Xan: Iceland and England (Part 5): Iceland or England?

Where are we, Iceland or England?  Put on your Sherlock Holmes hats to find out!

The game is afoot!

Clue!

Clue!

Clue!

Clue!

Obvious, isn't it?  As we can see, Catherine is soaked, most likely due to rain.  England is quite rainy, but it rains almost daily in Iceland as well.  However, judging by the dark patches on her bag, I'd say she's been in the rain for over 5 minutes, which rules out Iceland.  So England it is.  Elementary!

You might think that Paddington bear made it obvious, but much like Waldo, he is an international traveler and has been popping up around the world, albeit sometimes hidden quite well. A handful of recent spottings, courtesy of Linden and Chris:

I suppose the fat one and the metal one may have some trouble making it out of Paddington station, but that is merely improbable, not impossible.  Of course there is also the very fact that I am standing at 221B Baker Street wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat.

(not me)

Anyway, we're not done with Iceland, but we're taking a break to talk about England because I feel like it.  I'm pretty sure I've already ruined any hope of these posts having a logical structure anyway, so why not?

In particular, it seems that we're in London right now.  So let's meet the hosts!

Linden and Chris and, for all I know, Paddington bear

We were also hosted by this guy:

"Gromit! I'm wearing the wrong trousers!" <-- Exclaymation

So obviously we had a wonderful, albeit brief, visit to London.  But I'm not going to waste time telling you about all the touristy things everyone has already done.  Instead I will just tell you about the people we saw and foods we ate and rabid squirrels that befriended our pant legs.

Unlike my siblings or the European swallow, I am non-migratory.  Despite possessing British citizenship, it's been over 10 (!) years since I visited England, so I was glad for the opportunity to see some of the funny-talking side of the family.  (Kathleen does occasionally slip into her affectations, and even Linden has started using some funny words, but of course I mean the real funny-talkers).

To that end, we had a lovely dinner with Cynthia and Jane at the Cote restaurant.  Here we are:

This is actually the husband-friendly version of the photo.  In truth, they arrived at the restaurant fully laden with the fruits of a good old-fashioned London shopping spree:

(If you must know, there are more bags in Jane's other hand)

We meant to bring them chocolates but accidentally left them in the care of the giant Paddington bear pictured above.   That said, it was Ghirardelli, not See's, so Cynthia was not too sad.  Maybe even a little glad?  As everyone knows, Cynthia's motto is: Seize the See's overseas!  (Compare this to Catherine's motto, Ghirardelli in my belly!)

Despite the lack of chocolate, though, dinner was very good.  For my part I ordered the rillettes (duck and pork pate) and a brace of quail wrapped in bacon...

Pate in jar.

THIS QUAIL IS EITHER GIANT OR REALLY CLOSE

Despite some encouragement (cajoling?) to order chips like everyone else, I chose glazed carrots as my side.  You can decide whether that's because I am a healthy eater or because I knew I would get to eat all of Catherine's chips anyway.  Whatever the reason, it was a good choice.

So, in keeping with the general spirit of the trip, I managed to kill 3 birds (and at least 1 pig) with one meal.  I don't know if they have snowmen in England, but if so it's entirely possible that I also killed 6 snowmen to bring me those carrots.  (Out of concern for mom, though, I will refrain from making any Mr. Potatohead jokes.  Sometimes a potato is just a potato).

Anyway, I think everyone had a good time.  

Thank you to Jane and Cynthia for making time to come see us on such short notice!  Glad we could get together.

---- COMMERCIAL BREAK ----

I don't always bawl uncontrollably, but when I do, I prefer Kleenex Mansize Tissues.

STAY WEEPY, MY FRIENDS.

It must be a British thing.

We now return to our usual programming.  Note that I didn't get to the rabid squirrel yet, so the post is not over. 

Chris and Linden took us to a butcher where we picked up...some duck breasts!  That has been sitting on my todo list for a while.  I decided to cook them with thyme and orange, which is a good combo.

Here I have scored the skin to help the fat render.  And my did it render.  These things release an ungodly amount of fat.  I knew that and I was still surprised.

We put (a small fraction of) that rendered fat to good use on the spot.  It went in the mashed potatoes and the vegetables.

Except, oops, I put way too much in the vegetables.  They were braising so I couldn't really tell how much of the liquid was fat and how much was water.  I mean, not that I really mind an abundance of duck fat.  But that was not right.  Oh well, life goes on.

