The Great Egg Hunt

Our Grandchildren searching for Easter Eggs
 in our back-garden

Hoping you have a happy Easter Weekend with your families wherever you may be.

Arbroath Smokies

'Cheese Smokie'
 a warming and delicious supper for a cold night

Yesterday and as Good Friday was almost upon us, Toot and I visited our favourite fishmongers Alan and Bryan Snow at 'The World of Fish' in Lowestoft.  http://world-of-fish.co.uk/index.asp

The slab was a virtual cornucopia of denizens of the deep. Toot chose a fine fillet of plaice and I chose a sea bass fillet and later tonight both will accompany new potatoes and peas upon our Easter Friday dinner plates.

In a chilled cabinet, next to the kippers and smoked haddock was a neat pile of Arbroath Smokies.  Now I'm very partial to a 'smokie'!  If you haven't tried one, all I can say is get yourself to Arbroath or The World of Fish and treat yourself .  Your taste buds will never stop thanking you!

The Arbroath Smokie is in fact a hot smoked haddock and in my opinion smoked fish "doesn't get better than this".  The biggest flavour you can put on a plate but like a good wine or whisky not lacking in subtlety.

Two rows of small haddock awaiting removal from
the hot smoke

Arbroath smokies are prepared using traditional methods dating back to the late 1800s.

The fish are first salted overnight. They are then tied in pairs using hemp twine, and left overnight to dry. Once they have been salted, tied and dried, they are hung over a triangular length of wood to smoke. This "kiln stick" fits between the two tied smokies, one fish on either side. The sticks are then used to hang the dried fish in a special barrel containing a hardwood fire.

When the fish are hung over the fire, the top of the barrel is covered with a lid and sealed around the edges with wet jute sacks (the water prevents the jute sacks from catching fire). All of this serves to create a very hot, humid and smoky fire. The intense heat and thick smoke is essential if the fish are to be cooked, not burned, and to have the strong, smoky taste and smell people expect from Arbroath smokies. Typically in less than an hour of smoking, the fish are ready to eat.

Because the 'smokie' is hot smoked you can eat the creamy white flesh straight from the fishmonger just as you would smoked salmon.  Good brown bread, salt crystal butter, Guinness or Champagne or Chablis or Bowmore Whisky all make for good accompaniments.

In 2004, the European Commission registered the designation "Arbroath smokies" as a Protected Geographical Indication under the EU's Protected Food Name Scheme, acknowledging its unique status

Last night was really chilly so I decided to use my 'smokie' to make a hot supper.  I can really recommend this recipe, years ago something like this used to be on the menu at 'The Short Blue' Public-house in Gorleston Norfolk.

Cheese Smokie:

• Remove the skin and bones from the smokie and carefully arrange the bone free creamy white flesh in an oven proof dish.
• Make some cheese sauce, I would recommend a blend of strong English Cheddar and finely grated Parmesan.
• Pour the cheese sauce over the fish to cover.
• Grate some extra Cheddar and Parmesan for the topping.
• Mix the cheese with some freshly made breadcrumbs, two teaspoons of whole grain Dijon mustard and a few chopped chives.
• Cover the cheese fish mixture with the cheesy breadcrumbs.
• Salt and black pepper to taste and then place in an oven on 150 deg C for 15 minutes or until the fish and sauce are hot and the crumbs are crunchy and browned.
• Decorate with a sprig of parsley.

Last night I ate this meal with two glasses of Sancerre brilliant! Top notch 'World of Fish' and three cheers for Arbroath and its smokies.

Credits: some text and image Wikipedia

Full Moon

A photograph of tonight's full moon
taken from an upstairs bedroom window in our house.

After dinner Toot and I noticed the beautiful full moon rising above the trellis in our back garden.  I put a telephoto lens on my DSLR, went upstairs to a bedroom, opened a window and hand-held my camera to take this image.

The Moon tonight looks absolutely beautiful. If you have clear skies why not go out and take a look?

Amsterdam City Break

My collage of images
shows some of the wonderful
architectural features of
Sheepvaarthuis

Toot and I and our good friends Jude and Jonathon had a great 'City Break in Amsterdam'.

We enjoyed sunshine snow and a biting easterly wind all in four action packed days.

Amsterdam is a vibrant city with excellent museums, beautiful architecture and a network of canals.

I last visited Amsterdam in 1969.  I was a long-haired student in those far off days.  Now I am a bald-headed pensioner!

My memory hasn't yet failed!  Many places were familiar to me, although many new buildings have been constructed and many old ones have been refurbished.

