Now we’re cooking

Today’s guest picture shows a fine new staircase at the Tate Britain art gallery photographed by my sister Mary

The temperature rose today, the wind was calm and so Mrs Tootlepedal and I resolved to go for a pedal.  First though there was singing in the church choir to be done by Mrs Tootlepedal and a lamb tagine to be prepared for the slow cooker by me.

This took both of us some time and involved an ultimately successful hunt by one of us for a shop with a packet of dried apricots in stock.

Then there was the obligatory cup or two of coffee to be drunk and finally we were ready to go.  At that moment, the rain began to fall and Mrs Tootlepedal retired upstairs to spend a happy time pedalling away on the bike to nowhere while watching an episode of the West Wing and I went off to play with my photo editor.

Even before the rain started, it had been gloomy and it really wasn’t a day when taking photographs was a productive occupation so I didn’t take any.  Well, I did take one or two.  I liked this semi folded goldfinch clinging on to a feeder hole with no perch.

Anything in the air was difficult.

It didn’t seem that it would be much fun to be walking in the woods getting your camera equipment wet so I didn’t do that either.

The photo editor is going to be an endless source of fun as it has many, many processes which one can use to make the most of a picture.  The trouble is that you have so many possibilities that it is hard to pick out the one that is the best.  I had a lot of fun with Hollows Tower without coming anywhere near learning the optimum settings.

I started from here..

…went through this….

 

…and finished with this.

…and could have made a thousand different versions, each one a tiny bit different.   After looking at them for quite some time my only thought was that you can really see  where the chimney goes up the end wall.

It was an ideal occupation for a wet afternoon, pointless but entertaining.

I did one bit of useful work when Mike Tinker appeared clutching a memory stick in his hand which contained a Power Point presentation from a railway enthusiast who will be talking about the Waverley Line at next week’s Patrons’ Lunch at the Buccleuch Centre.  We made sure that it would load correctly onto my laptop and then project correctly via the Archive Group’s digital projector.  All seemed well and I am looking forward to hearing the talk.

The lamb tagine turned out very well.  I was looking at a recipe for this simple dish on a website and found that it had no less than 22 ingredients.  Mine had a lot less than that but still had a rich variety of flavours in it.  I can see that the slow cooker will be joining the bread maker as an indispensable part of our culinary life.   We are keen to eat our apples before they start to rot so the lamb was followed by an apple crumble.

Not a good day for walking, cycling or photography but a very good day for eating.

I caught a rather blurred flying chaffinch of the day just as the rain started.