As for the duck breasts, hey hey:

I squeezed some juice and reduced it to a sticky glaze.  But we used clementines instead of oranges, and for the second time now I was disappointed with the substitution.  I'm coming to think that clementines just shouldn't be used here.  Sigh.  Also the duck breasts were slightly overcooked, mainly because I am stupid.  Though I'm sure Catherine would disagree with me.  (About them being overcooked, not about me being stupid).

All of that said, overall it was a good meal and a great experiment.

Maybe Linden will post about the panang noodle fusion dish they made for us.  It was yummy but I don't have the pics.

*

This post is getting way too long, so let's skip to the walk in the park.  But I'm warning you, our walk in the park was no walk in the park.  We were attacked by an evil squirrel!

At first glance an ordinary squirrel, but for the glowing red eyes. Make no mistake, this is no creature to be trifled with.  The beast approaches!

That is my shoe.

Sensing the danger, I tried to appease him with bread, but he was not remotely interested.  He was after something more.  He was after me.  Without warning, evil squirrel flew threw the air, latched on to my pant leg, and began to scurry up.  Unfortunately I was too shocked to get a picture of evil squirrel in action, but as luck would have it, Monty Python has already dramatized the exact scene:

The horror!  I mean, look at the bones!

Brace of quail devoured by evil squirrel at Cote restaurant.

I escaped with just a flesh wound.

Xan: Iceland and England (Part 4): Snaefellsnes!

The Snaefellsnes peninsula! This was definitely our favorite tour, so today I will give you a tour of the tour.  It was a long tour, about 13 hours, but I'll try to keep this post under 13 minutes.

Let's start with the tour van itself:

There are tons of giant tour buses, but we did all our tours through a smaller company with these 12-seater vans.  It was a much more personal experience, yet somehow not more expensive.  I really don't understand the economics of it.  Why were they so cheap?

Well it could be that a steamroller driver would notice a bus.  Also, see that piece of metal hanging down from the undercarriage below the door?  I'm pretty sure that fell off at some point.  But in all seriousness, the tour guides (and tours as a whole) were fantastic, even though I normally reserve "fantastic" for fours and mr foxes.

Anyway, the tour began and ended with animal sightings.  Say hello to the harlequin ducks!

The harlequin is the jester of the duck world.  If you find regular ducks even vaguely amusing -- and really how could you not? -- then harlequins are sure to quack you up.  Just look at them!  Try to take them seriously.

We also made friends with some more horses. These two are helping each other to shed their winter coats:

Icelandic horses live happily outside year round, so they must be pretty shaggy in the winter.

For lunch we stopped by a small place which doesn't get many tourists, judging from their reaction together with the menu and the fact that there weren't any tourists there.  Authentic!  The choices were catfish and catfish soup.  I think Catherine could do with a little less authenticity, but catfish it was!  She had (some of) the fish soup and I had the fish plus the fish from her fish soup.

This is some sort of sea catfish, quite different from our usual freshwater cats.

The dark gray one.

It did not taste particularly like catfish.

After lunch the sightseeing really began.  Hey, who wants to play the Icelandic version of Where's Waldo?  It's called Where's Jón?

If you look closely, you will see that our tour guide is under the van trying to fix the piece of metal that fell off.  I hope you didn't think I was kidding about that!  We were a little worried, but apparently it wasn't a very important piece of metal.

While he did that, we took some time to soak in this absurd panorama of the Snaefellsnes peninsula:

Be sure to zoom in!

This right here is a perfect showcase of Iceland's geology.  Iceland sits atop the continental divide between the North American and Eurasian plates, and as they drift apart, lava comes up and makes Iceland bigger.  In the foreground you can see several stages of ground in the making: lava rocks, on which moss takes hold, ultimately decomposing into soil and allowing grass to grow.

In the background is a veritable mishmash of mountains that don't belong together.  At the left is a random flat-top mountain.  Next to it, with its head in the clouds, is the Snaefellsjokull mountain.  Which is actually a volcano.  With a glacier on top.  Then moving toward the middle we have a string of mountains which, while right next to each other, are completely different colors, ranging from brown to red to gray.  And then, yes, there is a cliche waterfall coming down.  Mm hmm.  Go a little farther to the right and the mountains are covered with snow, despite apparently not being any taller than the snowless mountains around them.  This is bad CGI.  If you saw this in a movie you would roll your eyes.  These things do not belong together, but here they are.

