Devils in the kitchen, and Black Magic

Firstly the devils, kitchen devils to be precise--those super sharp small knives that never seem to get dull and are the first ones you reach for in the kitchen drawer. We acquired our first ones as wedding gifts. One was straight-edged and one serrated. They were little knives, and amazingly sharp, and we loved them. They were the knives that come to hand for almost every task that involved vegetables, and quite a few other cutting/chopping jobs as well. They came with us when we moved to America in 1986, and by about  ten years after that momentous occasion, the straight-edged one had somehow managed to get lost, but the serrated one was still as sharp as ever. Or so we thought, until Brian and Joyce Spear visited us, and then sent us a couple more as a gift from England, where they were living at the time. The old kitchen devil had been the sharpest knife we owned, but the new ones were sharper still.  One of them got stuck at the bottom of the dishwasher one day, on the one and only occasion on which the heating element had ever been turned on. The plastic handle melted into a most strange shape, which just happened to fit my (Louise's) hand perfectly.  It became my exclusive knife, which didn't quite work for anybody else - the rest of the family had to make do with sharing the other one.  After about twenty more years (we are up to 2017 now, folks) the kitchen devils started showing signs of wear. The blade of the non-deformed one  gradually came loose, and the melted handle finally broke.  By just a month or two before we left on our mission we were, for the first time in our married life, more or less kitchen devilless. 'Twas a tragic fate but we decided to soldier on for just another month or two, for after all, we would soon be heading for the land of the kitchen devil.

I would love to say, for the sake of the story, that our first purchase in Scotland was a kitchen devil. It was not. We bought some smoked haddock for the next day's breakfast. We also bought some other groceries and assorted chocolate. But one of our very early purchases was a good knife, ie a kitchen devil. The one Richard found was a bit of a strange shape - it has a round ended blade with a serrated edge, and looks a little like half of an old-fashioned knife and fork set, only with a plastic rather than a bone handle. I wasn't quite sure about the style but it was inexpensive, so we decided to try it. Then, a week or two later, having fallen in love with the knife, we bought a couple more, packed one away to take back to the US, and pressed a second one into use. Then we went to Ireland a couple of weekends ago, and wished we had brought a knife with us, for picnicking purposes, so we bought another one. I think I can safely say that for me, the ideal number of kitchen devils per kitchen is three. One in my hand, one waiting to be washed, and a clean one in the drawer.

As you read this, you may be wondering if I have some sort of arrangement with the company. I do not; this is a totally unsolicited testimonial, but if they were to contact me and offer a lifetime supply of knives (with the four I currently have one more should do it) I would be tempted to ask Shana to make a commercial for them. She is much more photogenic than I am.

Now for the Black Magic part of this week's tale. Some of the ward members invited us out for the day on Saturday. We wanted to take them a wee gift and decided that they would appreciate some chocolates, so on our way we stopped off at ASDA (which is what Wal-Mart is called locally) which was more-or-less on the way. We found a truly glorious box of assorted Lindt chocolates and I hope they will very much enjoy them. We managed to resist buying some more for ourselves, but then, on the same shelf, we saw a box of Black Magic chocolates. At this point nostalgia kicked in. Memories of my (Richard's) childhood include Rowntree's Black Magic as the ultimate in deluxe confectionary. This was also helped by an advertising campaign that always showed them in unbelievable (literally) romantic situations being offered and eaten by elegant and well-dressed people. We both enjoyed them many years ago and now here they were again! We took a box and noted that first they were cheap (which should have warned us) and secondly that they are now made by Nestle. We started to put the box back. We are not Nestle fans, in general, but then reminded ourselves that the one Nestle chocolate we always used to enjoy was their Albany dark chocolate, and what could Black Magic be if not dark chocolate? So we decided to take a chance. If it didn't work out, there is always the treat shelf at the mission office, so how far wrong could we go?

