We all start The New Year with firm resolutions, projects, schedules and dreams. I usually have my lot and I pencil my diary with deadlines, lists of planned actions and a few questions marks. Besides that, I always make wise resolutions regarding my diet…
After having finished all the chocolates and biscuits I was flooded with at Christmas, I usually decide to stick to soups, steamed vegetables and lean meat and fish. It generally lasts a week or two as I capitulate in the face of my stubborn scale which refuses to take a step back and release me from a few pounds. When you are carved in stone(s), going on a diet becomes wishful shrinking! So better concentrate on more rewarding matters.
This is why I have decided NOT to make any good resolutions in 2014 (it does not mean I have decided to take bad ones!). I will just take a day at a time and make the most of it. But this does not exclude new ideas and projects. I have not completed my sensory trail yet. I will share my new (ad)ventures with you along the weeks… And I will add the French version. Sorry my compatriots and my Belgian, Swiss and French Canadian friends for not having been bilingual from the beginning.
I just need a few extra days to unwind after a very busy 2013 year. There is no better place for me to gather my spirits than my Bonnie Island. So after entering The New Year in the best way, ie in the company of dear friends, I savour the peace of Islay. Peace may not be the right word when the island is constantly swept by gales, when high tides leave heaps of seaweed on the roads, when the skies open and pour a deluge of rain and hailstones.
But how could one be tired of watching mighty waves crash against the rocks in a flurry of froth?
So, let me take invigorating walks in pursuit of the winter lights. Light is evanescent and harder to seize in winter but so precious, so deep and touching.
Savour like me these images. I am sure you can find the appropriate dram to match these atmospheres.
Hunting haunting lights certainly inspire and feed my sensory explorations.
I will be back soon. Enjoy!
Belle philosophie René. je fais de mon mieux pour la mettre en pratique. Au plaisir de te voir en Ecosse.
Slainte.
Hello Martine
Merci pour tes news…. Et pour les magnifiques images. Comme chaque année, je reviens en Écosse en juin, mais pas sur Islay….
Mes résolutions pour 2014…. Euhhhh… Prendre les choses comme elles viennent, éviter tout stress et jouir de toutes les choses simples que nous apporte le quotidien. Et je t’assure que ça marche !
et bien entendu, passer 8 jours de rêves en Écosse, inoubliables comme d’habitude…
Yes I know, I should write in English, but mine is so poor that I don’t trust me to use it…
Have a fun year, full of satisfactions, discover and new whisky tasting !
Amitiés et meilleure salutations
René
Dominique j’espère qu’on se verra cette année. merci pour ta fidélité.
Thank you from the deep of my heart for your message Kenny. You have no idea how it made my day. So glad you try and like my recipes. I am writing my cookery book. Be patient. I keep good memories of that Glenfiddich class… G(entlemen) O(nly) L(adies F(orbidden)!! Aye.
Hi Martine
You almost certainly won’t know me but I was one of the “pupils” on Steve Brown’s Glenfiddich Cook School day at the Edinburgh School of Food and Wine (ESFW) in the early part of 2013. It was so good to meet you on that day and to watch you observing a set of novices at work. Obviously, you took away the participants’ e-mail addresses thereby allowing us to receive your regular e-mail bulletins/ blog. How lucky we are.
In the interests of feedback, I would like you to know that I read these bulletins with great interest and thoroughly enjoy the wide variety of articles, including your recipes, contained therein. Indeed, my wife cooked your Walnut and Cheese stuffed Mushrooms from within your last blog – they were quite superb Martine. This month I note your Chocolate and Cardamom cream laced with Whisky and will look to prepare this dish. However, I’ll personally do this one to allow me to savour the wonderful Malt aromas as I cook!!
The variety of information that you provide is so diverse yet so very well balanced. You have it absolutely spot on. For example, apart from your recipes, the Islay photographs in the most recent publication are brilliant as is your spotlight in Prestige Hong Kong. Alongside all of the other articles, you are such a wonderful ambassador for Islay. I just love the way in which you advertise the island in such a complete and unassuming manner.
Lastly, and most certainly by no means least, may I offer my heartiest congratulations on being awarded your position as Master (or should I say Queen) of the Quaich. That really is so well deserved given your contributions to, and knowledge of, the whisky industry. Not bad for a lass who was weaned on Calvados and hated whisky after that unfortunate experience in your student days.
Martine, may I compliment you on your bulletin and thank you once again for this excellent read. I look forward to many more of your posts in the months ahead.
Who knows, I might even bump into you on Islay one day.
Kind Regards.
Kenny Sword
Moââââââ Martine , que c’est beau !!!!!
I won’t make any resolution this coming year, too, except…… to be surrounded only by true friends!
WHEN shall we see you?????
Continue tes scottish and gourmandes escapades !