Kinross

[March 26 - 28]

When my mother was the fair age of 23 or so, she lived in Germany working on an army base for a year. This allowed her to travel Europe and meet many new friends. One of those friends is Marj, who she still keeps in touch with and whose family has visited us and who we have visited too. So... Marj has a nice cousin Irene who had us over for three nights in the town of Kinross.



Irene is a flute teacher in several district schools and her husband Richard is a brewer at Inveralmond Brewery. They have 3 girls, Sarah (in Australia), Lucy (professional ballet school), and Kirsty (high school). We had a great time meeting them and playing with their two cats, simply named Black and Grey.

Our first night they treated us to a salmon dinner, but the next night we got to experience the ultimate in Scottish cuisine: Haggis! "Don't ask what it's made of," they warned. But we learned that it is sheeps intestine and the like. Really tasted good, like meat loaf but better. You always serve it with tatties and neeps (mashed potatoes and turnips).



Their accents were thick here, and they were probably equally amused with ours. We learned the words "toff" (a prententious person) and "chauncer" (used to describe the cat sometimes but what does it mean?). Also, we learned that "tea" means drinking tea but it also means "dinner" so when you come over for "tea" you are really coming over for dinner. Kind of confusing at first.

One of the highlights of Kinross is Loch Leven, with Loch meaning Lake in Scottish speak. In the middle of this loch is an old castle where Mary Queen of Scots was held. It was absolutely freezing so we ran around the area as quicly as possible. Marj's daughter Meg joined us and I had fun seeing her after 10 years. Here we are below all bundled up.



The weather during the rest of our visit was quite nasty so we stayed bundled up inside near the Aga, a huge gas range set at a constant temperature to cook and heat parts of the cold castle-like house. It was impossible to heat the whole huge house so we had to pick the warm spots for hanging out.

One afternoon I accompanied Irene as she played a lovely Handel flute piece. In the evening, we sampled Richard's brewed beers and enjoyed chatting with Lucy and Kirsty about their busy lives.

Our last night, we used the Aga to cook a big meal as a thank you present. It was fun to cook again and the dishes turned out great, considering that we were doing the recipes by memory. The next day we rushed off to catch the bus back into Edinburgh, happy to have spent a nice Easter weekend in Kinross with the Barnes family.