Gardens, Fairs and Festivals

Spring time in Ireland is busy, beautiful and unpredictable.  Yesterday was sunny and warm with occasional cold gusts, showers, downpours, hail, and more sun.  In the past few weeks we have visited a local botanical garden, worked in our garden, the Morley's garden and a garden plot of another friend of ours.  Lots of dirt under the nails and lots of hope for herbs and veg to come.

 I'm working on inserting a nice album, but until i get that sorted here is a link to an album of these pictures in dropbox.

We've also been involved in this pasts week's Ashford Country Fair, which was a community event and fundraiser put on by the local parish of the Church of Ireland.  We met loads of great Ashfordites and actually had nearly a full day of sun.  Abigail and I watched a sheep dog demonstration, a blacksmith shoe a horse, saw lambs and donkeys and watched a dog show.  Sarah was busy the whole time working at the bake sale tent.  I also helped with some kids games, and Abigail helped me too.

We are also involved in the upcoming Wicklow Arts Festival, which seems like a great weekend to visit Wicklow, in case you were thinking about it (may 24-26).  Sarah has been helping orchestrate an environmental-themed photography competition for kids, and we both will be helping out at the festival.  I will also be reading something at a poetry event they are having on the 26th.  We're quite excited about it.

Meanwhile, other fairs, festivals, car-boot sales and coffee mornings are happening all around the area.  It's a little bit like our community is coming out of hibernation, and it's exciting to see things becoming busy and vibrant.   And green, although it's been green since we arrived, it's getting EVEN GREENER. 

Irish Food #2

We love scones.  I used to think I knew what a scone is, but everywhere I go they call something different a scone.  Turns out it's a very broad term.

Around here what most people mean when they say scone is something like what we might call a biscuit.  They come in white or wheat, which they call brown, and they are quite tasty, especially with jam and Irish butter.  

Our Irish cookbook, which sadly has been returned to the library, had a basic brown bread scone recipe which we tried and loved.  They are a little more dense than standard southern (American) and they get a nice crusty bite to them.  They are great for eating plain or with butter, jam, cheese, bacon, really anything.  We made sausage gravy last night and used brown bread scones in place of biscuits and I think we were all agreed, it was fabulous. They looked like this:

Here is the recipe, the way we did it.  

2 cups self rising white flour

2 cups whole wheat flour (coarse)

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup yogurt

3/4 cup milk

Mix.  Flatten on the counter and cut like a biscuit (you might need some flour for this step)  We use a small glass to cut, you could use a cup, a cookie cutter, or just slice it in to squares with a knife if you want.  Bake them on a tray at 425 until golden brown and delicious looking.  Eat them as soon as you can without burning your mouth.  I recommend the raspberry jam and butter route (standard irish) The egg and cheese route is also quite good (more unusual but not unheard of)   Or, there's always gravy (unheard of)

Irish Food #1

Today we have a new blog segment called  Irish Food, in which we make Irish Food and tell you about it. 

Good craic. 

One of the most common questions we used to get when we told people we were moving to Ireland was "What do they eat there?"   There are a lot of stereotypes (corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, beer) and some of them are pretty true (potatoes, mostly) but we have been trying to experience the real Irish cuisine of today.

That's a little tricky for two reasons.  One is that half the people we know aren't originally from Ireland.  The other is that when we do eat with Irish friends, they like to cook all kinds of things, of course, not necessarily Irish food.  If someone came to our house we wouldn't serve them hot dogs and apple pie. (well maybe apple pie)  We would make Mexican, Thai, Italian... anything but USAmerican food.  Ick.

So we do have somewhat of a sense of how people eat here (yes, there are potatoes involved) and we also get a sense of local eating habits based on what is available at the grocery store (huge parsnip selection, several varieties of cabbage, and yes, a whole potato isle).  Another resource for us has been the library, where we have checked out several Irish cookbooks.

Boxty: think potato crepe with cabbage and bacon filling. 

Last night we made a creation that seemed to us to be very Irish, and even though we've never seen it or heard of it anywhere other than the cookbook we got from the library, we gave it a try.  And it was great.  The book is called "The Irish Kitchen" by Biddy White Lennon and Georgina Campbell, and we like it because there is lots of history, plus lots of recipes we haven't seen other places.  This one is called Boxty, which I think is the transliteration from the Irish, but I really have no idea what it means. 

