Food!

I never did much cooking before I came to Scotland. Now living by myself I have had to learn. This was the first week I was here and the first "major" cooking I did in my kitchen. Amy came over and we made pasta with pesto and feta.





Later that week Eileen and Fraser were coming to drop off my suitcase. I wanted to do something nice to thank them for going to all the trouble. Therefore Amy and I made cookies. I had bought measuring cups at Ikea. However, I did not realize until I started measuring out flour that they don't use cups in Europe. Instead they use a decaliter. They also measure their cooking ingredients in weights not volumes. We spent a long time trying to figure out how many decaliters are in a cup (I had no internet). We did a lot of the conversions on my cellphone. For being the cheapest cellphone available it has a lot of nice features. The converter is really useful.

The recipe for these ginger cookies came from Amy's mother. It required molassas. I looked for it in Tesco (the biggest grocery around here) and could not find it. Eventually I asked. The people in the store looked at me as if I were crazy. They asked all the other people that worked there. No one knew what I was talking about. Finally I called my mother who googled it for me. Apparently treacle is molassas! Once I said treacle everyone knew what I was talking about.






Here is what I eat a lot, rice, vegetables, tofu and curry sauce. Really quick and easy.


Another variation of it:
When I don't feel like cooking anything I tend to eat this, soup with tofu and vegetables added.



About a month ago I discovered a new vegetable. It is called a swede. It is wonderful! I have never seen in in Washington. It looks a bit like a huge turnip. You can peel it chop it up and boil it. Once cooked it turns a beautful shade of yellow.


It is really good for stirfrying.


The third thing Amy and I cooked was a greek rice dish (I can't remember the name). It is rice, spinich, carrots, lemon juice, a little oil and onions, if I remember correctly.

Another thing Amy and I have tried is cod with pesto. Also extremely easy.


After the fish we realized that food costs a ton here (not that we did not know this before hand)! So we decided to see what you could eat (other than a peanut butter sandwich) cheaply. It turns out baked potatos and baked beans are the only thing. Definitely not my favorite, but it is edible.



We also tried pitabread pizza. Well, Amy's was on pita. Mine was on regular bread as I didn't have any wheat-free pita.

And finally, salad from all the way back when lettuce was in season.

My building as seen from the edge of campus (right across the street).

The shops under my flat.


That is the door to my building, number 16. That white thing normally is not there.

This is directly to the right of El Falafel. Pretty isn't it. The construction workers start around 7 am every morning (including Sundays)! They are very noisy. All the construction workers are always hanging around outside. At least one is always sitting in front of our door smoking. They also walk through our building a lot. I cannot wait until they are gone.

My street. I got up early one morning and took these photos. They are a good example of life here; you never know what will happen! I am constantly being surprised by people showing up at my flat to fix things or inspect things or the fire alarm randomly going off. There is no quiet here! Anyway, this morning I got up and found my street blocked off and this huge crane lifting tons of cement right over my flat!!

Somehow I just wasn't expecting this first thing in the morning.

The blocked off street, looking across the street to campus.

A close up of the sign on my building. I don't know what the Darien House was.

The view facing campus from right outside my front door. Unfortunately the sun was in the way. One thing you can see though is the fence. It is cast-iron super annoying! The street is blocked off where the construction is. This means if you need to go that direction you have to walk up to the corner, cross and come all the way back on the other side of the street. I have been getting better at jumping the fence. I don't like to unless it is dry though (which it usually isn't).

Our hall. On the left is the front door, in front of you is my door. I am standing at the end of the hall. It is tiny.

Our incredibly loud buzzer. You can here when anyone in the building gets visitors. Also you can see here the lovely paint job. There are holes, bluetack marks and chips everywhere!

These switches are everywhere! Anything electrical has one, even the shower and the refrigerator. I think that they are ae really good way to save electricity in general. There are somethings though thatjust shouldn't have them! Mainly just the refrigerator.


Our kitchen. The white pitcher on the counter is a kettle. It is wonderful! You just pour in water, turn it on and you have boiling water in less than two minutes! I am definitely getting one when I get home.

We have a washer/dryer in our kitchen! It is wonderful to have one as otherwise washing clothes costs a fortune here. However the dryer does not work. Clothes come our very, very wet. To dry them they need to be in for over three hours. Even then they are not fully dried. Consequently I never use the dryer part.

We do not have a full sized refrigerator. It is fine for two people, too small for three though. However since Annie moved out Pauline and I have not gotten a new flatmate so it has been just fine.
Our table. This is the only communal space in the whole flat.

This was the first week. My cupboard is way more full now. It has always been way fuller than everyone elses. I hate not having edible food around!

My room. This is from the first week before I had bedding. The white rectangular thing on the wall is the heater. It does not work very well.
Again, right after I had moved in. The whole flat was filthy then. It was awful so I spent a week or so living out of my suitcase and cleaning.

The closet. It is huge. The entire room is huge actually. I thought I was going to end up with some little hole in the wall, not big enough to walk in. As it is I definitely have more space than I do at home.
This is the main problem. This is my window. Those are workmen outside it. Until a week ago they were out there hammering at 7 am everyday and were there throughout all the daylight hours. Now they are working more inside. It was awful! I kept my curtains closed when they were out there but as the lighting in my room is so poor it meant that it was semi dark all day. Luckily it is a bit better now.

The molding in the currently unoccupied bedroom.

The view of the other side of the street from that bedroom.
See how dirty the window is? Everything was that dirty when we got here.

This is Bristo Square which is the part of campus right across the street from my flat. It is really pretty although usually full of skateboarders.

Here is part of the new Informatics Forum. I don't get to use it. It is only for research and they only let us undergrads in for three hours a day. Undergrads don't get to do any research here. It is an awfully pretty building.

Day 19 - In which Amy and I search for our dorms and almost have to sleep on the floor

For the next couple days Amy and I stayed at the dorms again. Here is the dorm I was in. It is the same one as before.


We explored the city a bit and Amy attended all of her Arcadia stuff. On the third day, once we both knew which flats we had gotten, we decided to go find them. We couldn't go in but we at least wanted to know where they were. Amy's was a very short walk. Here is the outside of her building:


In front of the door to her building:


After seeing her building we tried to find mine. The street was only about a ten minute walk away. We couldn't find number 16 though. Part of the problem was that unlike home where numbers alternate (all the odds are on one side and all the evens on the other) the numbers here grow up one side of the street and then wrap around to the other. This means you have 1-10 on one side and 11-20 on the other. Even being confused we still found where we thought it should be (and we were not too far off). Unfortunately where we thought it should be looked like this:

I was really, really hoping that was not it.

All the information we had been getting from the university was very confused. First it sounded as though I would not have a flat. If worst came to worst I figured I could always sleep on Amy's floor until I found something. Then while staying in the dorms it looked like Amy was not going to be able to book the last night. So, she was going to sleep on my floor. There were a couple of other times we were planning on sleeping on each others' floors too. We never ended up having to which was nice.