George Square

Festival season has started in Edinburgh, we have another week until The Fringe actually starts but the city is full of signs it is almost here, the venues are all setting up and the big shows have posters up all over the city (special boards and boxes have been constructed  for this purpose). One of the big venues is Assemby at George Square Gardens, it actually being used for the "Edinburgh Food Festival", this is it's first year and is part of "The Year of Food and Drink, Scotland 2015".

I visited it today, it's not huge but it did have a few interesting stalls, it also has entertainment in the evening when I guess it might get busier, anyway I did buy a few interesting bits and pieces including a grow your own herb kit, I'd been thinking it would be good to have some fresh herbs to use when cooking and thought this starter kit could sit on my window sill, it will be interesting to see if it works. I also bought some small bottles of flavoured rapeseed oil, one black truffle, one orange and one lime. There was a stall selling "mara seedweed", it's basically dried seaweed which is then ground down into a sort of powder (similar to dried herbs), their basic version tasted a bit fishy to me but ended up buying a wee tin of "Smoked Applewood Dulse", which had an interesting smoked flavour, better for red meat. I also bought a wee jar of lemon honey which was quite interesting.

There were a couple stalls selling cooked food, but nothing I really fancied although I did buy a "peanut butter cream cheese doughnut" (which tasted of peanut butter, but not cream cheese) and a cup of cold coffee (it was supposed to be cold) similar to iced coffee but served to a nitrogen fed tap similar to keg beer.

The picture is of one of the beer tents in George Square Gardens, unfortunately it doesn't sell any decent beer (mostly generic brands and Caledonian beers) I'm not sure if there is any significance to the elephant, it quite possible I'll be back here a couple times for Fringe shows in the next few weeks.