We would change a few things next time, which I have noted below.  *update I just had leftover Boxty for lunch, and lets just say it's not one of those meals that can be just as good reheated.  Finish it off when you make it.  Especially if you don't own a microwave.* 

Boxty

1 lb Potatoes (we used red and it worked well) peeled and cubed
2/3 c. flour
2/3 c. milk
salt & pepper

Puree uncooked potatoes until they are liquidized.  (Takes a while)

Mix the flour and milk with the now desecrated potato.  Adjust the amounts of flour or milk to make it the consistency of a thin pancake batter.  Cook in a pan with butter, like pancakes.  We made them a little thinner, more like a crepe, but you can do it how you like.

Filling

We used half a head of white cabbage and a few slices of bacon which we diced.  We cooked down the bacon then cooked the cabbage in the pan with the bacon until it was soft.  We also added a splash of cider vinegar, a spoonful of mustard, some salt and pepper.  In the future, we would either use a different kind of cabbage (red or savoy) or possibly fresh brussel sprouts.  Also it would be good with some onion. 

We served it like crepes, with the filling rolled up in the pancakes.  It was quite good. 

We also made something called "fish cakes" which was really good, I'll post that another time.

If you try it, let us know how it comes out.

An Easter time of year...

This has been a different kind of Lent for me, usually Lent is full of "spiritual reflection" and "meaningful fasts," involving me choosing Scriptures to memorize, books to read, foods to give up... but this year I didn't plan anything. Gasp. I know, shocking, right?  There are a lot of reasons I could give you for why I couldn't come up with anything and even more why I didn't follow through with anything.  I just felt stuck.   

As much as I hate to admit it, sometimes I have a difficult time letting go of things.  Even though we left most everything behind in another country, it's easy to hold onto them in my heart.  To wish for them.  To be sad that they are no more with me.  To hold on too tightly.  

But the other day I was reading this Scripture while I laid down with Abigail and I came across these verses... "¹² Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal^, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³ Beloved^, I do not consider that I have made it my own;but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Perhaps my focus has been too much on what is in the past instead of what is ahead...  

All of these things were on my mind as I put Abigail to bed Saturday night (the day before Easter), finished cleaning the kitchen, and headed off for an Easter Vigil service at a local church.  Walking past the paschal fire I made my way into the cold stone building; while the building was dark, dim lights from small candles filled the room.  As we sang songs, heard Scripture, and renewed our vows, the light grew in my heart. The light of hope, of newness, of expectation... and I heard these words: 

     Alleluia.  Christ is risen. 

     He is risen indeed.  Alleluia! 

And so, now is the time to move on to a new season, a new life.... Easter!

Now is a time to celebrate, to rejoice in life, to dance in expectation, and sing at the top of our lungs -- 

     CHRIST IS RISEN! 

Here are some of the experiences for which I am celebrating:

 

spending a morning petting animals with my family... and having some sun 

 Adult Easter Egg Hunts... with Cadbury eggs (caramel & creme filled)! 

 

Getting the ground ready for our garden 

 

morning walks near the Irish Sea 

 

Alleluia, Alleluia. 

Failing

We’ve been doing a lot since we moved in, and some of our endeavors have even been somewhat successful.  We have made some great meals, stayed within our budget, and even managed to open a bank account.

Since we’re living on (your) support, we’re making every effort to stretch (y)our euros as far as possible.  A lot of those efforts (other than keeping the thermostat at “15”) have been what you might refer to as homesteading.  Making our own stuff.   Sarah has been knitting up a storm, but some of my projects have met with less success. 

Bread.  I’ve baked a lot of bread in my day, especially in the last year or two, but we’ve found that every ingredient is different here.  Different Flour.  Different Yeast.  You get the idea.   Sarah recently bought me a fantastic book called “Make the Bread, Buy the Butter” which is all about things that are better to make at home, and of course, bread is number one.  It’s cheaper, it’s better, and it’s funner.  

I have tried that recipe twice, and both times have been relative failures.  Didn’t rise enough, didn’t bake enough, too tough, too gummy, too dry.  I will make our bread.  I will. Eventually.  For now we’re buying half-loaves of sliced bread and hoping my next batch will be a keeper. 

Yoghurt.  (You may know it as Yogurt) I followed the recipe to the letter and the result was a kind of a slimy, stringy goo that tasted like milk and we used it like yogurt, until we thought maybe it had gone bad.  Huge fail, basically.  I will try again, even though I don’t really know what I did wrong.  It would be really nice to save that €3 per week, especially since the only ingredients in yogurt are 1) milk and 2)yogurt.   (I think maybe I didn’t heat the milk enough.)