These two do not belong together either, but here they are:

Of course I mean Klettsgata and Frambudir, which, despite being two completely different places, are supposedly in the exact same direction because some bonehead decided to use a square pole.

There is actually a story behind this photo, or rather in front of it, or wherever the photographer can be found.  Here we met a...flamboyant?...American guy who had been to Iceland 11 times and was just so excited that we had made it.  He gushed for a while about how he had fallen in love with the country, and I think he imagined in us an earlier version of himself, which simply overjoyed him.  Here's a representative bit of the longer conversation:

Him: And next time you really should rent a car, which is the way to truly unlock the wonders of Iceland, and you absolutely must go to Stykkisholmur, that's my favorite place in the world.  It has the best water and do you know Bobby Fischer, the chess legend?  He wanted to live in Stykkisholmur before he died, and can you imagine, this famous chess player who can live anywhere in the world and he chooses Stykkisholmur!  It really is a beautiful place, my favorite in the world...

Me (thinking): I'm sure Stykkisholmur is amazing but wasn't Bobby Fischer, like, wanted for arrest in the United States for playing a Soviet during an embargo or something?  So he had to, like, live out his life in countries that wouldn't extradite him?  Isn't he like the world's worst example of a famous person who can live anywhere he wants?

Me (aloud): Umm could you take a picture of us in front of this sign?

Him: Oh of course.  Wait oh my god this is so emotional...

So emotional, I kid you not.  He said that.  Our photographer really was very nice, he was just very italicized, a caricature of a caricature of a character.  In any case, a bit of wiki research reveals:

In 1972, [Fischer] captured the World Championship from Boris Spassky of the USSR in a match widely publicized as a Cold War confrontation. The match, held in Reykjavík, Iceland, attracted more worldwide interest than any chess match before or since...Seeking ways to evade deportation to the United States, Fischer wrote a letter to the government of Iceland in early January 2005 and asked for Icelandic citizenship...the Althing agreed unanimously to grant Fischer full citizenship in late March for humanitarian reasons, as they felt he was being unjustly treated by the U.S. and Japanese governments,^[306] and also in recognition of his 1972 match, which had "put Iceland on the map".

So, yeah, slightly special circumstances.  But anyway.

Next we visited the nesting grounds of some Arctic terns, or "Arctic sterns" as our tour guide insisted on calling them, despite a couple of attempts to set the record straight.  Sterns are his favorite bird, but he is not their favorite human.  In fact here they are squawking at him quite sternly before divebombing to defend their nests.

Jon says he was pecked many times in his childhood, but it's okay so long as you hold up a fist for them to attack instead of your face.  Despite his reassurances, we watched him march well into the danger zone before following suit.  And then the moment we got to him, fists held high, he held up a big stick and asked us, "Where are your sticks?!?  It hurts to get pecked in the hand!"  Tricksy tour guide.

Here's another tern, this time coming for me:

Just a few feet away...

Fortunately I was stern with him and he swooped up at the last moment.

Okay this post is getting long so let's skip to the end.  If you want to see everything on this tour, you will have to go on it yourself!

The capstone for our Snaefellsnes tour was a visit to a cove which, according to our guide, was home to a pair of friendly seals.  I scoured the cove with my eyes and binoculars for 20 minutes, but I caught not a glimpse of them.  It was on the chilly side, so naturally Catherine had retreated to the warmth of a nearby cafe, where she ate delicious carrot cake with many of our fellow travelers.  But I was not content to give up, so I turned my gaze out to sea.  And out there, way out there, I saw...a rock.  A big, whale-shaped rock. With waves constantly moving across it, the rock appeared to be in motion, swimming.  But I could see that it was a rock, because unlike most people, I am properly calibrated on the matter of whales versus rocks.  A rock can look like a whale, and there are a lot more rocks than whales.

Halfway between me and the rock, though, I noticed a whole swarm of seagulls ("flock" is for respectable birds, please).  They were going crazy.  Mine? Mine? Mine?  Why?  What's out there?  If you don't ask that kind of question, you will never stare intently at the right place for long enough to see what I saw. And what I saw was the reason there were no seals.  I ran back to the cafe and gestured to Catherine to come out.

Catherine: I think he sees something out there!
Guide: I'm sure it's a rock.
Me: It's not a rock, come see.
Australian Tourist: I see something, look!
Me: You're pointing at the rock.  It's not that rock.  But between us and the rock there's a pod of whales.  Look where the seagulls are.  It's a feeding frenzy.
Guide: Oh I see!  Whales, everyone!  Look out there! No, not the rock!

