green salad
basic salad dressing
New photo pages
The first photos from my new digital
camera
I've had a few setbacks since the last update. A parcel from my brother arrived containing, among other things I left behind in Scotland, the instructions for my new digital camera. I thought everything would be sorted and I could put some pictures up this week but no chance. I followed the instalation instructions to the letter but my laptop still refuses to detect the camera. My desktop computer is too old, so I can't try using that. The pictures I took in Scotland will just have to stay in the camera until I figure out how to get them out. They're definitely in there. I can hear them rattling about when I shake the camera.
Our downstairs neighbour came knocking on the door last weekend, claiming we were flooding her. I checked the toilet and discovered that she was right. There was a leak in our thirty-year-old cistern and the water was dripping down behind the toilet. We hadn't noticed the small puddle on the floor, as the water was disappearing downstairs almost as fast as it gathered. As I write, Andrey, my plumber friend, is struggling with the new toilet, trying to get it to fit. I guess I'm not the only one having installation problems.
I've still managed to get quite a lot done and you can see the results below. I've put quite a few new things up, but I've also taken a few old things down. Anyone who noticed my essay section will, if they care to check again, see that it has now vanished without trace. I got a particularly nasty email during the week from some guy who made a valid point in noting that I had been a bit one-sided with the facts in an essay and suggested I change it a little. His point was reasonable enough, although his tone was a little aggressive. I felt his claim that I was 'amazingly ignorant' didn't add anything to his case from a logical point of view (that was a Harry Belafonte song, by the way - just 'From a logical point of view', not the rest of the sentence) but when he moved on to 'if being a vegetarian was good enough for Hitler it is no doubt good enough for you' I realised logic and reason weren't too high on the man's priority list.
Finding such a thing in my in-box wasn't pleasant. It's like sitting down to breakfast and finding a shit floating in your muesli. I always thought aggression would come from people who had difficulty expressing themselves in other ways but this guy is a member of staff at an undergraduate college. No doubt he is a very intelligent and articulate person, if a little prejudiced against vegetarians. I'm going on about this but the point is, in the long run, everything worked out for the better. I put a few draft essays up months ago with a view to tidying them up over time but I forgot all about them and never did. That's not very clever when you've set yourself up to rationally defend a point of view. If a recipe doesn't turn out right then there's as much chance that the blame lies with the cook as the writer. I don't mind if people don't think my cartoons, jokes and stories aren't very good, as that's a personal, subjective thing. Some people might like them, some not. They're free and people don't have to look at them if they don't want to. With argumentative essays, however, comes a certain presumed objectivity, which means if they are not very good, they're bad. There are hundreds of sites doing the 'rational arguments for vegetarianism' thing much better than I can, and this site isn't really about that. So the essay page has gone and I feel good about it. Did I write and thank Mr. Angry? Not bloody likely!
It seems a bit Orwelian, removing things and making it look as if they have never been there, but I want to achieve two things here. One is to be continually developing the site as I come up with new material, have new creative impulses and insights, receive suggestions or requests from readers and in response to any other stimuli which impact on me as the author. This, of course, means the site will always be, to a greater or lesser extent, in a state of flux. My second objective, however, is to ensure that visitors enjoy surfing in my direction. I want them to always find an attractive, coherent site with easy, seamless navigation and no dodgy links. It's the process/product dilemma, isn't it? My way of reconciling it is to leave this part of the site as it is. I won't change the information in the update diaries. I will remove links to things which no longer exist, but I will leave the text so that it is clear what once was. The diaries then, will contain a perfectly preserved archeological record of my site's development through the years and anyone who spots a link-that-was and wants to know more about where it lead, or why it was removed, can write to me and ask. How does that sound? I can live with it.
New recipes
Banana custard
Beetroot in red wine
Clapshot
Potatoes with walnut and spinach
stuffing
Kashmiri dum aloo
Sweetcorn and prunes salad
New cartoons
A bird's-eye view
New stories
School daze
New links to other sites
Veg
world - This is a nice site with lots of interesting stuff including,
quite coincidentally, considering my comments above, a 'Hitler
wasn't really a vegetarian' piece. As they say on their front page
- "For all things vegetarian and vegan. Veg World provides information
and advice for vegetarians and vegans everywhere."
I just got back from a trip to the UK. It was great when I got there, but getting there was hard. I usually travel via Amsterdam with KLM, my favourite airline. Even in economy class they give you sweets and hot facetowels and their vegetarian food is, as far as airline food goes, not bad at all. This time I went with British Airways. There were only about twenty people on the plane and we could sit anywere. After a few minutes, I realised I had chosen seat number thirteen. I'm not superstitious ("..but a black cat just crossed my trail."- Howling Wolf 195Something). Well.. not very, but I thought to myself, 'Don't be silly, Ashy. What serious nasty could possibly happen to you in row 13 that wouldn't hit everyone else on the plane too. I'll tell you what - the vegetarian breakfast was eggs. I complained and the attendant blamed it on the Kazakhs. 'They don't know the difference here.' he said. When I pointed out that KLM seemed to have found someone in Kazakhstan who new the difference, he remained extremely polite and said. 'I'm very sorry sir, but there really is fuck all I can do about it.' He didn't really. I'm exaggerating, but he might as well have said that. I had a dry bread roll for breakfast.
