Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary
fuel that adventure
We’ve reached the end of the Alphabet Photography Project by Charly over at PODcast. What a hoot it’s been! I’ve really enjoyed sharing photos and stories which otherwise might never had been expressed and I’ve loved visiting a whole host of new-to-me blogs and commenting on their photos too. You guys are awesome! A big …
It’s been an incredibly busy week. I’ve had quite a few freelance deadlines to meet and I’ve been feeling rather uninspired when it came to last week’s Alphabet Photo Challenge hosted by Charly over at PODcast. It was the letter Y. Yellow? Yell (my photo was nearly the photo of the haunted Wind House on …
χάρτης khartēs – Greek for map I love maps, especially old maps. There’s something romantic and adventurous about them, not to mention the fact some of them can be beautiful works of art, like the one pictured above. Several years (2011 to be precise) ago I had a notion to make an old fashioned rag rug …
Common periwinkles: aka winkles, buckies, willicks or wilks Last week I went on a grand foodie adventure around my island home, following The Shetland Food Trail and researching articles for the 60 North magazine and the Taste of Shetland website which I am a regular contributor to. I spent the weekdays traveling on my own …
a place of honour, glory, or happiness : heaven I spent nearly three hours in Valhalla earlier this week. True story. This week I have been travelling the length and breadth of my island home seeking out foodie stories and photographs for a local magazine piece I am writing. I found myself drinking coffee and …
It took me awhile to come up with a photograph for this week’s Alphabet Photography Project by Charly over at PodCast. This week the letter is U. My photo was nearly “unusual” a photograph I snapped on my iPhone the other day while leaving a taster session at Hay’s Dock cafe restaurant for their special Shetland …
How quickly it flies! That’s the youngest gone off to big school now. The summer holidays flew by far too quickly and the first day of school suddenly came around. We were late. Great way to start, eh?
This photograph was taken last night by my eldest son. I had been invited to attend the launch of the third in a series of Shetland murder mysteries by my friend and neighbour Marsali Tayor. I recall with great fondness sitting with the manuscript of the first novel, sticky notes and pen at hand as I …
When we want a new bowl we head to the shop and buy one. If it breaks, we simply replace it. Just imagine if we had to do what the Vikings living in Shetland had to do – carve a new bowl out of the rocks! Shetland is home to the largest steatite (soapstone) quarry …
Puffins posing for the camera at Sumburgh Head, Shetland, this spring. Atlantic puffins spend most of their lives at sea, forming colonies on the rocky cliffs here in Shetland to breed in the spring and summer. They are dubbed the “sea parrot” because of their colourful beaks but did you know their beaks fade to …
Home (n): 1 a: the place where one lives; the fixed residence of a family or household. Where is home? Home is where the heart is, where you hang your hat, where you happen to be living at that particular time.
This week for PODcast’s Alphabet Photography Project M is for Marmoset.
Who says you can’t play with your food? This week’s Alphabet Photo Challenge by PODcast was a little bit tricky. The letter K… possibilities for me included kiss, kittens, Kergord, kale…. and in a moment of inspiration: kohlrabi! Sitting there in my near empty post-holiday fridge (stocked only by the contents of the vegetable box we’d …
Last May, because of some confusion while moving email addresses, I ended up with three days to write a piece for the summer issue of 60 North, Promote Shetland’s quarterly magazine. For this article I needed a foodie hiking photo or two, so when, on Day 2, the sun shone brightly and warmly down on …
This week, for PODcast’s Alphabet Photography Challenge I is for Iron Age. The youngest and I recently went on a little adventure to the south mainland to drop off our elderly neighbour at the airport and on the way home we went puffin spotting at the Sumburgh Head RSPB Nature Reserve. We were in luck …
Two years ago I started volunteering with the Royal National Lifeboat Institute at Britain’s most northerly lifeboat station, on the little rocky outpost in the North Sea that I call home. I was asked if I would like to be their Press Officer as their current one, at the time, was standing down. They knew …
This time last week I was all packed and ready for my grand trip to London to attend BritMums Live, my very first blogging event. That fantastic adventure will be a separate blog post, but I wanted to share this photograph with PODCast’s Alphabet Project. I stayed with a dear friend of mine while in …
The seafood industry in Shetland is currently worth £300 million a year to the islands and surpasses the value of the oil, gas, agriculture, tourism, and creative industries combined. Fishing has supported generation after generation of Shetlander, protecting our rural communities and remaining an integral part of our island lives.
Schools in rural Shetland are under threat of closure. In a bid to save money centralise everything into Lerwick, primary and secondary schools throughout the islands are fighting fiercely to keep the hearts of their communities open.
I’m a naturally curious nosy person and I love old things. Any time I get a chance to have a good peek around an old derelict building I will. My imagination runs riot; I can picture the people who used to walk the hallways, sitting in the rooms drinking their cups of tea reading the …
