American Galway Girl

24 October 2009

Med

I'm writing a short story for my Medieval Mediterranean class. It's going to be about Irish people in the Crusades - I think I can get into this! Now...just for the motivation to start!

04 August 2009

I successfully made sticky toffee pudding yesterday! I was very proud of myself. This is not the type of pudding Americans think of as pudding. It's like a very moist cake with wonderful toffee sauce on top. Absolutely delicious! One of the things I forgot to tell my people before coming to Ireland was to order this dessert somewhere along the way. Oops! Here is the recipe - I think it tastes pretty authentic.
Toffe Sauce:
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons molasses

Pudding:
6 ounces chopped dates
1 cup water
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup carmelized ginger
1 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350F and butter an 8 1/2 inch porcelain souffle mold, or similar-sized baking dish. (If it's metal, you may want to decrease the baking time.)
2. Make the toffee sauce by bringing the cream, brown sugar, and molasses to a boil in a medium saucepan, stirring often to melt the sugar.
3. Lower heat and simmer, stirring constantly until the mixture is thick and coats the spoon. Pour half the sauce into the prepared souffle mold and place the mold in the freezer, and reserve the other half for serving.
4. To make the pudding, in a medium saucepan, heat the dates and water. Once the water begins to boil, remove from heat and stir in the baking soda. Add the ginger, then set aside, but keep it slightly warm.
5. In a small bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder.
6. In the bowl of a standing electric mixer, or by hand, heat the butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs, then the vanilla.
7. Stir in half of the flour mixture, then the date mixture, then add the remaining lour mixture until just mixed. Don't overbeat the batter.
8. Scrape the batter into the prepared baking dish and bake for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with moist crumbs attached.
9. Remove the pudding from the oven, and let cool slightly before serving.

Serving: Spoon portions of the pudding into serving bowls and douse with additional warm toffee sauce. Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream are good accompaniments, although it is also good just as it is.

Note: To make the pudding in advance, bake the pudding without the toffee in the bottom. Let cool, then cover until close to serving time. Poke the pudding about fifteen times with a chopstick. Distribute half of the sauce over the top, cover with foil, then re-warm in a 300F oven, for 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

28 July 2009

Pictures!

10 July 2009

Ireland...The Final Day...

My last day in Ireland. :’( We started off the morning by going on a tour of Connemara. It was nice for me that we took a different route than the tour that I took earlier in the month with the only repeat sight being the Quiet Man bridge, which our bus almost didn’t make it over. We also went to the Connemara Marble Factory where many indulged in “retail therapy.”
That afternoon, we returned to Galway where I had 3 hours to show my parents a semester’s worth of stuff. We have to go back.
We ate at the King’s Head off Shop Street, then walked to Gort. Mom thought that was entirely to far so she and Dad took a cab to campus while Ashley and I walked. After showing them the Quad (that’s the only pretty part of campus) we walked to Galway Cathedral, then downtown. Since it was a bank holiday, the market was in place, but not very many of the people were set up so it was nothing like the Saturday Market. After doing a little souvenir shopping, we rested in Eyre Square while waiting for the bus to pick us up.
The next morning we left the hotel at 5:00am in order to get to Shannon in time for the people with 8:45am flights. Sarah and I did not leave until 11:30am so we got to hang out in the Shannon Airport for quite some time.

Ireland Trip Day 6

We left Killarney this morning for GALWAY!!!!! I was a little excited. And a little impatient throughout the journey. Just a little, though. ;) David, our tour guide, gave us instructions to write Limericks throughout the long journey and we would have a contest later that day. I was very entertained that we drove through Limerick as we were writing Limericks.
Our first stop of the day was at Bunratty Castle. This is a restored castle between Limerick and Galway. All of the restorations are period appropriate so we could see what a castle really looked like in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. The castle is surrounded by a folk park in which you could see how the villagers around the castle would have lived. We saw quite a few buildings, then discovered by looking at the map that we hadn’t even made a dent in viewing the park!
After this we moved closer to Galway with a visit to the Cliffs of Moher. Forgive me if I’m not too excited – this was my fourth visit in two years and third visit since January.
We then proceeded through the Burren to the Aillwee Caves. Again, been there done that, caves don’t change much in three months. See my post on The Burren.
After this visit, David read the limericks aloud and awarded a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and booby prizes. My Uncle Pat won the booby prize which got him a piece of turf! Here is his limerick:
He traveled so far ‘cross the sea
Seeing sites ‘til weak in the knee
then Guinness and whiskey
got him feeling quite frisky
He woke to find “she” was a “he”
After an agonizingly long journey for me, we arrived in Galway! (In case you can’t tell, Galway is probably the best city, not only in Ireland, but in the world.) We stayed at the Hanley Oaks Hotel, which to my disappointment, was in Salthill (a suburb) and not in Galway. Town was a thirty minute to an hour walk. L Tonight I was able to take a lot of our group to the Crane Bar, one of my favorite pubs in Galway. They have a traditional session every Sunday night, which usually includes a wonderful Irish singer named Steven James. Sadly, Steven was not there that night, but we had a good time anyway.

