Scottish Vegan Homemaker

Well, I hope you’re not, because I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a wee bit longer, because…  Oh, hang on a wee minute.  It’s just that I promised Tom…

 I told the wee fellow that I’d put a pic of him right at the top of my next post.  He wasn’t included in the last one, you see…  An oversight on my part, for which I’ve felt thoroughly ashamed…

And that reminds me…  I’ve been meaning to mention this before…  You know I’m Scottish, right?  Well, there’s an enormous clue in the name of my blog and, if you’ve ever spoken to me, there’s an equally enormous clue in my accent.  However, I’ve never spoken what we call ‘broad Scots’.

When my wee sister, Sylvia, and I were at primary school, we were quite unusual in that we didn’t use expressions such as ‘Ah dinnae ken’ (when asked something we don’t know); ‘Ah hivnae goat wan’ (in reply to ‘Where’s your hankie?’); ‘Whit did ye dae that fur?’ (when wondering about the reason for another person’s actions).  We said ‘marbles’ not ‘bools’ and ‘April Fool’ rather than ‘Huntie Gowk’.  And how would you describe this? (Careful what you say now!  It’s me!)

Well, the people in our street would have said it was a ‘photie uv a wee lassie’ or (and I hope I’m not being too immodest here?) if they really, really liked it, ‘an awfie braw photie uv a bonnie wee lassie’.  (Translation:  a really nice photograph of a pretty little girl.)

Some Scots words, however, were a natural part of our vocabulary; indeed, for many years I didn’t know some of them were Scottish.  A very small river is, of course, a burn. This is the burn that we walk beside for much of our daily walks.  At the end, I say to Daisy, ‘Daisy, wash your feet!’ and she goes into the water.  (She gets much muddier than Bob…)

 If I get a splinter of wood in my little finger, I’ll say I’ve got ‘a skelf in my pinkie’.  I’ll say that someone with a vacant look on his face and his mouth hanging open ‘looks glaikit’ and I’ll describe a cold, damp miserable day as ‘dreich’. 

But the Scots word I use most is ‘wee’.  And I use it a lot!  My spell check doesn’t recognise it as a word.  Tsk!  I use it affectionately, as in referring to Tom, who loves his food and has the weight to prove it, as ‘my wee fellow’. 

I use it as a modifier as in ‘a wee minute’ (a moment); ‘quite a wee while’ (a long time) and ‘a wee bit more’.  And I use to it show sympathy, as in ‘Wee soul!!!’  The family are used to me exclaiming this as we watch films and programmes on television.  In fact, if it’s a film the offspring have seen before, they can tell when I’ll first express sympathy in this way, and, if I glance across at them, I’ll see them grinning affectionately.  I believe a person who elicits this response is called ‘a woob’.  The other evening we were all at home and so we took the chance to see (500) Days of Summer which The Offspring had been waiting to watch with us for a while.and, as expected, I was ‘wee-souling’ all the way through.  I mean, how much of a woob was poor Joseph Gordon-Levitt in that film?  Wee soul…

Of course, ‘wee’ is used by non-Scots, but, as I explain to my pupils when they’re analysing poems and texts, when an unusual word is used, it’s done for effect.  When Frank Sinatra sang ‘In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning’ it was for emotive effect. 

And when, in one of my favourite books ever, Jane of Lantern Hill, by L. M. Montgomery,

one of the characters says to the eponymous Jane, ‘Don’t you think you’re being just a wee bit ridiculous, darling?’ the use of ‘wee’ emphasises her patronising tone and makes the reader bristle in Jane’s defence.

Anyway, where was I?  Tom…  Scottish words…  Oh, yes!  I was saying you’d have to wait a wee while!  For the revamp I mean!  You see, Jenny and I are going to swap bedrooms! She has a square room with a big window at the back of the house and John and I have a colm-ceilinged room with a dormer window at the front.  I’m excited!  So’s she!  So’s John!

Long before I was vegan (but not long before I was Scottish!) I was a bit of a homemaker.  When Sylvia and I were wee girls we had a shed in the garden as a playhouse and I loved fixing it up.  Anything with a cover over it was a potential house for me.  In the long, Church of Scotland, sermons of my youth, while waiting for the minister to finish, I would sit and imagine how I’d turn the church into a house (little knowing that this would, indeed, happen to many church buildings later). 

(Now I would have put a photograph here, of a converted church building a couple of towns away from here, but it would have meant putting off posting this up and I didn’t want you to wait any longer.  Right decision?  I hope so…)

So the thought of having a new room to fix up is very exciting!  The walls are already purple, though at present they’re covered in posters and pictures.  So that will go nicely with the ‘new’ bedding I bought from a car boot sale for £2 (about three dollars?)

and with the sheets and pillow cases I dyed navy.  This is rather a dark photograph, but it shows the bedding, Susie snoozing on my pillow and the comb ceiling, so I think it serves the purpose…

So…  Sorry… I hope you’ll think it was worth the wait when you eventually see our new bedroom!

You know I like to have a bit of a theme to my blog posts and the theme of this one is…..  Wait for it…..  Waiting!!!  (See how I did that?)