Actually, the chocolates are not all that bad. We will not be ashamed to put them out on the treat shelf on Tuesday, which is an All-Scotland zone conference, so they should all disappear by the end of the day.  As for our preferences, not to mention our nostalgia, the chocolates were not all that good either. They looked beautiful, but were too sweet for our current taste. And if one is going to overindulge, let it be on excellence. (Lindt Excellence, maybe?)

Our main activity for the day on Saturday was visiting Floors Castle with the Campbells. They told us that they have taken several sets of senior missionaries there. There are three generations of Campbells in our ward, btw and these are the grandparents of the youngest generation. Brother Campbell has just been released from the Bishopric, His son is the Elder's Quorum President, his daughter-in-law the Young Woman President, his other son the assistant Ward Mission Leader,  and his grandson, who recently returned from a mission, was just released as Gospel Doctrine Teacher, as he is moving away to attend uni (university or 'varsity' to Americans). Sister Campbell, (senior) teaches Relief Society and waves stick in sacrament meeting. Altogether the ward would be much poorer without them.

Floors Castle isn't really a castle; it is a large manorial home set in an estate of tens of thousands of  acres.
Like many other noble houses it is opened to the public either as an act of generosity, or as a means to generate an income to maintain the vast (and doubtless heavily-taxed) estate, or possibly some of both.  It is home to the tenth Duke and Duchess of Roxburgh. They still live there in the private west wing. Like on many other estates the family run a variety of enterprises including farming, entertaining, logging, horse-breeding and several other ventures. They pride themselves on being ecologically sensitive, which seems to be a major trend in the UK.

What made the home fun to explore was that the grandfather of the current duke married a wealthy American heiress. One of the guides assured us it was a love-match, and it may well have been, as they stayed together in the castle for many years, and when he died she remained there happily. She and her 21 million dollars (1900 dollars!) transformed the castle, installing such things as electricity and modern plumbing, but also redecorating. Someone, or several someones in the family, including the duchess, were also collectors. Collectors of what you ask, well, almost everything. They were showing off not only paintings, cutlery and crockery but decor, cigarette lighters, pipes, porcelain figures, stuffed birds, furniture, statues, clothing, toys, personal items, weapons, tapestries and books, books, books. A fabulous collection of books on display, but all carefully marked 'don't touch' This was a frustration to a pair of bibliophiles. How do you admire a book if all you can see is the cover? There was a suitably tragi-romantic story to go with the books. A member of the family loved a girl and planned to marry her. The king nipped in and married her younger sister. This apparently prevented the duke from marrying the older sister due to an arcane rule of protocol that the younger sister as queen-consort cannot owe reverence to the older sister married to someone of lower rank. Apparently the love-thwarted duke immersed himself in his book collection and then did all he could to thwart the king at every turn. We did not explore the truth of this story, we just admired the books--from a distance. And that was another minor frustration, for insurance reasons, apparently, no photos can be taken of the wealthy collection, so this blog post is sparsely illustrated. We did admire the amazing collection, Richard finally got to see Sevres porcelain, and it is beautiful, as well as Wedgewood, and several others. Louise also got to see lapis lazuli. We both admired the wonderful collection without coveting it at all, in fact we were grateful to pay a few pounds to be able to look at it and then walk away and leave someone else to care for it, maintain it and worry about it.

British marketing

We were so into the mode of not taking photos that we forgot to take any of the beautiful grounds, green acres running down to the River Tweed and the distant hills, so this blog post is very sparsely illustrated. Here's a link if you want to see some of the commercial photos. We ended up eating lunch in the estate restaurant and spotted this lovely example of restrained British marketing. Any American would tell you that the Sorrell Sauce is the greatest thing ever, unbeatable, and that everyone loves it. It takes restraint and a firm regard for truth in advertising, and perhaps a very dry sense of humour, to claim only that the "majority of customers agree" with the duke that it is the preferred accompaniment to the fishcakes.

We finished our Floors Castle day with a gentle drive home on back roads through rolling Scottish countryside with a wealth of green fields, woolly sheep, miles of dry-stone walls, trees, hedges and hills. This is Sir Walter Scott's country; he loved it with good reason, and so do we.