Pheasants North Fife

Road Killed Pheasant

 

Road kill pheasant, always distressing to see, it will be missed by his harem of hens though at this time of the year they will be quickly enchanted by other cocks. The mating imperative is strong just now, by the way how are you feeling? I digress, bred for shooting, pheasants are just about everywhere, not the brightest of birds compared to others, they frequently fall fowl (sorry) to road traffic. I see many victims and today I stopped and picked  this one up. My daughter could see a use for the exotic feathers and myself its value for eating and why not, free range, organic diet, what could be better unless you are vegetarian.
Traditionally game birds are hung for a time so they are more tender, the taste is stronger but in my experience not necessary. Coq au vin recipes will do you fine to get the best.

Fruit Blossom North Fife

In my garden we have many young fruit trees, this year after a long cold winter they appear to have been stimulated into prolific blossom with much promise. Just after taking these photos there was a deluge washing away much of the pollen. Few pollinating insects about but if by good fortune the fruit set the garden birds take them just before they are really ripe, as a consequence the birds do well, multiplying and each year more mouths to feed.

Sweet Cherry Blossom.

 

 

Comice Pear Blossom, prolific too and maybe, just maybe it will bear fruit. Comice pears are perhaps the best pears for eating raw. They have a great fruity aroma and flavor and a slightly finer, less grainy texture than other varieties.

Orpingtons  Cockerel who always comes along to see what's going on, do anything and he will be there.

I mentioned the deluge after taking the photos of the fruit trees. Well, Fife Council have spent many tens of thousands £s implanting drainage on the road to Newburgh, Sort of, a torrent of water passes by my home bypassing the drain points which are set higher than the water flow levels. Time for some competency.. Consequently the road below was flooded.

Tayview May 17th 2013 North Fife

 Tayview May 17th North Fife

Finally Spring has arrived, a wee bit late but now all growth is greening. It's even getting warmer. The whole season is about 3 weeks behind the norm, it's the middle of May and we're getting April showers of rain and hail, snow even on the high ground. Not that you need me to tell you about climate change.

Wild Garlic North Fife

Wild Garlic, what a treat, it grows in abundance in North Fife, is a fabulous early wild food that has exceptional culinary and medicinal benefits. Given its antibacterial, antibiotic, and antiseptic  properties, it makes sense to pack as much into your diet as you can. The headline health benefit of garlic is its effectiveness in reducing blood pressure and, hence, heart disease and the risk of stroke. Although all garlic has this property, wild garlic has the greatest effect on lowering blood pressure.
Emerging at this time are stinging nettles, brilliant, as a food, highly nutritious particularly for the lungs. No reason why it can't be added to a pesto.

A stand of wild garlic in a wood near Cupar North Fife.

Wild Garlic flowers and buds with a stem of ground elder which is a a good addition to salads also.


Homemade pesto sauce is very easy to make and is essentially a paste of greens, parmesan, garlic and nuts with some olive oil. If you don’t have any wild garlic you can easily just substitute in other greens like basil, rocket but you would have to add in some garlic. Nuts, Pine nuts are traditional but almost any will do, it's a matter of taste and availability  Roasting the nuts definitely make a difference to the flavour of the pesto so try not to miss this step.
Recipes abound, you may wish to try:-
100g freshly picked wild garlic leaves
50g shallot, spring onions or leeks
50g shelled walnuts
200 ml olive oil, sunflower oil or rapeseed oil
50-60g mature hard cheese, Parmesan or similar hard, mature cheese), finely grated
½ - 1 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon sugar.
Also:-

Easy homemade pesto recipe with wild garlic, Parmesan, cashew nuts and olive oil.
Ingredients

    100g (3½ oz) wild garlic
    100g (3½ oz) Parmesan cubes
    100g (3½oz) roasted cashew nuts.
    Salt
    Ground black pepper
    100ml ( ½ cup) extra virgin olive oil

Instructions

Heat a frying pan and add in the cashew nuts and dry roast them stirring frequently till they are golden and then transfer to a cool container immediately (or they will keep cooking on the hot frying pan).
Put wild garlic, parmesan, cashew nuts, salt and pepper into a food processor and whizz into a paste.
If you like your pesto chunky then whizz for a shorter time than you would if you want it smoother.
Transfer paste into a container and slowly drizzle in olive oil mixing all the time till pesto is saturated.
Adjust seasoning and serve.

Feel free to play around with the quantities of nuts, cheese and greens to suit your own taste. Alternatively you can roast the nuts in the oven at fan assisted 140C/ 160C/ 350F/ Gas 4 for about 15 mins. Pesto turns darker if left in contact with air. This is perfectly fine to eat. To try and avoid it turning dark you can cover the surface of the pesto with a layer of olive oil. I have frozen pesto for up to 3 months. Usually devoured before then so you can see one can never make too much.

Tonight I enjoyed some wild garlic pesto smeared onto Maultashen (meat, herb filled pasta) with a wild salad.

Now is the time, get out there and gather I'm sure you'll be delighted.

When harvesting today, along the way a pair of Mallards took interest probably in the expectation of food. Here they are, a beautiful Drake and Duck.

 

Easter Cake

Easter, a time to celebrate, full of tradition including eggs and bunnies.  Madeira Cake, marzipan  and covered with sugar paste decoration. I was delighted to see and enjoy this cake made by my daughter Hannah. It was a wonderful cake to eat, a pity it will all be gone quite soon.

