I've been meaning to make my own mustard condiment for years, but never got around to it for one reason or another. If I had realised how easy it is to get a really tasty result, I would have done it years ago, instead of prevaricating. The only (mildly) difficult part is sourcing the mustard seed. You can buy one of three mustard seed types: white/yellow, brown and black. The three seed types are increasingly hot in that order. If you live in a city you probably have access to a...
Limbing produces a lot of relatively small branches, which although useful firewood, is time consuming and difficult to handle. The problem is that the branches need to be held in place while I cut them with the chainsaw. As the branches are thin, I might cut through them in a second or two. I then need to put aside the chainsaw, re-position the branch, secure the branch in place, pick-up the saw, cut the next section of branch, re-position the branch... Well, you get the idea. This...
The long period of sunny weather we have experienced in the Highlands this year, starting in April, seems to have increased the number of birds striking the house windows. The angle of the light hitting the windows, the light intensity and how bright it is in the room, all have an effect on how transparent the windows look. The birds, presumably, don't see the glass and believe they can fly-through the gap. I was dismayed when a juvenile song thrush (Turdus philomelos) struck...
This is an article on how to make sauerkraut at home. I'm not going to give you a precise recipe with measurements down to the gram, nor will I set out the exact equipment you should use. Instead, I will describe the process and the proportions of ingredients I use when making fermented cabbage. Armed with an understanding of the concepts, it is easier to adapt to using different quantities of cabbage, introducing new ingredients or dealing with changing ambient...
I have only been on Mastodon for about 10 days, but I have found the concepts easy to understand because I am familiar with Twitter. The familiarity is enhanced because the standard Mastodon web interface looks very much like TweetDeck. There were however some deficiencies in the web interface which were niggling me.
The main problem was the column widths for each "activity" (Editor,...
This is an account of my five-day mission to explore to the far extremeties of The Fediverse. Although I am a complete newbie to The Federation and The Fediverse I hope this very naivety has some value. If the free social network is to grow and prosper it needs to attract people who, like me, don't completely understand it.
I've been considering using some kind of social network in addition to this blog...
This is the first in a series of posts showing my ideal wood processing set up. We use a wood-burning stove for about three-quarters of the year, only leaving it idle during the summer months. To supply the stove requires spending a lot of my spare time processing wood. Processing wood includes all the jobs from cutting down trees to putting the logs in the stove. In recent winters we have had some severe storms which created a lot of windblown trees, adding to the requirement...
Delivery charges for goods purchased online to addresses in the Highlands and Islands has been a big problem for years. There are two issues which contribute to the problem.
The first issue is that sellers have been glib in the way they describe and promote their delivery charges. Often sellers would describe their goods as having "free UK delivery" or "free delivery on all orders" and it wasn't until you got three-quarters of the way through the purchase...
Eighteen years into the 21st century and the class system is still alive and well, in the UK. The apex of that class system seems to be as popular as ever and we still have an unelected parliamentary second chamber where our "representatives" get called Baron or Baroness, except for the ones called Bishop. I've always liked to believe that the people in Scotland are more...
This is a great wee sketch, which pokes fun at the constant changes in advice for healthy eating over the decades. The illogicality, and the humour, becomes obvious because 35 years of advice is squeezed into less than five minutes.
The video struck a chord with me as I discovered it about the same time as I realised the cooked breakfasts I got every morning as a child probably was the healthy option after all.