The Scottish teacake is a very different cousin to its English relative just as your favourite blogger is very different from my very own Little English Teacake.
The Scottish teacake is a semi-circular chocolate-covered cake with a marshmallow filling and biscuit base.
While the English equivalent is a sweet bun with dried fruit, typically served toasted and buttered.
How do you open tbis?
And us Scots celebrate our teacake as an important culinary and cultural part of our identity.
Glasgow is my cup of tea
So that when Glasgow hosted the Commonwealth Games, dancing teacakes jumped around the track as part of the Opening Ceremony.
But while we all agree that we love nothing better than eating a teacake with our tea we will often spend the time arguing about how to ear them.
Oh, you broke the chocolate…
So are you a gobbler or a nibbler?
Apparently according to a survey of 100 Scots conducted by onepoll for the Chester Hotel in the Granite City of Aberdeen one in four of us eat the filling first and then the biscuit base.
While the second most popular method is to strip the chocolate first.
And it seems my age group, the 35-54-year-olds, are ten times more likely to be chocolate strippers than the next generation.
Where are you from?
One in ten of us are nibblers with more women than men going that way.
And 13% of us whack it down in a oner.
And if you want something else too
Even within that there are regional variations with some surprising conclusions.
While Edinburgh is seen as the refined capital of Scotland its citizens like to munch big mouthfuls of their teacake while Highland and Islanders will stick the oil’ teacake in their mouths in a oner.
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond they like to eat the biscuit base first.
Don’t eat with your mouth full
One from each shelf?
I’m not sure how my fellow Glaswegians eat them, but outside of genteel Kelvinside I’m afraid that loquacious lot that they are they probably eat them while they’re still talking!
I know Aberdeen is in temporary lockdown but when you do get back out you should book yourself an afternoon tea at the Chester Hotel in Queen’s Road from €26.50 while a Champagne afternoon tea is also available.
Takeaway afternoon tea – provided in the Chester Hotel take-away tea caddies – are available to book online
When will you realise Vienna waits for you? – Vienna, Billy Joel
No, I’m not plumping for the maudlin Ultravox song as I mark the survey that puts Vienna top of the pops for quality of life for newlyweds and families.
I took Miss F to Corfu for our honeymoon where she only had eyes for me as did the hotel keyboard player!
But Vienna has always been on our radar and Austrophiles that we are, I will waltz her around the square yet… to work off their famous hot chocolate and cakes, of course.
A two-film trip… to Australia!
Many of us are put off travelling to the other end of the world by the time we have to spend in the air.
For airplane (and movie) fans like myself I love it because it means I can see all the latest releases.\
My longest continuous trip has been to Los Angeles where I reckon I got to see all the Oscar nominations for that year.
Now Virgin Galactic are raising the bar by releasing details of their most ambitious airplane ever, their supersonic route from London to Sydney… in only five hours!
The Virgin Group Space flight company announced the first stage design scope for the build of its Mach 3 plane yesterday.
And he’ll be there waiting
They’re also teasing us with less than two-hour flights to New York. So that rules out a Martin Scorsese film then!
Easy does it
How are you all down there?
The more our politicians try to stop us travelling the keener we are to do just that.
And EasyJet are saying that they will fly at 40% capacity, 10% higher than their projections because of better than expected bookings.
And with 84% of its flights full. All of which should leave a spare seat for me.
Automatic for the people
No one to disturb us
Because this is where to come for all your musical touchpoints… though there will be no REM, or Rapid Eye Movement, here as you’ll get a great sleep in this Automatic hotel.
Just up the road from my old stomping ground of Greystones in Ireland’s Garden County of Wicklow.
Firefly Bray, which is a sister hotel of The Martello, offers the latest in self-service check-in technology with your room key downloaded directly to your phone. And there is no on-site staff.
Firefly is close to the promenade front and the dramatic Bray Head from where you can walk the cliffs to Greystones.
Rooms start from €70 per night. Tell them I sent you!
And as is the way of it you wait for one Holiday Snaps and two come along in quick succession. I’ll be back with more.
And Alex does the ‘best song of all time’ justice, and a bunch of others with his ‘Candy’ well worth a mention.
I even forgave him saying that Paolo Nutini had ripped it off REM.
I’ll be in one of those huts
All this, and did I say that they have a game where you hammer a nail into a block of plywood with the acute end?
Which funnily enough you won’t see in the pubs of Glasgow, Liverpool or Dublin.
We travelled to Soll with ski specialists Top Flight and I have hiked up the hills with them too since.
And that’ll be the beer then
Top Flight, who also with good reason call themselves the Italy specialists, are suffering like so many in Travel.