I'm sure every time our guide takes people to this cove, someone sees a whale and it is always that same stupid rock.  But this time there were also half a dozen orca whales out there, and they were busy hunting seals.

Or fish.  Okay, probably fish.  But it's possible the seals from that cove will never be heard from again.

In case it isn't obvious, minkes have nothing on orcas.  Though we got a lot closer to the minkes on the whale-watching boat, this was a much more exciting sighting.  Unlike the minkes, which really just moseyed along poking up their backs every once in a while between dives, the orcas would cruise along the surface as they hunted, and instead of being scattered about, there were a lot of them in the same place.  Unlike the wimpy, undersized dorsal fin of the minke whale, male orcas have a dorsal fin that is tall, distinctive, perhaps even iconic.  And whereas MINKE has never once appeared in a New York Times puzzle, ORCA is everyone's favorite crossword whale! It fits right in, due to its convenient letters and black-and-white coloration.  (Just like everyone's favorite crossword cookie, the OREO).

Though it is not always the case, these particular orcas had a white patch behind the fins.  But there was something that confused me.  Some of the whales had orange instead of white.  I didn't know what to make of it.  When I got home, though, I googled "orange orca" and immediately found this.  Newborn orcas have their white areas stained orange from the womb!

I don't know how our whale sighting could have been any more epic.  Our guide said it was only the second time he had seen whales on one of those tours.  We spent half an hour watching the orcas do their thing, and then we headed back to Reykjavik.

And that, chronologically speaking, is when I ate my lamb boat.  I already posted this but I think we need to see it again.  This lamb boat is a metaphor for the whole day, for it is long and stuffed with awesome:

YES.

Xan: Iceland and England (Part 3): Lammykins and puffins and whales, oh my!

Do you know Mark Bittman's minimalist steak recipe?  Salt pepper meat heat eat.

The Icelandic version actually has an extra step: Salt pepper meet meat heat eat.  It is a peculiar fact that in Iceland, I saw most of the animals roaming free before I saw them on my plate.  Lambs, whales, puffins, hot dogs...you name it. (Joking, Mr. Perkins!  Icelandic hot dogs are made from a mixture of beef, lamb, and pork. Dog is not on the menu...yet).


Lambs are cute...

They don't really belong in this post but look how fluffy they are!

Whales are majestic...

A minke whale, the most common sighting.

Puffins are a little of both...

Lots and lots of puffins.  Binoculars are a necessity here, sorry.

Zoomed way in, you can sort of tell it's a puffin.

Evidently whales and puffins are a bit more majestic than a dinky camera can capture.  You would think they were special, if you saw them with your own eyes.  So it's something to think about, whether you want to eat these special creatures.  Personally, I did think about it, and I'm fine with it.  But your mileage may vary, which is why I decided to be tasteful and not put my live animal pics right next to the corresponding food pics.  It was a strong aesthetic urge, so...you're welcome, Lin.

By the way, note that sustainability isn't really the issue here. The puffin and minke whale (pronunciation here) are not even close to being endangered.  There are literally millions of puffins in Iceland, and an estimated 100,000 minkes in the North Atlantic alone.  Of these 100,000, Iceland hunted about 60 last year...which if you ask me is a shockingly low number.  They actually have a quota of about 200 whales, but they did not hit it.  Apparently a whale can feed a lot of people.

Okay, let's meet the meat.  Now that I've eaten whale, let me tell you what I think.  I had a "whale burger," but it's really a whale steak in a bun, not ground whale chuck (or whatever the whale equivalent of shoulder meat is).

Sorry I don't have a picture of the inside; it is a red meat that looks a lot like beef.  And it tastes a lot like beef, too, but with a distinctive whaley flavor (gamey? funky? fishy, maybe? don't tell the marine biologists on me) which subtracted more than it added. It was really interesting, but probably the best reason not to eat whale is that it is a more expensive, less tasty version of beef.  At least that is my first impression, based on a single steak from some unspecified part of the giant animal.


The puffin, on the other hand, was excellent.  I'm not a food critic, and I just had a little bit, and it was marinated in something, so I really don't know if I can describe what puffin tastes like...but what I had was tasty.  Not particularly strongly flavored or anything, just...nice.

Marinated puffin with blueberries

So to see these animals off the plate, we caught a whale-watching boat out of Reykjavik.  It first took us past the puffin island pictured above, where thousands of puffins were nesting.  They didn't seem to mind our presence, and we were able to get pretty close.  Very cool!