In 2013, Sheepvaarthuis is a very smart hotel located close to the Maritime Museum.  In 1969 it provided offices for a number of shipping companies.

The building is a magnificent melange of art-nouveau, art-deco and moderne features.

Replica Ship at
the Maritime Museum

The Maritime Museum is well worth a visit and entrance includes access to the replica ship moored close by.

It is quite sobering to consider the challenges faced by Dutch Mariners sailing such a small timber ship from Amsterdam around the Cape of Good Hope to India, Indonesia and Japan.

The Museum has wonderful collections of navigational instruments, model ships and maritime paintings.

I was particularly impressed by the mechanical solar system or 'Orrery'.

Whilst Jon and I were at the Maritime Museum, Toot and Jude visited  the Anne Frank House and Museum in Prinsengracht.

It should be inconceivable that individuals, agencies or governments might discriminate and condemn on the basis of nationality, religious or political views, age or sexual orientation.  It should be unthinkable that children should be denied our universal protection and love.  Sadly such terrible and terrifying inhumanities have been and continue to occur.

This little girl, her diary and her home will, no doubt, continue to remind succeeding generations  that hatred, discrimination and totalitarianism should have no place in a civilized society.











Whilst we were in Amsterdam, both the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum were closed for renovation. Fortunately we were able to see a number of Van Gogh's paintings in a temporary exhibition at the Amsterdam Hermitage Museum. The Rijksmuseum's Rembrandts and Vermeers will have to await a future visit.

Wheat-field with Crows
Van Gogh

We also visited the Peter the Great exhibition which was fascinating in its eccentricity. The exhibition included a number of fine paintings including one stunning Rembrandt.

Peter the Great
Tsar, man of science and amateur dentist

Credits Wikipedia, Amsterdam Hermitage, Amsterdam Maritime Museum and Joop Schilperoord

Curiosity Update

Self Portrait of Curiosity at the
'John Klein' drilling site
Gale Crater- Mars

Toot and I continue to suffer from computer glitches but NASA engineers have got Curiosity out of safe-mode and back into scientific harness.

Results from the chemical analysis of powder ground from one drill core have been published on NASA's website.

On February 8th Curiosity drilled two rock cores in veined bedrock located in an area of Gale Crater named 'Yellowknife Bay'.

NASA scientists believe that long ago 'Yellowknife Bay', was at the end of a river system or was an intermittently wet and dry lake bed.  The rock is a fine grained mud-stone rich in sulphate containing minerals.  In contrast to  findings made elsewhere on Mars, this ancient wet environment was not harshly oxidizing, acidic or salty.

Chemical analysis of the  rock core sample detected the presence of sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon. These elements are some of the key ingredients of life.

"A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "From what we know now, the answer is yes." 

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-092#5

Credits NASA JPL

Lost Art Treasures No 7

The Shaven Cavalier
by Dick (his eyes follow you around the room) Halls.
Painter ,Decorator and Chirotonsor.

credits: Base image Wikipedia

Comet C/2011 L4 Panstarrs First Light UK

Comet PanStarrs low in the sky
over the Waveney Marshes
(just after sunset 13th March 2013)

".......this most excellent canopy, the air—look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire....."  William Shakespeare-Hamlet-1604.

Toot an I were unable to see the comet on the 12th but did manage to see and photograph it on the 13th. Clearly it survived its encounter with the Sun and looks a treat in binoculars or a small telescope. If you are trying to see it from the UK it should get easier and higher in the sky as the week progresses. Comets and our weather are notoriously fickle so lets hope for clear skies!

I took these photographs when the comet was at its highest above the horizon.

"Then Jupiter, the Father, spoke..."Take up Caesar s spirit from his murdered corpse, and change it into a star, so that the deified Julius may always look down from his high temple on our Capitol and forum." He had barely finished, when gentle Venus stood in the midst of the Senate, seen by no one, and took up the newly freed spirit of her Caesar from his body, and preventing it from vanishing into the air, carried it towards the glorious stars. As she carried it, she felt it glow and take fire, and loosed it from her breast: it climbed higher than the moon, and drawing behind it a fiery tail, shone as a star" Metamorphoses-Ovid-8AD

"When beggars die there are no comets seen;The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."
  
William Shakespeare-Julius Ceasar

Photoshop enlarged view of Comet Panstarrs
(Photograph taken with a tripod mounted
 Canon 400D DSLR with telephoto lens)

"Comets are like cats, they have tails and
they do precisely what they want"
David H Levy- Comets Creators
and Destroyers

Comets have been observed throughout time and have been associated with battles and the death of  kings, princes and emperors.

Billions of years ago, comets brought water and the chemicals required for life to an embryonic Earth.

