Looking Back and Best Meals in 2021

Looking back at 2021 is tough as it was filled with a never-ending lockdown in the United Kingdom and several losses.

Volunteering, sourdough baking, making restaurant meal kits and cooking helped fill the voids, but those were temporary fixes. Losing a loved one is always difficult.

2021 started with Britain officially leaving the European Union, and some crazy Americans storming the U.S. capitol 2 weeks before U.S. President Joe Biden took office.

We celebrated Biden’s inauguration from London with homemade hamburger buns, hamburgers, mac-n-cheese from a box and freshly baked apple pies.

Another Zoom cooking class from Africa to London.

On March 26^th, we celebrated another wedding anniversary in lockdown by cooking up a Caribbean feast at home. We made jerk chicken and Jamaican peas and rice. Hey, might as well try to “travel” somewhere, right?

The UK lockdown dragged on until April 12^th when pubs and restaurants with outdoor seating could FINALLY reopen – after being closed since mid-December 2020. On April 12^th, I also received my second Covid-19 vaccine that day, and we left London as fast as we could. We were itching for a break from the city, so we hired a car and headed to North Yorkshire for almost 2 weeks. Our holiday was filled with long walks and afternoon/early evening pub visits so long as we were fully bundled up in layers. It was pretty chilly out.

You don’t realize how much of your UK life revolves around the pub until you can’t go anymore. Not that we were total boozers, but we often went on long walks or bike rides on the weekends and then stopped at a local pub for a drink and food.

During our Yorkshire staycation, the locals at the Fox & Hounds Inn in the wee village of West Witton made us feel welcome.

At the end of April, we had a family emergency in the US and we flew back for nearly a month. It was a very sad and devastating time for us all.

Summer 2021

The summer of 2021 was filled with many summer BBQs with friends in London, fine dining experiences and as many English side trips we could fit in…because it was to be our last summer in London.

In June, we visited Stonehenge and, on the drive, back to London, we booked a tour at the Bombay Sapphire Distillery. Living in the UK for five years taught me to enjoy gin. Sitting in the sunshine enjoying our gin cocktails and eating a picnic box filled with local cheeses and charcuterie felt like perfection!

Having been deprived of restaurants for so many months, we decided to treat ourselves to a few Michelin-starred lunches and dinners.

We booked a belated birthday lunch at Marcus where we enjoyed 3 courses for £55. Highlights were English asparagus with roasted chicken fat mayonnaise, roasted salmon with Cornish new potatoes and a buttermilk panna cotta with cherries for dessert.

Then, we joined our Turkish friends at Murano, Chef Angela Harnett’s one-Michelin starred restaurant in Mayfair, for a fabulous five-course dinner. Highlights included crispy veal sweetbread with artichoke and fennel, risotto with summer truffles and a perfectly-cooked beef fillet with bone marrow and black garlic.

In July, we managed to squeeze in one last trip to Scotland to sightsee and visit our friends in the Scottish Highlands. On our first night, we stayed in a 19^th-century manor house that looked like a castle called the Kincraig Castle Hotel, just north of Inverness. Our lovely dinner included local scallops with pickled samphire and roast apple, Scottish lamb with watercress pesto and local cheeses for dessert. Delicious!

At the end of July, my husband moved back to the US to start his new job, I stayed on in London to wrap up our international move and to spend more time with friends. I was reluctant to leave. We had lived abroad for 11 years and now we were returning to the US. I felt like a foreigner in both places, but London had been my “home” for the last five years.

One special goodbye lunch was with my pastry girlfriend the elegant Hélène Darroze, a three-Michelin starred restaurant at The Connaught Hotel. There were too many dishes to remember, but highlights included my main of roasted Welsh lamb and the desserts. Dining here is a definitely an experience that you won’t forget!

TIP: Often, fine dining restaurants like the ones I’ve mentioned offer incredible lunch deals, which are usually a fraction of the cost of dinner. Also, look for special menus posted on restaurant’s websites or through reservations sites such as Opentable.

Looking back, I had a lot of delicious meals with good friends during my last few weeks in London. Whether we were having sushi, fancy cocktails or market hall lunches or country-side pub lunches, it all seemed special.

Moving back to the U.S.

