Dispatches from across the border

 

 We all seem to be very unconfined all of a sudden. Katie’s been away, Melinda made it to France, and we spent last weekend in Edinburgh (yes it has taken me a while to get round to writing this). It was lovely. Food was eaten, wine (and whisky) were drunk. It was warm enough to sit outside and drink Aperol Spritz during the day, which for Edinburgh in March is quite something – simultaneously lovely and slightly worrying.

A week on, the lateral flows remain negative. Touch wood this is how they will stay. Does anyone else find they still get twitchy after doing anything like this? It was nice to see the level of compliance with mask wearing in Scotland – I know it’s still a requirement there, but people seem to just get on with it, even with fairly minimal notices/announcements.

It’s just another thing that confirms Edinburgh as one of my favourite cities. I went there a lot as child (because it’s the easiest ‘proper’ city to access if you live in the north east) but it turns out I love it as an adult too.

Edinburgh, you beauty

Anyway, the main purpose of this post was supposed to be to share some pictures of our anniversary dinner, which was at Dean Banks at The Pompadour (for anyone who knows Edinburgh, it’s in the Caledonian Hotel). Dean is the man behind the Haar at Home food delivery (which I wrote about here) which was an early-ish lockdown sanity saver, so it felt like a good move to try his new (ish) venture. And it was very good. I said as it was an anniversary I wasn’t going to take lots of pictures, I was actually going to concentrate on talking to my husband, but they kept delivering food that demanded to be photographed, so… (and it's not like I haven't had the last two years of lockdown to talk to him...)

Oysters, plus dry ice!

Beef tartare

Scallop (you know it's posh when you only get one)

Halibut

(there were a couple of other courses but I did restrain myself)

I have done quite a lot of cooking since we got back – including an excursion into Japanese food  (I’d recommend Japaneasy by Tim Anderson)-, but I have failed to photograph it. Tonight, I am cooking from Olia Hercules book Mamushka, and will be making a suitable donation to Cook For Ukraine, in lieu of being able to be anything more useful. Some of what’s out there in the world is good, but some of it definitely isn’t. I guess we all just have to do what we can.