And they had to make the heartbreaking decision to let some staff go last week.
Which I know from dealing with them would have been the last thing they would have wanted.
It may seem like all uphill right now while downhill doesn’t seem too appealing either.
And the locals are real friendly
But skiing proves that we can ride the bumps and come out still standing at the end of it all.
And there’s a Jagermaester at the end of it all at the end of it all and a rocking music set. It’s apres-ski and it’s everything.
*Everything – The Real Life Story which chronicles the career of the first all-black British band to reach No.1 in the UK charts screens on BBC Four on Friday at 9pm.
And if you’ve felt too silly to ask what it is, the food that gives its name to Liverpudlians as in Liverpool scouse, this week’s Hungry and Thursday is all about Liverpool scouse and stews around the world.
Scousers have been getting their voices heard (and what’s new there?) these past few weeks, culminating in their fireworks party as they lifted the Premier League title at Anfield yesterday.
But seeing this is a food and drink post, and I already give you a sporting post, My Sporting Weekend every weekend, I’ll stick to scouse.
In a Stew
Which will stick to you teeth or in them. Because it’s really just stew with extras.
Ally in red, naturally
I first had myself a plate of scouse in Albert Dock, Liverpool, as I waited for my interview at the Liverpool Daily Post back in the 1990s.
I had pulled a sickie to attend and was to go on and stare inside the studio where the British morning magazine programme This Morning was televised, only for the camera to turn on me.
Just the job
Which is when I got a shiver down my back as I thought of my boss’s wife watching from up in Aberdeen and reporting to Jim that I was really down on Merseyside when I should have been at my desk.
Still, I got the job so it wouldn’t have mattered.
Back to the scouse and the word derives from ‘lobscouse’ which was a Scandinavian and Northern German stew brought to Liverpool by sailors.
The Liverpudlians, of course, reciprocated and sent exports of their own to these parts… The Beatles. And you can hear all about that in the city they made their home, Hamburg.
Hamburgers… and stew
On Stefanie Hempell’s Beatles tour (and you won’t get better).
While scouse isn’t the only comfort food that the Hamburgers have exported with great success. See Hamburgers and ships.
A Star in Hamburg
So what’s in Scouse?
Scouse consists of mutton, lamb (often neck), or beef with vegetables, typically potatoes, carrots, and onions. Serve with pickled beetroot or pickled red cabbage and bread.
Ethiopia and the world
While I leave my Liverpool-born son to make his way back from the festivities to Scotland, or indeed the phone call to bail him out of jail, I’ll take you on a gristlestop tour around the world of stew.
With the queen of Ethiopia, Meseret
Meat of Africa
Ethiopian chicken stew: And I’ll miss those Ethiopian New Years in Dublin which I shared with my friends Carole, Lorcan, Tony and my Queen of Ethiopia Meseret.
Because Enkutatash runs to the old calendar which means that you actually lose time. I, of course, lose all sense of time when the wine starts flowing which I only do to soak up the Ethiopian stew which you eat with your hands soaking it up with bread.
And you can get a fancy dish too
Balkan bellies
Bosanski Ionac, Bosnia & Herzegovina: And they love their homely food in the Balkans and it unites the different cultures and traditions.
Carbonnade, Flanders, Belgium: And the brave soldiers who went to the Front in the First World War would take their pleasures where they could.
So that meant wine, women and song… or in Ieper, dark beer (there’s lots of it in this dish), women (they’re the same the world over) and drinking shanties. All right up a Tommy’s street and the best people to go with are GTI Travel and Visit Flanders.
Load your plate up with shellfish and don’t be liberal with the squids and octopus.
You’ll need a rich base of onions, white wine, olive oil, and tomatoes, and season with a variety of fresh herbs and spices such as saffron and nutmeg.
They’ll be the dumplings then
Cesky goulash: Not to be mistaken for Hungarian goulash. All right, it is quite similar. Mop it up with the obligatory Czech dumplings and sauerkraut.
And, of course, Pilsener Urquell.
They had a big post-lockdown feast on the Charles Bridge in BohemianPrague recently and I[m hoping there were leftovers!
And with apologies to Irish stew and other meaty greats from around the world.
Heck for fear of being force-fed vegetarian I’ll return to this subject.
Splendid isolation in Tenerife
And he’ll be there waiting
I skied some of those mountains… yeah, right!
I’ll be in one of those huts
And that’ll be the beer then
And the locals are real friendly
Got there
Working my ass off
On the road
You’re James too
With Bajan Geraldine and Virginian Patay
And my sailing pal Patsy