At the end of August, I said a tearful goodbye to the good friends I stayed with my last week in London and joined my husband in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’ve written about NC before on the blog because that’s where my in-laws live. Since we’ve lived outside of the U.S. for 11 years, we decided that was probably time to live closer to family for a while.

So far, Charlotte seems like an alright place to live for a few years. The metropolitan population is around 2.6 million people, so it’s a small city for us. We’re having fun checking out the local breweries and restaurants. Two dining highlights from 2021 revolved around smoked meat. Since we’re in the South, we’re taking advantage of all the really good barbecue joints.

In October, we dined at Supperland, an old church that’s been converted to a barbecue restaurant, for hubby’s birthday. Highlights included grilled oysters with burnt ember butter that was poured out a ceramic teapot (outstanding!), charred broccoli with bone marrow butter and grilled lamb neck. We’ll definitely be dining here again.

That same weekend, we also had a friend visiting us from Austin, Texas, who had read about a popular barbecue place about 45 minutes outside of Charlotte. Jon G’s Barbecue, located in the rural town of Peachland, is only open on Saturdays and serves BBQ until it runs out. We arrived at 9:30 a.m. with our camping chairs and cooler in tow. This was one of the strangest, but also coolest things we had done all for the sake of good food.

Basically, everyone hangs out in an orderly line, talking to your neighbors and then you get to order your BBQ. We waited in line a little over 2 hours, but so far, this has been the best damned BBQ that I’ve ever had. We ordered a little bit of everything off the menu – pulled pork, smoked turkey breast, homemade sausages, mouthwatering brisket and side dishes. Even the “cowboy candy” – jalapeno slices cooked in simple syrup – was a delight!

Well, 2021 was an interesting year – filled with a lot of highs and lows due to the ongoing pandemic. I’m hoping that 2022 will be a little bit kinder to us and that we’ll continue to eat well. 

 

Follow

Read More

A Wee Scottish Holiday in the Highlands

Since losing my dad last month, I’ve been struggling with a lot of different emotions. I wasn’t feeling the Christmas spirit, but I didn’t want to spend the holidays by ourselves either.

Fortunately, our dear friends in Scotland invited us up to spend Christmas with them in the Scottish Highlands. Perhaps you remember my last visit here when I was hand-feeding reindeer in the Cairngorms National Park?

When you live far away from family, your friends become like your family. Living as an expat for the past eight years has taught me that you can always rely on your friends - your good friends. True friends don’t judge you. They give you a shoulder to cry on when you need it and give you a glass of wine (or two or even three) to cheer you up. That’s what I needed this Christmas season.

We spent three nights cooking, eating, drinking, sitting around a warm fireplace, taking long hikes and talking with our friends – surrounded by the rugged Scottish Highlands. It was a relaxing wee break after I had just worked six days in a row. And absolutely what I needed!

I’ll close this year with some photos from a beautiful part of Scotland. Here’s hoping that 2019 is a happier and healthier year than 2018 ended up being.

Happy New Year!

Joy

Scenic Hikes

Four shadows of four friends hiking on Christmas Day in Scotland.

Birdwatching

Scottish Farm Animals

Follow

Read More

Hand-Feeding Reindeers in Scotland

Even though I’m a city girl, I love putting on my hiking boots and getting out into the countryside!

When I visited my girlfriend up in the Scottish Highlands, she booked us a special treat – to visit UK’s only reindeer herd living in the wild. More than 800 years ago, reindeer used to roam the island, but now they only live high up in the Cairngorms National Park where the herd are permitted to graze on over 10,000 acres on the mountainsides. Back in 1952, a Swedish couple re-introduced reindeer to Scotland by bringing over several Swedish reindeer to establish the herd.

Today, the Cairgorm Reindeer Centre in Glenmore is home to about 150 lively reindeer, but only a handful of older ones live at the centre. A daily guided tour takes you on a short hike up and down rocky paths and wet grasslands to where the rest of the reindeer live in the park. You’ll definitely want to make sure you wear layers to stay warm and have a good pair of hiking boots. Sometimes, the tour may be cancelled due to inclement weather or if the reindeer are too far away.

Once on the hill, we were free to interact with the reindeers, approach them slowly, pet their soft furs and even feed them. The friendly staff passed around handfuls of animal feed to us, and then the reindeers rushed toward anyone who had food. At first, I felt a little hesitant because the reindeer do have big mouths and soft noses, but as soon as they nibble in your hands, the sensation is more like a tickle. All I could do was giggle!