So…  Books that feature waiting…  Well, one I read a year and a half ago, and loved so much I want to read it over and over, was Marianna, by Monica Dickens, written, amazingly, when she was only twenty-four!!!Mary has fled to the seclusion of her holiday cottage in the country while her husband is at sea during the Second World War.  Switching on the radio, to listen to the news, she hears that his ship has hit a mine and has sunk with several lives lost.  The next of kin have been advised…  But if a telegram has been sent to her, it would have gone to their London home, and with her telephone line down because of a storm which is still raging, Mary has no way of finding out if he is dead or alive.  She must wait till the morning, when she’ll be able to walk to the post office/telephone exchange in the village…

Most of the book takes the form of a flashback of her life: her childhood; her holidays in the large, family home; her infatuation with her cousin; her work in France; her love for Sam…

In the final chapter, she walks, after a sleepless night, into the village, to find out if Sam is still alive or not…

What?  No, of course I’m not telling you!  Sheesh!  You’ll just have to wait till you’ve read it!  You’ll love it!!!  And why Marianna, when her name’s Mary?  Well, you’ll remember Tennyson’s poem, about Marianna in the Moated Grange?

 She only said, ‘My life is dreary

He cometh not,’ she said;

She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,

I would that I were dead.’

Well, Marianna was waiting, too…  And this was the poem that Maud tried to teach young Albert, the page, in A Damsel in Distress by the inimitable P.G. Wodehouse.I couldn’t wait for The Offspring to be old enough for me to read P.G. Wodehouse to them and this was the book I started with.  They LOVED it!  Maud is waiting at the family’s ancestral pile for the unsuitable young man she’s fallen in love with to get in touch with her.  George, however, a young American songwriter, who was able to give her assistance in avoiding her overbearing brother in London, has fallen in love with her and he comes down to the castle to try to further their acquaintance. Maud is miserable and heart-sore and likens herself to Marianna, hence her love of Tennyson’s poem, which is, unfortunately, murdered by the page’s strangled vowels!  A perfect Wodehousian treat!

And so, seamlessly, on to Recipe Corner, with a meal that requires a bit of hanging about waiting.  It’s pancakes, known in this family as ‘Punks’.  We love Punks!

When I was a wee girl, we used to visit certain friends of my parents for afternoon tea and the table was always groaning with goodies.  ‘Aunt’ Lizzie would say, ‘I had a wee boy visiting the other day and he managed six pancakes.  D’you think you could manage more than that?’  What a delightful challenge for a child!  (And yes, I could!)  I should mention that these were wee pancakes, also known as ‘drop scones’.  And, of course, they were made with eggs and cows’ milk.  Here’s my vegan version. 

Penny’s Punks (serves four punk-loving vegans who either don’t have to worry about their weight or who are trying not to think about that for a wee while…)

300g self-raising flour

About ¼ teaspoon of salt

150g sugar

4½ teaspoons egg replacer

Soya milk

Now, I’m going to leave the amount of soya milk you add up to you.  Play it by ear!  Judge it for yourself!  It really depends how thick you want them.  Just make sure you have at least a litre in the house though…

Whisk the lot together until all blended and smooth.  You can use a liquidiser if you like.  Or a food processor.   Or a blender.  Whatever gets the job done…

Pour a ladleful into a lightly oiled frying pan and swirl it to cover the bottom.  Cook at a medium heat and wait until the bubbles rise to the surface and burst. 

 Flip the punk over.  Not in the air!  Sakes!  Just carefully with a ‘fish’ slice. 

Let the other side get nice and light brown. 

Fold it tenderly in a thick dishtowel to keep it warm and then do the same with the rest of the mixture.

While this is going on, I like to ‘fry’ some mushrooms in water and stockuntil the stock has evaporated and the mushrooms are nicely cooked.

This can be cooking away on another ring…

I make the first four punks quite thick and we have them with baked beans and mushrooms and possibly some Redwood’s Rashers on top.  We didn’t have any rashers when I took this photo…  But it was still VERY tasty!I then add more milk to make the mixture thinner and so the remaining punks are more like crepes.  I used to always have my second punk with maple syrup until I followed Jenny’s example and had it with sugar and lemon juice…  Oh, my!  I’ll never have them with maple syrup again!  Mmmmmm……

I’ll admit it’s a bit tedious, having to wait for eight punks to form bubbles and then for the bubbles to burst.  I usually lean on the worktop reading a book, while waiting…

Some of my kind readers have been sweet enough to say they look forward to my blog posts.  Well, I’ll tell you why they’ve had to wait so long for this one.  Last month I started a new course with the Open University.  It’s called Worlds of English and, funnily enough, not long after I’d written the bit about using Scots words, in preparation for this blog post, the topic came up at my first tutorial.  Anyway, I’ve been writing an essay.  Not much of an excuse I know…  But I’ll be writing one a month for the next six months.  Just so you know…

And, as a wee extra for the ‘waiting theme’, here’s Bobby.  He’s heard the postie coming along the street and is just waiting for him to reach our door, when he will tell that man what he thinks of him!  As you can see, Daisy doesn’t take guarding duties NEARLY as seriously as he does…

Now, here’s a wee test.  The wonderful Laurie, who blogs in Mehitable Days, sometimes has an alphabet theme in her posts.  Emulating her, I thought I’d just ask if you can see how often, in this post, I’ve used the word ‘wait’ in any of its forms?

Today’s title: So tired, tired of waiting by The Kinks

Reading at the moment: Good Wives? by Margaret Forster, a fascinating look at the wives of four famous men; The Iron Hand of Mars by Lindsey Davis, fourth in a series about Marcus Didius Falco, a detective in ancient Rome – great fun!; The New House by Lettice Cooper, a story of an overbearing mother and her gentle, downtrodden daughter when they move from the family home to a smaller house.  I have to read other, cheerier things in between stints with this one, but it’s beautifully written and I care about the characters.  It’s one of my Christmas Persephones; Thanks for the Memories by Cecilia Aherne, an attempt to get one of my pupils to read something and therefore improve her vocabulary – I think this is the first book she’s ever enjoyed! – I’m reading along with her…; study materials for my course.