Today was very hard. Just getting out of bed, after yesterday’s mad dash (and six extra hours due to time-zone relocations), is Very Hard. Realizing we’re not in Ireland anymore, well, that’s the Hardest of All…
It was fun, though. Grand, glorious fun! All the tasty pub grub; touring around Dublin, then travelling most of the [...] Read more »

This morning dawned gray and damp, which means it was later than normal before the birds began chirping outside our window. In fact it was nearly 4 A.M. before the serenade began! I guess they stayed in the pub too late or something, and just couldn’t bring themselves to start at 3:30 like the previous [...] Read more »

You know you’re going at it too hard when you have to take a day off from your vacation to rest up. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to spend another fourteen hour day overloading our brains with more lovely memories of Ireland! We needed to slow down, just a bit. Heck, we’d taken so many [...] Read more »

Not much happening at the moment. I’m stuck “down south” for the weekend, but I’m reading everything I can about Ireland and their food. I’ve got a couple of nice tour guidebooks and I’m using up all my tape flags marking stuff to see. At the moment I think I’ve marked enough items to keep [...] Read more »

Stews and soups make up a goodly part of the Irish diet. Given how tasty they all are, I can see why! However, after a while they begin to seem “all the same,” especially the beef stews.
One way to avoid “suicide by sameness” on the stews is to look for specialties at some of the [...] Read more »

Irish agriculture has pretty much all gone mechanized these days, but for many decades the ploughman was an integral component of food production there. Probably longer than in the U.S., where we adopt new ways more quickly, and we have more social wealth to support that.
Working with a horse and plough is mighty hungry-making, not [...] Read more »

In honor of our impending two-week trek in Ireland, I’ve been doing some essential research. I’m already aware of some of the basics, such as the Guinness Storehouse and the Tullamore Distillery, and they’re scheduled on the tour.
But what about Irish food? And how it’s prepared? Especially in the places where I intend to spend [...] Read more »

In a magical May in 2007, my lovely spouse traveled to Ireland to visit with me for a few days while I was toiling away “over there.” I was “stuck” there for a month, in the village of Adare, consulting my buns off for a multinational corporation. Tough work, when you can get it.
Anyways, Paula [...] Read more »