We landed in Azarbaijan to refuel and change crew and I had to return to row 12, as more people got on the plane, but the curse of row 13 followed me. The new crew had no record of my request for veggie food. Luckily, one of the attendants, Damir, a very helpful and pleasant young Frenchman, snatched a veggie meal from the crew allocation. I felt a little sorry for the crew member who missed dinner but I had been on the go for eight hours without a decent meal by that time, so I took it.
So, maybe I'm a little more superstitious about numbers now. Actually, I have always prefered some numbers over others and I take note of omens too. I also flash my cash at the new moon and, if I remember, cut my nails on Tuesdays and Fridays. I don't freak out about these things - I mean, if number 13 was the only seat on the bus I wouldn't worry, but given the choice I would choose, maybe 7. I discuss lucky numbers further in my cabbage and beer soup recipe, if your not already fed up with the subject.
When I was in the UK, I went to Scotland to see my family. It was only for a couple of days but it was an unexpected bonus and we all had a really good time. I bought a cheap (well, relatively cheap) digital camera so I'll be putting some more photos up on the site soon. It won't be tomorrow, though. I left the instructions at my brother's house. I managed to read the bit about how to get the pictures into the camera, but not the bit about how to get them out onto the computer. As soon as the booklet arrives in the post I'll get to work.
I went to see my long-time friend Simon, who is in the process of opening a pottery painting cafe on the outskirts of Glasgow. People can buy a piece of unglazed pottery - usually a little statue - and paint it themselves. Simon will glaze it and fire it in the kiln and they can pick it up later. That's a good idea isn't it? I'll create a link to the cafe web-site as soon as Simon gets it together to send me details.
Let's get back to what's new on my site. I've been tampering with the front page, as you can see, and I've added a search-this-site facility. We'll see how it goes. The the trouble with free things is they usually come with advertising attached and this is no exception. I don't mind as long as it doesn't negatively affect my readers surfing experience. I don't think it will but let me know if you don't like it. If enough people object, down it comes. I got a free counter too. I set it at 1000. I thought that looked better than 0.
While we're on the subject of freebies, I'd like to take the opportunity of saying a big 'thank you' to everyone that has helped keep my site free. That includes my web hosts, Topcities - they're great. Not a bit of hassle from them at all. There's also all the people who put free links on their pages to mine. That helps me get better rankings on search engines. There are also a lot of people offering very good free advice on web-building and even giving away graphics and stuff like the site search facility and counter. I've avoided the free graphics. Not because they aren't good. It's generally very good stuff on offer, but I think I'm not a bad artist and I like the home-spun, scissors-and-sticky-paper look that my site has.
The last but definitely not least - in fact, the most important - people to thank, are all you people who visit the site, especially those of you who write to me. That gives me the inspiration to keep bashing away.
Here's what's new this time. There's more in the pipe-line so come back soon.
New recipes
Paneer butter masala
Skirlie
Marinated beetroot
Cabbage and beer soup
New photo pages
India 2002-03 page 2
New cartoons
Beach barbecue
The feelgood factor
As you can see I've started a new page for 2003. I got back from India last week and I've been busy putting the site in order since then. I'd meant to do a lot more work during my travels. The opportunity was there - Internet cafes are all over India now and they aren't too expensive. The trouble was, there were so many other interesting things to do and when I did get it together to do some writing I got frustrated by the slow connections and the frequent power cuts.
I did do some cooking and writing in India. If you read my diary you would have noticed a few new recipes. Here they are again if you didn't.
Banana
porridge
Avocado
custard
Paneer and tomatoes
Paneer slices with pineapple and
tomato garlic sauce
I also picked up a stack of new ideas which I'm trying out now. You can see the first few results below.
A few people wrote while I was travelling. I'd like to thank to Keri Owen for suggesting a lot of new terms for my dictionary pages. Thanks also to Sylvan Korvus from Vegan in Vancouver for putting me right on the spelling of 'roux' - that's the squidgy flour and oil thing you use to start making a white sauce.
I've been busy with a lot of other things too since I got back. Paying bills for example. I went to the telephone station and payed my bill then a few hours after I got home they cut off my line for non-payment. These things happen. I've also been planning another trip - this time to the UK. Something came up at short notice so I'm heading off at the end of next week. I'll be in London for a few days then I'm off up to Scotland to see my mum and dad (and my wee brother). I'll only be away for ten days or so but who knows, I might find inspiration for some new recipes. It can happen anywhere - maybe I'll be inspired by the food on the plane. Or then again maybe not. That's stretching it a bit.
I'll try to get another update done before I leave. As I said, I've got loads of stuff to work with. My friend Anil at the Park View guest house in Bharatpur gave me some good cooking tips which I want to try out this week. Sveta took some photos of us doing our thing in Anil's kitchen but I won't have the photos up until I get back from the UK as it's cheaper to get them developed and scanned there.
New recipes
Paneer peas pilau
Lemon rice
Agra peas (with spinach and cashew nuts)
Coconut rice
New recipe links pages
Breakfasts
Sweets and desserts
New cartoons
Animal Krackers
New photo pages
India 2002-03