Black and White Edinburgh

Saturday morning and the alarm goes off.

It’s about a minute later that my confusion fades and I realise how much of an idiot I’ve been. My excuse is that I was absolutely shattered on Friday night, even still, I felt a bit stupid. What did I do to deserve this level of self mocking, I hear you ask. Well, instead of altering my alarm from 7:45 to 8:45 I somehow got the hour and minute buttons confused on my alarm clock (which I totally haven’t had for at least 6 years). Thus my Saturday morning lie-in was rudely interrupted at 7:46. Not a great start to the morning.

If pre 9am still sounds a bit early for a Saturday to you, then ordinarily I would agree; however, on this occasion I was meeting Mel at the farmers’ market at ten and so had to be a little bit more organised than usual.

Despite my (somewhat earlier than intended) get-up time I hadn’t quite managed to consume any coffee to kick start the day, and so altered my route so that I could pass a certain coffeehouse chain whose logo may or may not have a mermaid on it. This, conveniently, meant that the quickest way to the Usher Hall (where we were meeting) would now lead me through Princes Street Gardens, over the railway lines, and under the

shadow of Castle. It’s a tough life, I know.

After a few minutes taking photos around the Usher Hall Mel showed up to claim her coffee and we headed down to Castle Terrace car park, or rather to the farmers’ market taking place there.

As this isn’t the first time I’ve been to the farmers’ market I won’t go on too much about it, so if you want to know more about the wheres, whens and whys have a look at From Source to City, the post about my original trip back in August.

Today we were looking for something to make for lunch. So, as we wandered up and down chatting away we had our eyes pealed (the coffee had been consumed, thus making such things possible) for what we were going to get. We initially decided on a cheese and onion quiche (having discovered our old favourite from the St Andrews farmers’ market – the Arran Cheese Company were there), however, after finding the claret cheddar we got distracted by one of the butchers stalls (whose it was, I wish I could remember). On this stall they had venison, partridge, pheasant, pigeon and hare, but what caught our eye was the rabbit. Both Mel and I are partial to a bit of Flopsy (Mopsy or Cottontail), and so we decided that the rabbit fillets (if combined with a prune and red wine sauce) would make a most suitable lunch. Neither of us had actually cooked it before, so it was a bit of a trial run, but it all turned out rather deliciously. I also got a rabbit and apple pie for last night’s dinner, which was scrumptious.

At this point it started to rain and we decided to take cover in a doorway. On our way to find the bus stop I took a few more photos to continue my little theme of Black and White Edinburgh. All of these photos can be found over on Flickr and I intend to add more to it over the coming months.

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