Of cabbage and kings

A mention that we were in Germany over the Christmas break triggered a dormant thought in my English friend's brain: had I ever heard of something called a Gaitopf for making Sauerkraut, and did I know of any less expensive option than the one on Amazon?

I checked out the link she sent, to the Harsch Gaitopf, with its jaw-dropping prices. It's a nifty-difty old-fashioned looking ceramic crock designed to ferment lowly (and plentiful in winter) cabbage into delicious and healthy sauerkraut. The trick is a rim of water that the lid sits in; it forms a seal to keep the bad bacteria out, and let the beneficial ones multiply.

There is a long-standing tradition of fermented foods (think yoghurt, cheese wine, sauerkraut, oh, yes, don't forget yeast for bread and beer…), and the white coats that have deigned to look at traditional foods are still scratching their heads on why they are so good for us. But even they readily admit that these ancient foods are still around, both for taste and their benefits.

Which meant I was equally baffled as I helped her hunt online for a more reasonably-priced version of such a clearly traditional vessel. It turned out to be a two-fold problem: the Germans have been/are slow to adopt "new" technology (Number One son actually got to see someone use a typewriter--in the hospital no less) so online shopping is a hit-and-miss proposition.

The other problem turned out to be linguistic: the term to use was gaeren or gären, not gairen. Once I figured that one out, Google's floodgates opened, and we found oodles of them. I laughingly joked that prices were so reasonable that she couldn't spend a hundred dollars unless she really wanted to make 25 liters of the stuff. Turns out she did, and at the latest report, she had bought the 16 liter pot, which arrived in only two days from Leipzig. I can only hope that she also invested in the nifty slicer they had for preparing that much cabbage too.

And so I thought of her cabbage bubbling away this evening, as I chopped up a heavy purple cabbage and threw it into my bubbling pot on the stove for tomorrow evening's meal. We'll be out all day tomorrow, exploring by train (the destination is secondary to the mode of transportation as far as Little one is concerned), so I'm making supper ahead. And I know that my Rotkohl will taste better tomorrow anyway.

Boiled egg, anyone?

Imagine if you will, a nation of Irishmen waking up late on a very frosty Sunday morning, with just a wee bit of a hangover from a company Christmas party that went until three in the morning. The smart ones--that is most of them--booked a room at the hotel, both to enjoy a night away from the kids as well as to not have to worry about driving after far too much Guinness.

Our Irishman and his wife both emerge from the shower feeling a bit better, and head downstairs to that staple of Irish luxury, the full Irish breakfast. Their mouths are salivating at the thought of a plate piled high with eggs, back rashers, sausage, black and white pudding (well, maybe she moves the black pudding to his plate), and a token tomato, all washed down with some strong black coffee. Imagine their disappointment, then, when their waitress explains that there is a nationwide recall of pork, and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) is asking everyone, from merchants to housewives to restaurateurs, to destroy all pork and pork products produced in Ireland since September 1 of this year.

Like those fellow partygoers, I awoke to a headache and the same headline, and though pork was not on the menu for Sunday, I do have a pricey organic loin roast in my freezer, purchased a few weeks ago from a local farm stand. An email to my friendly contact at the farm stand gets her on the phone with her farmers and her inspector. It's a blanket recall so she can't tell me it's OK to eat, but reading between the lines, I think I should wait before chucking it, as it is likely that over the next few days many farms will be declared clean. As a postscript, she notes that Dominic makes his own pig feed, and expects the "pro organic/anti-cheap food debate" to rage for a few days. She sounds happy about this bit, because it can only be good for business.

As an American, food recalls are nothing new to me. The last major one, of over 20 million pounds of tainted beef, is an order of magnitude larger than this one, which, though it encompasses all pork produced in this island nation for two months, is inherently different, and not just because of its size.

How so? First up, the wording in yesterday's refreshingly concise press release: "The FSAI is requiring the food industry to recall from the market all Irish pork products produced from pigs slaughtered in Ireland." Imagine, a government agency requiring industry to do something without asking. What's more, they extended the recall to all farms and immediately banned the transfer of pigs between farms, even though they suspect that the feed has only contaminated about 10% of the island's pork. But they want to be sure. The contaminant, dioxin, was detected last week; the ban came down Sunday, "as a precautionary measure." By Monday, they had named the source of contamination, and warned that some beef may be affected. They will be out testing in the next few days, and as farms show themselves to be free of the contaminant, they'll be allowed back into the supply stream.

