Marinated with a dash of heresy

Regular readers of my Pitkirtly series of mystery novels may have noticed recurring references to traditional Scottish recipes and delicacies. This is partly an attempt on my part to counterbalance the prevalent urban mythology about the Scottish diet – although I must admit one of my work colleagues swears by deep-fried confectionery to ward off …

Sayings of my granny

After writing the heading for this post I stopped to think how many of my granny's sayings I could actually remember, and although when I was young it seemed my mother was always quoting from her, I can now easily count them on the fingers of one hand. But I suppose it's the sayings that …

Redding up the house

Hogmanay seems like the right day to introduce a new occasional series of posts about Scottish words which may or may not be little-known. I'm not entirely sure about the provenance of 'redding' but I'm fairly certain the word and the concept are Scottish as my mother and granny both used it. My mother, who …