Far Too Short a Time in Dublin

By the time we'd checked our luggage and caught the bus into the city, it was late afternoon in Dublin. We got off near Temple Bar, looked at the river Liffey and went in search of lunch. Ryanair may be know for some things but good food isn't one of them. 

Afterwards, we ambled around the narrow streets of Temple Bar, poked our heads into bookshops, took a look at Trinity College and eventually found Oscar Wilde's house. Sadly, you can't go inside it but it didn't take much imagination to image him stepping out on that graceful balcony. 

Later, we stopped at a big boisterous pub for a huge dinner and a watch of the soccer game on TV along with the rest of the crowd. It was dark when we left to catch the bus back to the airport after much too brief a visit. 

Sausages, Banoffee Pie and Murphy's

Probably 60 percent of the photos I took over Easter weekend showed people sitting around a table. 

Breakfast first. I've always considered the English one as the benchmark but it' s a feeble effort compared to a full Irish breakfast. There's bacon and eggs of course, but also sausages, black pudding and potato farls which are a kind of cake. That's Gerry cooking the bangers in the Aga and Valerie making a large vat of soup for lunch. 

To nourish the work crew (that's a couple of them--new friends for us--chopping vegetables at the table) we also had Banoffee Pie. 

A new dish for us but go on the Internet and you'll find all the info you need to make it. This version began with a crumb crust base. On top of that went sliced bananas. Then the toffee layer. Simplicity itself. All you do is bang an unopened can of condensed milk into a pot of boiling water for three or four hours, let it cool and open it. (You definitely don't need to empty the condensed milk out or faff around with a bain-marie as one pernickety web recipe would have you do.) So toffee on top of the bananas and then, the icing on the cake, so to speak, a thick layer of whipped cream. Let me tell you, Irish cream is so thick that it's almost butter. See how it looks in that pavlova. 

The groaning table shows some of the dishes we made for the big party on Sunday night. The star elements were a beef stew and a sliced ham plus lots and lots of salads and side dishes. Then came the pavlovas and Gerry's apple pies which, not too sweet and dense with fruit, were probably the best we'd ever tasted.

Wine played a role in all this but, oddly, not Guinness. In this part of Ireland, it's a "foreign" drink. What you order is a pint of Murphy's which is what we did when we went to the village of Baltimore for the afternoon.

Easter in Ireland

A  good few days since I posted. It's been a busy time which really began when I opened my e-mail one morning to find a note from a long-lost cousin inviting us to her and her husband's ruby wedding anniversary party. South of Cork. It took us two seconds to say yes. 

   All it took was a flight from Carcassonne to Dublin, a few hours hanging around (eased by a pint of Guinness) and a commuter hop to Cork where Valerie and her daughter Wendy met us. She and I had Skyped so we did at least know what the other looked like. Necessary as we were in our teens when we last met. 

   She and Gerry live at the end of a winding road four miles from the coast and the Fastnet lighthouse (if you've ever listened to UK shipping forecasts, there's a familiar name for you). 

Their farmhouse is large, pleasurably rambling and its heart is the kitchen which has a large Aga and a very large table. 

   Saturday they showed us around the nearby countryside, vivid green and dotted with cows and gorgeous Georgian houses. I became besotted with the colours that people paint their homes in this part of Ireland. This shot of some shops in Skibbereen is typical.