Ireland Trip Day 5

Today, we went on a tour of the Ring of Kerry. The Ring of Kerry is a circle driven around the Iveraugh Peninsula on Ireland’s southwest coast. Absolutely gorgeous scenery! We traveled from Killarney to Sneem (I kept calling it Smee – lol) in a counterclockwise direction around the peninsula.
On this day we stopped and watched a man named Brenden give a sheep dog demonstration. The dogs were amazing! The first part of the demonstration consisted of Brenden showing us the different kings of sheep they raise in Ireland (he had at least a dozen). He then took us over to a field that went up the side of the mountain. Through a series of whistles he demonstrated how he could communicate with each dog in order to bring the sheep down the mountain. Not only could the dogs bring the sheep down, but they also could separate the sheep into the groups dictated by Brenden! I think I got an overload of sheep pictures there.
We also made a stop at the Bog Village. This gives tourists an idea of what life was like in a little community in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century. We also found out that when fireplaces burn turf, the smell can get quite strong and the smoke very thick! We were also able to try Irish Coffee or Bailey’s Coffee here. I do not care for coffee so I did not have any.
We went to Mass at the Catholic Church in Killarney tonight. Some were brave enough to sit in the front row, but I was not one of them! I thought I was doing good on warning people that they don’t stand as much as we do, but that must have just been a thing at the campus center. Going to church in Ireland does, however, test how well you know the responses because as soon as the priest’s done with his bit, everyone races to the end of the congregation’s response! It’s quite confusing, even during the Our Father! Everyone was also amazed that we were out in 40 minutes rather than the usual hour allotted for Mass.
We went back to Danny Mann’s tonight, but didn’t think the band was as good as the night before and the microphone was REALLY loud so we didn’t stay long.

17 June 2009

Ireland Trip Day 4

My two uncles and my dad took advantage of staying at the Blarney Golf Resort and played 9 holes of golf before breakfast. Breakfast was followed by a trip to Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney stone. The Blarney Stone is supposed to give you the gift of gab - the difference between Blarney and Baloney is that Blarney is Baloney spoken eloquently. This was decided by Queen Elizabeth I when the Earl of Blarney would send word back of great flattery, but not do the things she wanted. Dad and I kissed the Blarney stone, but Mom took one look at it and said "No way!" This is because you have to lay down, lean back over the side of the castle, grab two poles while a worker holds your torso, and kiss the stone opposite your head.
We shopped and ate lunch at Blarney Woolen Mills - a massive souvenir shop with very good Irish Stew. Our next stop in Ireland was Killarney. Our first order of business after checking into the hotel was a jaunty ride (a ride in a horsedrawn carriage) through the Killarney National Park to Ross Castle. Our jarvey (the driver) was hilarious! Here are a few of the jokes he told/sights we saw:
Those woods over there are the Monk's Woods. The ones on the other side of the road are the Nun's Wouldn't.
(After seeing a wedding party drive by): There goes another sorry man.
It only rains twice a week in Ireland. The first 3 days and the other 4.
There are two types of deer in the park: male and female.
A trough that was filled with water - that's the leprachaun's swimming pool. The olympics were held there last year.
He also proposed marriage to a girl from the Minnesota part of the group. He asked her what time should he come that night and she responded with "We're going to get married tonight?!" and he said "No, not for the wedding!" He also gave her a boquet of wild irises and one of the other jarveies asked if he could be the best man.
There are three lakes in County Kerry, and the Lower Lake is beside Ross Castle. We took a boat tour of the lake, which was gorgeous.
That night, Ashley, Sarah, Manda, and I walked down to Danny Mann's pub in Killarney and enjoyed live music. When the waiter came to take our drink order, he pointed at me and said "Ok, Heinekin," which I corrected by saying, "No, Guinness." He then came back saying he had missed someone and I said I wanted a Guinness. He came back with the drinks and gave me a Heinekin so I just drank that.

American Galway Girl

Ireland