Of pheasant plucking and nut cracking

The week began with two more days at Ballater primary school with 22 primary 2s and 3s. Pleasant enough but it didn't fill my heart with longing to return to the classroom. I know I made the right decision to retire from education when I did while I still have enough energy to do all the things that I didn't have time for during the 40 years in the classroom. I am equally sure that teaching was the right career for me and I have not one single regret about spending my life to date doing that. But now the time has come to move on!
I have made contact with my friend Sheila about the possibility of finishing the cracking children's novel that we half finished 5 years ago. She is keen to go for it too so we will talk later today about how we should proceed. There is a Scottish publishering company - Floris Books - which runs an annual competition for novels for the 9 - 12 age group set mainly in Scotland. Our tale of 21st century Peter Pan fits the criteria and their entry date of late February would give us the much needed deadline to work towards.
Other projects still simmering away in the background of my life at the moment are the drama group's murder mystery coming up in less than 3 weeks, the panto which currently takes up minimum of 9 hours a week, and plans for the Third Jacobite Uprising.....
But what of pheasant plucking? The other day a friend phoned offering free pheasants (her husband is a gamekeeper) as they had more than they could deal with after a successful days' sport (Sport? Not what the birds would call it!) Richard said he was willing and able to do the cleaning and plucking so I agreed to take two brace and planned to add them to the menu for Friday night's dinner for Allan, May, Christopher and Nirit. Nirit is Jewish so I wasn't too sure if the pheasant had been treated in a kosher way??? But that is another story. I was out visiting an old neighbour when the pheasant arrived and I came home to the most awful sights and smells in my kitchen. Richard sitting at the kitchen sink wearing his butcher's apron and up to the elbows in carcasses, feathers, guts and blood while an aroma of foul fowl surrounded him. Coolie was enjoying the scene of course. Once all the nasties were dealt with I was left with the next task of deciding how to cook them. Isn't google a wonderful thing? Google is definitely of minor god status in my opinion. Various recipes came up and in the end I decided casseroling in cider sounded good, and I also decided that getting them into the slow cooker early in the morning on Friday and leaving them to their own devices for the day was the way to go. At least that way they wouldn't interfere with all my other culinary plans for the day and if they didn't work out, well, at least they had cost me nothing in either time or money...although they had cost Richard a fair amount of time. I also decided to only use the breasts and to boil up the legs and other bits for Coolie. The resulting casserole was indeed very tasty and gobbled up by my body building nephew at dinner and then again as a top up supper before he went to bed.
Yesterday evening Richard and I treated ourselves to a night at the ballet. The Moscow Ballet were performing the Nutcracker at Pitlochry Theatre...currently our favourite venue. It was most enjoyable. The costumes were beautiful, the music outstanding (though it wasn't live)and the dancing, especially by the principles was divine. How can they move their bodies like that and yet make it seem so effortless? However, we were disappointed a little in the story side of the show. We were expecting the full story of the Nutcracker, very Christmassy etc, but it wasn't quite the version we had hoped for. The first half seemed to be setting the scene and did have a token Christmas tree as part of the set. There were various 'dolls' dancing, plus we got a glimpse of the menacing mice and the toy soldiers. The second half was filled with various corp de ballet routines which were good but not brilliant, interspersed with excellent performances from each of 4 pairs of principles, and an oustanding duet from the prima ballerina and partner but none of it seemed to be related to the story. During the final dance somebody uncovered a toy nutcracker and held it aloft! Still, it was a lovely evening and a bit of culture for us! We are back to Pitlochry next weekend for something completely different which I will tell you about in due course.