Acute Nostalgia

It's amazing what can trigger attacks of nostalgia.

Last night, after dividing and carting off the remaining booze from the old apartment and dealing with a few other odds and ends (such as watching SotFW and a buddy doing their incompetent best to get the washer/dryer unit out of the apartment without laughing aloud) Maman, Sis, the Engineer, the Viking and I went to a nearby Irish-theme-pub for supper. The place is really quite good and is run by an actual Irish person, so it rates rather above some other places I could name, but no matter.

I ordered the seafood pie -- essentially a fish stew with a topping of puff pastry. As fish stew, it's perfectly fine; I've eaten it before and enjoyed it. I have no idea what it was about the fish stew, or the pastry, which tripped the switch, but suddenly fish stew was insufficient and I longed for the seafood pancake (cr�pe) from the Russell Hotel on The Scores in St Andrews.

The contents of the seafood pancake were variable, depending on the season and what was available. Usually there were prawns and mussels in it. Sometimes in the summer there was crab; often in the winter there was haddock or another white fish. The seafood was mixed with a cream sauce (not too much sauce, I hasten to point out -- just enought to hold things together), wrapped in the pancake, topped with a bit more sauce and baked until hot and just browned. There was always some kind of side salad. It was very simple, but good and nourishing and comforting. I haven't thought about it in years, now, but last night there it was.

Dear Tully has proposed 'Thegns and Thralls' for the T's of the October event, which is both clever and perfect and makes me feel silly for not thinking of it myself.

The Viking took the style quiz from the other day and is also druidic, which surprised neither of us. (We have an Ent/Entwife sort of relationship -- he is about trees and wild places, I am about gardens). He did say however that I always reminded him more of a mulberry tree than an oak. I haven't asked how precisely I remind him of a mulberry. I think I'm afraid to know.

verso - recto