Ash Coates Artist

Ash Coates

I first met Ash Coates two days before he vacated the studio flat at The Steeple, Newburgh North Fife.

Naturally I had a wee look.

Revealed was this series of acrylic paintings. First impressions are of enchantment, enchanted forest. There are many in the area. However Ash has now moved on to Edinbugh, thence to Berlin. The paintings speak for themselves. Magic as in mushrooms.

   

 

 

Ash in the Steeple arts studio Newbugh.

A portrait of Ash from his Blog Site

Moon Phases North Fife

Waxing Gibbous 9th Day Moon

The Moon last night above North Fife it exerts a huge influence on our world, daily changing, on the seas, plant-life, germination, insects, fishes, animals, us, in fact just about everything.
The Moon is the only natural satellite of the Earth and the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. It is the largest natural satellite of a planet in the Solar System relative to the size of its primary, having 27% the diameter and 60% the density of Earth, resulting in 1⁄81 its mass. The Moon is the second densest satellite after Io, a satellite of Jupiter.

 

Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash. (Oct. 27, 2004) - The moon turns red and orange during a total lunar eclipse. With the Earth passing between the sun and the moon, the only light hitting the full moon was from the home planet's sunrises and sunsets, resulting in the orange and red hue.

World religions have in their calendars Moon Days of various phases. Notably full and New. In Astrology phases of the moon are beginning to be more recognised as influencing factors. I was enlightened myself in the early 70s by this book:-

 Phases of the Moon: A Guide to Evolving Human Nature [Paperback]The primary author of this classic astrology text was Dorothy Wirgin, whose name is listed third on the second page of this book. Wirgin was teaching psychology at the U of Colorado in the late 1960's and developed the overall idea of 'Phases' with Marilyn Busteed, an astrology student of hers. Richard Tiffany was a writer who helped put this rather complex subject together in good form. I first met Wirgin and Busteed at an AFA workshop on their book in the early 1980's. Their book has always had a fairly low readership, as have others on the same subject, such as Martin Goldsmith's 'Moon Phases', which uses a similar mathematical division of the moon phases.
The original inspiration for most astrology texts on this subject is 'A Vision' by the great Irish poet and statesman, W.B. Yeats. Although Yeats method of determining one's personal moon phase is unknown ( most likely he used automatic writing or some form of divination), the method found in this book for determining a moon phase based on one's natal chart works well. The delineations of each of the 28 phases is excellent, with added depth from Dorothy Wirgin's psychological insight.
Yeats claimed that the phase of the moon that one was born into had a great influence on ones' life, and that they indicated the sort of incarnation that one was living. This book is a wonderful addition to any astrological library, and can add great depth of understanding to any natal chart interpretation. Only one word of caution; this is 'graduate-level' astrology, and may take some perseverance from those who are unused to astrological convention.
 Well worth the study and can still be bought on Amazon, second hand priced very reasonably.

You can Buy here. Phases of the Moon: A Guide to Evolving Human Nature
 

The original  inspiration was derived from :-

 

The System of W. B. Yeats’s A Vision

 Edmund Dulac’s woodcut of the Wheel of the 28 Phases of the Moon (1937 version; A Vision B 66) 

 

 

The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume XIII: A Vision is part of a fourteen-volume series under the general editorship of eminent Yeats scholar George Bornstein and formerly the late Richard J. Finneran and George Mills Harper. One of the strangest works of literary modernism, A Vision is Yeats's greatest occult work.

 

You can look inside and buy here. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats: A Vision: The Original 1925 Version: 13

The above phase of the Moon is the one at my time of birth
  .

Walsall West Midlands

Travellers Walsall. West Midlands, happy to be photographed with their van. They had a difficult time ostracised by main stream society yet happy in spite of. I wished them well then and still do so.

North Fife April 9th

At last the snow has gone due to a shift in the wind, South Westerlies bringing warmer Atlantic air. I imagine that in a few weeks accelerated growth of vegetation will show itself. All the farms are busy ploughing and drilling seed crops, much later than usual but hopefully all will catch up. Climate change, each year is never the same, the last 12 months have been extreme on a global scale. We are all affected one way or another.

North Fife April 8th 2013

East & West Lomond April 8th.

East Lomond April 8th, snow capped just like much of the Highlands this year, it's April for goodness sake and yet winter prevails. Further East sits Falkland with its Palace and estate which is the venue to the Big Tent Festival.

West Lomond, to the West sits Loch Leven on which there is a tiny island where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned. Boat trips can be taken to the very spot where one can wander and muse on the historical facts.

Later same day at Newburgh, heavy intermittent clouds over the river Tay.

Lowish water exposing the sandbanks by Mugdrum Island.

I just love the clouds too catching the sun from the west.

The Steeple Newburgh North Fife

The Steeple Newburgh North Fife, rises above the town, once the Town Hall and Corn Exchange now houses Wasp studios, residential flat, project space for use by the community. I hire one of the studios to process videos, photographs and print archive quality giclee prints. In fact any photographs found on this blog can be reproduced any size up to A2+.

Same day, April 4th down by the riverside, low water, stranding the boats and exposing the rich mud of the River Tay.