Having taken my usual haitus after the Christmas blogmas mayhem I’m back and ready to go stronger than ever. But it hasn’t worked out nearly that way as uni seems to have the same idea and has thrown us right into the deep end once again. I really cannot complain as I love having so much to do and it’s lovely to be back into shorthand (think I may actually be obsessed with shorthand now) so on this freezing, flurry-filled snowday, I thought “why not write about our H, I, J and K dates?!”
H
“HOME is where the heart is” and I was home for 6 weeks over Christmas. It was lovely being home with Joe and my family so he thought we should make the most of it and make our H date into HOME COMFORTS. We made homemade pizzas, baby sat for friends, had cosy nights in and then he took me out to one of our favourtie burger restaurants in Inverurie, Meeks Burgers, before he took me back to Glasgow. Having time with him while being at home and see our family, friends and pets was great and I love that one of our alphabetical dates was so focussed on home.
I
Then I got back to Glasgow, spent a busy week 1 getting back into the routine of uni, a fast week 2 focussing on shorthand, and then Joe came down to see me for the weekend! It was nice knowing it wasn’t too long ’til I got to see him. For I date we went for an Interesting walk around Glasgow, went for Ice cream at Juicy Lucy’s for a brunch/snack, then I made us an Irish focussed dinner followed by the Iron Man movies!
Irish dinner was excellent – probably one of my better ideas. Having scrolled through many recipe websites, I found a recipe for Guinness cheese sauce which I made bacon nachos with as our starter which was DELISH – check out this link to read the recipe! I then used the rest of the Guinness to make a gravy to go with sausage and mash. The gravy was foul. Not even Joe, who is kind enough to eat anything I put in front of him, couldn’t even face it. Genuinely nothing has been that awful so I won’t tag that recipe (I’m likely to have done something wrong). Then I made us Irish soda bread for dessert and it was just brilliant. I had originally hoped to make a bread using Guinness (using it’s yeast content to rise the dough) but instead I followed Paul Hollywood’s soda bread recipe here. What a good meal that was – Joe was impressed with the amount of thought and effort I had put into it. We had a lovely Sunday relaxing together and then Joe headed back home.
J
J date was a few weeks after I date – I went home for the weekend between I weekend and JK weekend which was brill and involved LOTS of wedding planning. But then came J! We’d had a day full of work and doing other things, until we went out in the afternoon to see Black Panther – Joe’s movie choice. The movie is EXCELLENT, go and see it if you get the chance as it’s worth seeing.
Joe and I then walked for a litle while and then went to Juicy Lucy‘s (the place we’d been for ice cream) as the food menu looked so good that we couldn’t resist it. Check it out HERE as it’s so worth going to! Joe and I had a burger each, he had a fancy mushroom one and I went for a BBQ pulled chicken one, with onion rings and fries to share and two cokes each. I was BEYOND SHOCKED when we went to pay, showed my student card and then the waitor gave us our £22 bill!!!!!!! £22 is incredible value for a meal that’s that good. (Also, if you’re looking for a good burger in Glasgow, a few of us girls from my class went out for Haley’s birthday to Smash burger which is also brilliant, tasty burgers and sides with refillable drinks is excellent – and they take student cards too!)
K
K date has been one I’ve been planning for a while. I was tired of our dates being food orientated and, since we have Historic Scotland memberships, I flicked through the pages of our book to see what places were listed near Kilmarnock. We started off at Dean Castle and country estate which was beautiful and had deer on the land and some water features. One of the best bits was the large pond which had frozen over. Ducks and geese were skidding over it to come and get food from some of the people stood at the edges. As they were all stood in the same small area the ice cracked under them and a few splashed down into the water – it was adorable and cute.
Then we went to Dundonald Castle. It’s a pretty place which is a slowly crumbling building with a stunning hall inside and a gorgeous stone structure. But the best part was in the exhibition room, which has a selection of display units depicting the castle over the times. Those were interesting but sat at the back was an ADORABLE little barn owl named Ghost. She was so sweet. The woman even let me hold her! What a brilliant experience.
Then, after popping to Tesco for a cheeky meal deal, we headed to the next one on the list- Rowallan Castle. We got there and there were no signs!! None! And usually Historic Scotland sites are very obviously marked. So, we found it was a bit weird. But on we went, opening the little gate at the entrace and walking up to it after parking in the golf course car park next door. We strolled up to it, me snapping pictures of Joe as we walked under a lovely stone arch. We then came up to the front of the well maintained looking castle and were mesmerised by the lovely staircase.
Joe stood up a few of them and I took his picture, then we swapped and it was only after a handful of pictures, Joe said: “Tam, don’t turn round, come down here and lets go now, there’s someone in the window!” So he took my hand and we quickly but smartly marched back to the car. It was only then that we checked online and the castle had been sold to someone and is now a PRIVATE RESIDENCE. Oops! It turns out that the Historic Scotland site I had looked at was the 2004 page. HAHAHHAHAA. But we had so much fun and a brilliant adventure!
Tam's Adventures 
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