In fact, did you know that reindeers only have tiny teeth along their bottom jaw, and no teeth along the top, just a bony palate? We learned that these small teeth aid the reindeer in grazing on the tufts of wild vegetation, such as heather and grasses, on the hillsides.

During the winter months, the reindeer’s diet consists of up to 70 percent of lichen – a type of “reindeer moss” that grows even in the coldest environments. This is also the time of the year when the reindeer’s coats turn to a brilliant white in order to blend into their snowy surroundings. In fact, we saw some of the reindeer’s coats already turning white at the end of our September visit. The white really stood out against the bright blue sky that we got so lucky with because the next day was grey and rainy. So typical of the U.K.

Don’t worry, if you’re not able to do a guided tour, you can visit a few of the older reindeer that live at the centre, which is open from mid-February to early January.

After playing with the reindeer for nearly two hours, we headed for lunch at the nearby Rothiemurchus Centre, home to the Druie Café and Estate Farm Shop.  Both are open every day except Christmas Day. The café offers breakfast and lunch featuring homemade soups, sandwiches, scones, shortbread and cakes. The farm shop sells locally roasted coffee, leaf teas, artisan cheeses, Highland beef and venison, fresh and smoked fish, produce and other locally-made crafts. Everything looked truly mouthwatering! If you like simple, home cooking and fresh ingredients, the Druie café is a great place to try.

This trip marked my third time in Scotland – a country whose beauty continues to impress me.

Would you like to visit these reindeer in Scotland too?

Rothiemurchus is a privately-owned Highland Estate within the national park, northeast of the River Spey, that includes a 13th-century island castle, wildlife and Rothiemurchus forest covers an area of about 30 square km. This castle is located in the middle of Loch an Eilein, which means “Loch of the Island” in Gaelic.

Read More

Hiking in the Scottish Highlands

I had no idea Scotland would be so beautiful! I was blown away by the lush green hills, fluffy sheep everywhere and the snow-capped mountains.

We kicked off 2015 with a long weekend trip to visit friends in the Highlands, a large region in northern Scotland that is dominated by many mountain ranges and forests. The Highlands also are one of the most sparsely populated areas in Europe. I would have to guess there are more sheep than humans here.

As our train chugged along the rail from Glasgow to Aviemore, I couldn’t help but stare out my window in amazement. How come no one ever told me Scotland was THIS stunning?

Every scene looked like it belonged on a postcard!

Our friends, a Scottish-British couple, swore we got lucky with the weather as the Highlands generally receives a lot of snow during the winter. We had little snow on the ground near the village of Carrbridge, but we did have abundant sunshine, which led to spectacular sunsets and sunrises. I could still sleep in and catch the sunrise at 8:45 a.m. each day.

Our weekend included two hikes through the large Cairngorms National Park which covers 4,500 sq km of snow-covered mountains, green forests and picturesque lochs. The hikes I did were fairly easy, lasting about 3 hours, and took me through an ancient Caledonian pine forest, sheep-grazing fields and past Carrbridge’s most famous landmark, the Old  Packhorse Bridge, from which the village is named. The bridge, built in 1717, is the oldest stone bridge in the Highlands.

Like I said, sheep were everywhere in the Highlands!

Meanwhile, my husband and our friend’s husband took a more adventurous 15km hike which took them to the knee-deep, snow-covered top of Meall Chuaich (map), a Scottish Munro, with a height over 3,000 feet (915 m). The national park is home to five of the United Kingdom’s six highest mountains, including 43 whose summits are considered Munros.

I’m so happy I decided not to go with them on that hike as I would have been climbing headfirst into bitter, winter winds and trudging through snow in my ill-equipped hiking boots. No thank you! Instead, my girlfriend and I had a relaxing hike through the nearby forest and ended our afternoon with glasses of wine on the porch at home.

After our busy Christmas trip through Spain and France, a chilled-out weekend in Scotland is just what I needed. The Highlands definitely impressed me and I hope to return to explore more of its scenic landscape. 

Have you been to Scotland? If so, please share your tips/advice in the comments below.

(I loved these bright blue doors we passed by in the village of Carrbridge.)

Read More