Malahide, Migas and Milk (hot, with chocolate)

1) Today I met a friend for lunch in Malahide, a town about 15 minutes up the coast via DART. Malahide has a nice town centre with many restaurants and shops. I had a tasty shepherd's pie at Cafe Provence. French shepherd's pie? Le pâté en croûte du berger! Perhaps the French influence was using wine in the mince, which provided a nice flavor dimension. It was cold today, cloudy in the low 40s. Perfect for piping hot pie. My friend's pasta carbonara was scrumptious, based on my one bite.

2) One year Bill made oxtail soup for Valentine's Day. This year, MIGAS! This tex-mex concoction of scrambled eggs, onion, tortilla chips, and garlic tasted great with some salsa from our Austin pack. (Again, thank you Helen and Lisa!)

3) To close out this chilly day, we used the hot chocolate stirrers we bought in Brussels. A chunk of Belgian chocolate melted in milk. Good stuff!

Scenes from the Park

I walked in St. Anne's Park today. Always a new path to explore.

More on Our Weekend

Saturday we took off around 11:00 for our drive to County Wexford. We avoided the M50, driving past the Dublin docks and down through the towns known to me as DART stations: Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Leary in case you're ever quizzed), Booterstown, Dalkey and Bray.

We drove past the campus in Greystones where Bill attended the men's retreat. We kept on the coast road, though Arklow, stopping for lunch in Wicklow.



Outside Wexford we stopped at the Wexford Wildfowl Reserve. The Reserve, a key winter home for many fowl including up to 10,000 Greenland White-Fronted Geese, is located on a mud flat known as the North Slob, from the Irish word slab, meaning mud (or a soft-fleshed person, the origin of our current use of the word).

We arrived at our destination right before dusk. It's staying light until 5:30 or so now. Ballinkeele was built in 1840 by the Maher family, farmers and horse breeders. The home is still owned by Mahers and exhibits an amaranthine grandeur. John and Margaret Maher live at Ballinkeele with their three dogs and from February until November host guests in the bedrooms in the main part of the house. The name of the house means "off the narrow;" the property boundary on one side is a small river, or narrow.

After Margaret gave us a tour, we had tea in the main drawing room. As the day faded, John came in and closed the internal shutters on the 12-foot tall windows. We had scheduled dinner at Ballinkeele; Margaret is a Euro-Toque chef. At 7:15 or so we met the other guests in the drawing room for drinks. We were sharing the home with four other guests: Mary and Pauline from Dublin, and Mary's brother Des and wife Aisling (pronounced Ashling) from Enniscorthy, a town about 20 km up the road.

Any food would have tasted delicious under the gleaming crystal chandelier in the beautiful dining room. Even better, our meal was truly marvelous. A starter of eggplant with feta followed by passion fruit sorbet. The seemingly simple entrée of impeccably fresh salmon on a bed of spinach with cream sauce, potatoes, leeks and cauliflower worked together perfectly. Dessert was a gorgeous panna cotta with berries. After a cheese plate, we retired to the drawing room for Irish coffee (me) and tea (Bill). We chatted with our companions until midnight, the end of a lovely day.

On Sunday we stopped at the Irish National Heritage Park. The Park provides a trail through Irish history with recreations of dwellings and burial and ceremonial sites from 5,000 years ago until the Viking times. We saw an example of a Rath, or ring fort, that would contain dwellings for an extended family; the livestock would be brought within the fort walls at night. Villages often sprung up around the rath locations because cow paths and other "infrastructure" would be in place. Raheny, the part of Dublin where we live, is derived from Rath Éanna.

We ate lunch in Enniscorthy, and tried to visit a number of sites that are closed for the winter. We took the N11 which is more direct but has plenty of lovely green hills to admire. We missed a turn in Dublin, and so wandered through City Centre, but we are such pros now that it was no big thing. We arrived back at our Rath around 6:00.

Weekend in County Wexford

Today on O'Connell Street

Jambalayski and Pancakes

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez! Or as we say in Ireland, "Have a pancake." Seems Mardi Gras is celebrated in Ireland as Pancake Day. The day preceding Ash Wednesday is also known as Shrove Tuesday. Shrove is the past tense of "to shrive" which means "to hear confession." (Shrive is also the basis of the term "short shrift"--to disregard another person's problems.)

Pancakes are a delicious and easy way to consume the dairy products the family will deny themselves during Lent. They also help the cook use any stores of cooking fat, hence Fat Tuesday. Also, did you know that carnivale means "Goodbye Meat!" derived from carne=meat and vale=fare you well (as in valediction).

Last night I learned from a Finnish gentleman that tradition in Finland includes pea soup as preparation for fasting. Most Finnish households eat pea soup every Thursday before the Friday fast, and the soup is also part of their Shrove Tuesday meal. They also eat pancakes, typically as dessert. Bill and I were happy to hear this, as we've got pea soup in our dinner plans for this week. We might be a little out of order on everything--pancakes last Saturday, soup during Lent, but we'll try to fit it all in.

We definitely couldn't let the season pass without jambalaya. Bill made a terrific batch of chicken and sausage jambalaya on Saturday. The basic ingredients were easy to find; he used polish sausage instead of andouille. It was really great, as good as the batch that made me fall in love with him back in '94.

Bill prepares jamabalaya in our kitchen (note: the pita bread in his hand is not an ingredient)







Good ol' Cajun goodness








I'm sure there is a sadness (and hunger) in Austin today as the townspeople mourn the absence the Annual Gunter Mardi Gras Food Fest. There's a little sadness in Raheny, Dublin too. I'm hoping Bill will still make a King Cake.

Behold the Groundhog

Bill and I were at a gathering yesterday comprised of several hardy Irish individuals (North and Republic varietals), a few US blow ins, and one Canadian. As is perhaps unavoidable in such company, the conversation turned many times to the wacky idioms and customs of the other culture. "The whole world doesn't know when Labor Day is, you know." "How do they know when to stop wearing white?"

When the topic of Groundhog Day came up, someone asked, "Isn't Groundhog Day a day when everything happens over and over again?" This person had never seen the movie, but knew the basic premise, so had only the reference of a day being lived over repeatedly. Our explanations of the true meaning of Groundhog Day made as little sense. We outlined the details: Shadow=More Winter; No Shadow=Spring Awakens. "Is there one groundhog?" "Yes. Punxsutawney Phil."

"But what does it mean?" Once again we were being asked to speak for all America: What does it mean? Why does every person reared in the US know that Feb 2 is dedicated to an indigenous rodent who any other day is more likely to meet with a shotgun than a top hat? Maybe it comes from a farmer's wisdom, based on the counterintuitive idea that sunny skies will actually delay spring? A young man from the heartland (i.e, Nebraska) enlightened us that it stems from a German festival. Eventually I waved my hand and said, "it is independent of all meaning." Which to one person at least, spoke significantly of the philosophical notion of nothingness. And perhaps he has a point, I tend to look for reasons to celebrate, and to me the charm of Groundhog day is we observe GHD for no better reason than "Why not?"

We did explain that for Murray's journalist character in GHD: The Movie, covering GHD is a ludicrous assignment, one of many non-news events that have to occur to maintain the fabric of society. The fact that this movie is potentially creating an idiom unmoored from its cultural reference is fascinating. Perhaps in the next decade persons in Ireland experiencing déjà vu will say, "Ah, I'm having a bit of the groundhog's day." Or for a particularly disturbing sense of the already seen, "Feck all, it's the bleedin' goundhog's day!"

By the way, sorry about the six more weeks of winter!