stone of destiny, farmers market, plans

i'm a lazy bum, so this is basically the email i accidentally sent to loads of people earlier...

my friend felicity and i decided to go see the stone of destiny movie last night, because we're in scotland and in edinburgh, where the stone lives (when a monarch isn't sitting on it). and we decided to have dinner first, but as both the us and the australian exchange rates are pretty much rubbish, we opted to eat in. as the previous time we had dinner i made paneer-sultana stew and we ate here, felicity brought fresh strawberries and raspberries for dessert. this time we planned to have pizza at her flat, so i decided to bring desert, but pretty much the only sweet thing in my flat was a jar of nutella left over from when my brother was here. at first i thought about making some plain vanilla cupcakes, but cupcakes pretty much require a mixer. then i thought about fairy cakes, which are like cupcakes but, well, basically a bit tougher, having been made by hand, but fairy cakes need icing and i didn't have any powdered sugar and icing them with just straight up nutella didn't occur to me. so i decided to make crepe batter, as it makes a big batch and can be dessert for two, and then my breakfast and lunch. and i decided to try it with flax eggs, just because. and it worked!! totally made my day. anyway, the movie's quite cute. and it has a great colour palette (omg i can't spell). and it was happy and scottish.
this morning, got up, made crepes, threw on some clothes, and headed over to castle terrace to the farmers market for the first time since i've been here. it's lovely. everything's so neat and clean and professional looking. the two veggie stalls were rather haphazard, but most of the stalls sold cheese or meat or eggs or alcohol or hot food. speaking of which, there was a whole stand for porridge. as i'd already had breakfast i didn't try any, but next time i think i will have to. sidenote: it's the world porridge making championships this sunday. i tried to figure out how to go see them, but i wouldn't be able to get back here in time for classes on monday. back to the farmers market. being the total sucker that i am, i left with not only the broccoli i set out to buy, but also a roll, a 400g loaf of pumpkin bread (which here means actual yeasted bread, not a sweet quickbread), four cooking apples for apple tart, a jar of strawberry preserves, and a thing of soft highland cheese. most of which i justified by saying that a. it would last for awhile and b. that damn it i keep wanting to make apple and treacle tarts and it's not like there are cooking apples at the supermarket.
but also c. i can use it for this weekend! because in about two hours i will be on a train bound for the middle of f-ing nowhere in the highlands where i will be spending the night in a castle which was donated to a hostel association to turn into a youth hostel. i'm pretty much thrilled by the prospect of this. and the good news is that if i spend a bazillion hours on a train to get up there, i will have to read for school whilst on the train. so shortly i will have to leave off and go figure out how to fit three meals, two cameras, a change of socks and undies, an extra lens, and warm things (apparently the highlands - i'll be at around 58 degrees north, well within the north sea - are cold. who knew?) into my little school backpack. always an adventure in itself.