Fire.  We have a fireplace in our living room and since our house is heated primarily by an inefficient combination of kerosene fueled boiler and radiators, we thought we would try a nice fire.  Actually, Sarah thought I should try a nice fire.  I took one look at the data on particulates and air quality with regard to solid fuel and decided that Kerosene was actually our best bet.  

But it is nice to have a fire every now and then.  Or I should say it WOULD be nice.  So far I have made 4 fires, and none of them made a noticeable difference in the temperature of our living room, not to mention the rest of the house.  Here is a list of my failures in order.  Fire 1: Not enough kindling;  Fire 2: kindling too damp (I found it in our yard); Fire 3: Plenty of kindling (I borrowed a hatchet) but not a good shape, logs kind of smoldered then went out; Fire 4: wood was wet.  Why they sell wet firewood I have no idea.  

I’ve been googling it but I would take any advice you can give me, dear reader.  The most common practice here seems to be using a combination of wood and coal.  We’ll see.

Needless to say I'm learning a lot, and pretty soon (I hope) I will be the guy who builds awesome fires, makes delicious bread, and saves tonnes of euros on yoghurt.  Gorgeous.  

 

Lots to do

(left: Abigail making a to-do list for us)

We've been trying to send out a newsletter with updates about once a month, but sometimes there is  a lot happening in between, so here is a mid-month update!

We have a lot of plates spinning, so to speak, like renting a house (almost there!) opening a bank account (maybe today!) starting a parents and toddlers play group (next thursday!)  and making sure we're legally resident (got our ID cards that show we are registered aliens!  yay!)  So we're spending a lot of time slowly chipping away at all of those tasks. 

We knew we would find Christians in Ireland, they've been here longer than in the U.S. (By about 1200 years!)  But what we didn't expect was the kind of generous, open, even ecumenical atmosphere that we've discovered here in Wicklow Town.  This past Sunday we visited with a Methodist church and this Wednesday we will observe Ash Wednesday with the local Church of Ireland.  Everyone has been very welcoming, they even like to say "you're very welcome!"  all the time. 

We are also helping out with the St. Patrick's Day Parade.  It sounds like a stereotype, but St Patrick is a really big deal here.  Really big.  We'll post more about this in the coming weeks, including Wicklow Town's attempt at a world record, which as of now I am not at liberty to discuss.  Needless to say, it will be a lot of fun.

Thanks again for following us, and keep in touch!  We want to hear from you! 

Love,

Ted Sarah and Abigail

Expectations

Whenever you go someplace new there are expectations, and there are always surprises, good and bad.  Here are a few of ours from the first two weeks:

Expectation:  Green, damp and sheepy.

Reality:  It REALLY is green and there REALLY are a lot of sheep.

Expectation:  Everything is expensive here.

Reality:  Not much more expensive than Washington state, if you eat like a local.  If you try to eat like an American, good luck.

Expectation: Lots of potatoes

Reality:  LOTS of potatoes.  Still trying to sample them all, but so far, great!

Expectation: People are always drinking beer

Reality:  There is beer, and lots of social things take place in pubs (from knitting groups to chess clubs) but there is not a noticeable difference in drinking.  At least not that we've noticed...

Expectation:  People are always drinking tea

Reality: Sarah kept track on Thursday:  She had 12 cups. In one day.

Expectation: They love their soccer/football and rugby

Reality:  They do like those sports, but they main scene here is what they call GAA:  Gaelic Athletic Association, a kind of national amateur sports league for sports like Hurling and Gaelic football.  That's a whole other post... for now just google it.

Expectation:  They like fish and chips here

Reality:  Fish and Chips are popular (mostly the chips, what we call fries in the states) but the place where you get them, called "the chipper" is the real attraction:  think fairground food, but year round.  We've yet to try the curry chips or the taco chips, and really we have no idea WHAT to expect there...


And here are a few realities we had no expectations for at all:

Nothing happens before 11 am.  Nothing.

Rainbows are a daily occurrence.  There are rainbows ALL the time.  It's pretty cool.

Flour is different.  We've had to rethink baking because the flour is totally different.


All said, it's been going really well, and in just over two weeks we have a car, a likely place to live, and we're even officially registered with immigration to stay here for a whole year.  Things are going well, and we're ready to see what's next!