Sixty-five million years ago the reign of the Dinosaurs was brought to an end by the comet that fell on the Yucatan Peninsular. In doing so, the comet enabled mice like mammals to begin an evolutionary trail that would one day see mankind assume a similar and contemporary dominance.

One day our species may find itself at its evolutionary terminus and who knows whether a comet, yet undiscovered languishing icy-cold in the great Oort Cloud, will have a hand in it?

In the meantime, try and see this beautiful solar system traveler as it serenely passes our home planet. It will not return to our part of the Solar System for at least 110,000 years!

Inverted black and white image
to enhance comets tail

View from St Michael's Church Graveyard Oulton Broad
over Waveney Marshes. The comet just a pin-prick of
 light above the horizon and the new Moon illuminated
 by sunlight and earthshine high above.

Thanks to Toot, June, Val and an owl for providing company in a cold and dark graveyard.  Extra thanks to Toot for the hot drinks after!

Lost Art Treasures No 6

Whistler's Mother
by Dick Whistler BA (Hons) Arch  B.Arch
(Painter, architect and levitationist)
credit for base image Wikipedia

Heavenly Triplets

My photograph of a tranche of sky between the constellations Leo Major and Ursa Major.
The inset magnified image of the Leo Triplet of Galaxies was taken by the European Southern
Observatory's Very Large Survey Telescope (VST)

Apparently, the Triplet can be seen through binoculars but I've never been able to.  If the clouds ever part from over our backyard I will have a go at imaging the Triplet through my 127mm refracting telescope.

This is a computer enhanced enlargement of my photograph centred on the area of sky in which the Triplet is located.

The three arrowed  tiny red smudges of light represent the only photons  I managed to capture from these vast collections of stars 35 million light years distant from Earth.

The bright white star above and to the right of the Triplet is 73 Leo lying a mere 478 light years away. 73 Leo is a binary star approximately 130 times more bright than our own Sun.

The ESO VST image of the Leo Triplet M65, M66 and NGC 3628Image credit: ESO/INAF-VST/OmegaCAM. Acknowledgement: OmegaCen/Astro-WISE/Kapteyn Institute

Melotte 111 Open Star Cluster

Photograph taken in our backyard on the 4th March 2013
with a tripod mounted 35mm Canon 400D DSLR

The Coma Star Cluster Melotte 111 in the constellation Coma Berenices is a cluster of 40 or so bright stars which are moving across the sky with a common proper motion. The cluster is approximately 280 light years away.

Magnified section showing the cluster in more detail

Passing Penguins

How many ways can you stack a penguin ?
No 6 The Stacked Deck

Fox in the Snow

Vulpes vulpes

In January, my son Chrissy photographed a fox prowling around his garden in the snow. Chrissy and his wife Nina keep hens.  I think Mr Fox was savouring the taste of a chicken dinner on a cold winter's afternoon. I played around with the photo image to create a digital painting.

Computer glitches

This artist concept features
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover,
 a mobile robot for investigating Mars'
 past or present ability to sustain microbial life.
 Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 

Since we returned from our holiday in Madeira, Toot and I have been having all sorts of problems with our computer network.  In addition I managed to drop a portable hard-drive and lose gazillions of bytes of information, mainly archived photographs.

Apparently NASA engineers are having difficulties with one of the computers on board the Curiosity Rover and have had to swap from the operational computer to its back up while they try to sort out 'corrupted files'. Bearing in mind the difficulties we have had updating software on two laptops and a router in our house, those girls and boys at NASA will have to be pretty smart if they want to recover corrupted files on a computer sitting in an alien desert several hundred million kilometres away.

Mars to Earth distance varies due to planetary orbits being elliptical and differential orbital speeds. Minimum distance is 54.6 million kilometres, maximum distance 401 million kilometres and average distance 225 million kilometres.  This is why, in some years, Mars becomes very bright in our skies and presents a much larger disc to the eye when viewed through a telescope.

Curiosity's work schedule has had to be suspended for a few days. It has been drilling cores in rocks and analyzing the mashed up rock fragments in its on board laboratory.  How good is that!  I'm looking forward to NASA publishing the results.

Ready, Set, Drill

An animated set of three images from NASA's Curiosity rover shows the rover's drill in action on Feb. 8, 2013, or Sol 182, Curiosity's 182nd Martian day of operations. This was the first use of the drill for rock sample collection. The target was a rock called "John Klein," in the Yellowknife Bay region of Gale Crater on Mars. 

This set of images was obtained by Curiosity's right front Hazard-Avoidance camera on Feb. 8, 2013, or Sol 182. 

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech