A grand goose egg washed down with elderflower cordial – a natural delight

I’ve just polished off a glass of the first of the Doyenne’s delicious homemade elderflower cordial. This is living off nature’s bounty. It’s the year’s first free offering from the countryside, and it’s on our doorstep.

Enormous soup-plate-sized heads of elderflower blossom, ivory coloured and heavily scented were cut from the bushes.

Dissolve 1kg sugar and 80g citric acid in two pints boiling water and add two lemons, sliced. Add 20/25 elderflower florets to the “bree”. Cover and leave overnight and next day strain into bottles.

Couldn’t be simpler, but you have to remember it’s a concentrate and must be diluted. Taken neat it’ll probably shift your fillings!

It’s a tremendous lifesaver in the summertime. After an afternoon’s heavy exertion cutting grass, nothing compares with the cool refreshing pleasure of a pint of cordial smothered with ice and a handful of crushed spearmint leaves scattered on top.

Providentially it can be frozen, prolonging the pleasure into autumn. And then there’s the anticipation of next spring and the whole mouth-watering process starting all over again.

A box at the roadside outside Fettercairn advertised goose eggs for sale. It had been a while since I’d had a goose egg so we stopped and bought nice brown hens’ eggs and a large white goose egg.

Back home we got out the kitchen scales and weighed the goose egg which was the equivalent of three hens’ eggs.

There seemed no point in delaying eating our goose egg so we had it for supper.

As you’ll see from the picture the yolk is a rich buttercup yellow.

The Doyenne made scrambled eggs which were the same deep colour and fortuitously one goose egg is just enough to make a delicious meal for two.

Plenty of toast with lashings of butter were a perfect accompaniment.

When I was a youngster Mrs Jess Scott, whose husband Jim farmed Mains of Gallery, would give me a turkey egg when my father and I visited.

Father and Jim drank whisky while I was taken through to the kitchen and sat down at the kitchen table for my tea. The eggs are midway in size between hens’ eggs and goose eggs, pointed at one end and speckled white in colour. I’ve never seen them in the shops and it’s so long ago I can’t remember how they tasted, but I know I always enjoyed them.

It’s nearly three weeks since Hamish joined the Whitson household and he is coming to terms well with being uprooted from his old familiar surroundings.

It’s seven months since we lost Inka and we were in danger of forgetting the responsibilities of having a dog in the house. Neighbours have been quick to notice the new arrival and they ask kindly after him.

We live in a dog-friendly street and Hamish is going to fit in well. He sees himself as a cut above the average Labrador and can pass them out on walks with a superior acknowledgement.

Does he have any hideous habits as his predecessor Macbeth had? Well, if he does they haven’t surfaced yet.

He has a habit of disappearing at speed out of the back door barking hysterically at only he knows what. We can live with that and I’d much rather he barked at unwelcome intruders than he rolled over to have his tummy tickled

I was asked recently why we call common sorrel, Soldiers’ Blood. You’ll see it flowering in May and June on roadsides and grassy banks and its small blood-red

flowers die away to rusty coloured seeds, which may be the simple explanation.

But could the story behind the name go back to 1746 and the Battle of Culloden, the last battle to be fought on British soil?

In less than an hour the blood of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Highland army, the cream of the Highland clans, lay spilt upon Drummossie Moor, marking the beginning of the end of the culturally separate identity of the Highland people.

Other floral tributes are associated with Culloden.

Dianthus barbatus, the flower we know as Sweet William, was supposedly so named by the English to honour the English commander and king’s third son William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, to celebrate his great victory over the Scots.

Not to be outdone, and in memory of Butcher Cumberland’s brutal suppression of the Highland clans after the battle, we Scots named the rather noxious-smelling ragwort, Stinking Billy.

A folklore has grown up around many of our plants and flowers. Some say that the lyrics of the children’s party game of Ringa-ring-a-roses are a description of the symptoms of the Black Death in the 1340s.

Others believe they originated during the Great Plague of London in 1665.

Or did, perhaps, some other forgotten battle take place on a field of flowering sorrel and the name Soldiers’ Blood just naturally evolved from the spilt blood of the fallen soldiers on the crimson flowers?

The goose egg was the equivalent of three hens’ eggs

NATURALLY GOOD: A single goose egg, with its deep buttercup yellow yolk, was enough for a delicious, nutritious lunch for two.