Then it was out to sea, where we saw half a dozen minke whales, at least one of which is pictured above. (poor taste!  poor taste!)  For comparison, half a dozen is six more than we saw on our family vacation to New Zealand in 1998.  So, pretty successful by that metric at least.


Unfortunately, Catherine has another metric called an "internal thermometer."  It is basically all she really cares about, and it was more than a little cold and windy on the boat.  The sea was angry that day, my friends.  "I'm not going to make it," she said.  I thought we were sunk.  


But the crew saved the day with a supply of windbreaking red "overalls"...and I really do mean overalls.  Here's Catherine all decked out:

And here she has stolen my binoculars to look at puffins:

I call this one "Wall-E"

On Linden's suggestion, I combined this with an old picture of myself hiding from biting flies:

What's so funny, E-va?

Xan: Iceland and England (Part 2)

If I didn't say so already, Iceland was pretty awesome. Somehow no one in America knows this, although it's just a 5-hour flight from New York. But we here at Vongsafood, we know it, because somehow a majority of us have been to Iceland.  Let's face it, economic collapse is good for tourism, and Icelandair has great package deals if you'd like to stop by on your way to Europe.

I'll tell you about some of the more interesting sights we saw, but first we have to get there.  Our story begins as so many of our days began: with a long drive out of Reykjavik, broken up by both planned and unplanned stops.  You have to understand that in Iceland they drive on the right side of the road, except when they don't.  If, say, there is construction on the right side of the road, your tour van might find its way over to the left.  And then a steamroller might suddenly decide to reverse into you without looking.  Hypothetically speaking, this is something that could happen.

Here's what it might look like, if it did happen:

Artist's rendition of a hypothetical Icelandic steamroller, thoughtfully entitled, "Before and After"

This piece is entitled, "Van with Crumple Zone Leaks Radiator Fluids"

And then you would probably have to wait, like, a couple hours for another van to come pick you up.  Or something like that.

If this happened an hour into your first tour on your first day in Iceland, you would probably be like, "Jam Doughnut, I really wish that guy had looked over his shoulder!  You gotta be careful with those things!"  Well, if wishes were horses...

Wait!  Horses!  Icelandic horses!

There are friendly horses everywhere in Iceland, and they are always happy to come over and say hello to stranded travelers.  They like to be hand-fed the exact same grass they are already eating, and also they will let you pet their soft noses.

They did bring the flies, but Catherine improvised a fly mask. 

Apparently these horses were brought over from Mongolia long ago -- as you can see they are short and stocky -- and the population has remained unadulterated since then.  Iceland has strict rules about importing horses, and even an Icelandic horse is not allowed back in once it leaves.

What could be better than a few friendly horses to kill an hour?  More horses! All of a sudden, a hundred horses came stampeding down the road, kicking up dust and shaking the ground beneath our feet in a serious way.

They were being herded by a sheepdog and a handful of riders on horseback.

So, yeah, that was pretty cool.

Speaking of livestock, Iceland also has a lot of sheep.  It probably isn't much of an exaggeration to say there are sheep within sight of the road most of the time.  And at this time of year, many of them are cute fluffy lammykins.

A black sheep!

If you have to be a sheep, Iceland is a great place to be.  They roam free all year until the fall, at which time they are rounded up and sorted back to their owners.  As a result, Icelandic lamb has a reputation as the ultimate freerange lamb.

Lamb shanks!

I was very excited to try the lamb boat (Pinnabatur) from Hlolla Batar, and it did not disappoint:

Note the fried onions!

Look how much lamb there is!

As a matter of fact I went back a second time.  It was right in the city center.


I also bought some lamb at the grocery store.  Most of the lamb was marinated in some sort of orange mixture, so I figured I should try that.  Bounty from the Bonus supermarket:

These fried dried onions are delicious and ubiquitous in Iceland. Needless to say, I smuggled a few bags home.

Gratuitous fried onions!

The ingredients were in Icelandic, but paprika accounts for the color.  In any case, we enjoyed it!  But I don't know how much of that was the lamb versus the marinade.  Maybe someone else can tell the quality of the lamb under all these spices; I myself do not claim such a discerning palate.  I just like lamb, okay?  I care a lot more about the simple fact that lamb was so abundant than the supposed quality difference.  In fact, there was more lamb at the airport than at my home grocery store.  For real!  Even though that makes no sense!

Am I missing something?  Seriously, why would you buy meat at an airport?