Contrast this to the massive recall of American ground beef last September: USDA inspectors detected the E. coli O157:H7 pathogen. The initial press release lists products with production dates in June and July of 2007; the recall came nearly two months later. Note also that the USDA cannot actually enact a recall themselves, which is why we see the wording 'XYZ Company is voluntarily recalling so-and-so-many-thousand pounds of meat.' By the time the USDA released more information, nearly two weeks later, the recall had been expanded to meat produced at one factory for an entire year--21 million pounds.

Now, dioxin is a bad thing for people to eat, but small quantities eaten over the short term don’t usually have serious consequences. But a trace of E. coli, ingested even once, can make people extremely ill, and can even kill those with weaker immune systems. And yet, US government inspectors had to prove--not just suspect--that meat was tainted before they could ask the business to pull the meat. Given that both the FDA and USDA are chock a block with representatives from agribusiness, it's amazing that recalls ever happen at all.

I ducked into the market today, and there is an empty case both at the butcher's counter and where the bacon and sausage live around the corner. They will likely begin filling in the days to come, as FSAI gives producers a clean bill of health. The huge display of Christmas hams is equally void, and is likely to stay that way, as there isn't enough time to cure new hams.

That doesn't mean all is perfect in Europe, as industrial animal production is alive and well here: Sunday's front page article of the Irish Times appends the customary listing of similar outbreaks at the bottom of the page, and I have to read it twice to make sure I got it right: "In 1998 dioxin-contaminated citrus pulp from Brazil was used in feed for dairy animals in France and resulted in contaminated milk." Mention of just how ridiculous it seems to be shipping citrus pulp from Brazil to France is absent.

I reflect on how food waste recycling has only come to Dublin this year (and certainly not out here), and how I and millions of French housewives are scraping their plates into the garbage. I wonder, why do they have no local food waste to feed their cochons? The thought of making the food stream run both ways crosses my mind briefly.

I wonder if Dominic would like my kitchen scraps for his pigs?

Misbehaving

Our neighbor has his birthday today. He smiled and stated that he was 56 today. I told him he was lying, and he admitted he was. He's 44, but by adding a few years, he either gets compliments or honesty in the form of no challenge or someone like me calling him on it.

Just for kicks, I took one of those "what is your real age?" tests. Depending on how I fudge the answers, my "real age" is between 5-10 years less than my chronological age. I also learned that my media behavior makes me Gen-X (and nearly Gen-Y) even though my birth year technically makes me a Baby Boomer. One of my buddies even noted that my cell phone is for 20-somethings. But my old Bell telephone ring tone dates me.

My mother, on the other hand, is acting more than her age. Since the double-whammy of losing husband and pets in one year, compounded by not being able to keep up her walking (too much smoke from California's bad summer of fire), she has been feeling poorly. So, like any self-respecting medicare-card holder, she high-tailed it to the doctor.

Seems this young whippersnapper had the unmitigated gall to say that her cholesterol is high enough to warrant medication. Out comes the prescription pad, but bless my mother, the pills' side effects means she stops taking them. Instead, she says, she's loosing a little weight, and starting to walk again.

The cholesterol number. Doctors wield it mightily, as a magic predictor for our lives and deaths. But I want to know if this one-size-fits-all number means anything in the face of our great-grandmother's wisdom.

I jaunt over to the American Heart Association, where I am admonished to eat a heart-healthy diet no matter what my magic number. The "safe" level--used since the 70s--is that I should consume no more than 300 mg of cholesterol a day--in other words, eat an egg, and I'm done for the day. But wait, I'm sensitive to eggs.

So, I dig deeper, to learn that this "safe" level was determined in a single meeting of food scientists back in 1968. Based on the assumption that serum cholesterol levels reflect the amount of dietary cholesterol, they quite arbitrarily guessed that 300mg should be safe.

But there's more bad news: not only is that number a best guess, it's based on a flawed assumption: serum cholesterol reflects the cholesterol you produce yourself, not what cholesterol you consume. Numerous studies have confirmed this, but the myth continues to be promoted, even by the Heart Association.

Which isn't to say that what you eat has no bearing on your cholesterol level. Indeed, if you eat a poor diet, rich in processed foods, and low in real food, it's a pretty safe bet your levels will go up.

What's more, my naturopath also explained that she sees dangerously high serum cholesterol levels in people who are eating relatively well, but who are eating foods to which they are sensitive or allergic. Metabolizing allergens (and living a stressful life) gets the liver producing cholesterol in the body: Eliminate the allergens, she notes, and levels drop drastically, without medication.

Imagine that. Eat well for who you are. Grandmother knew all along.

Dear Mr. President-elect

I am writing in the hopes that mine is not the only voice emphasizing the importance of your choice for Secretary of Agriculture. It is my deep-seated desire to see someone in this role who understands just what is at stake, that agriculture has as much to do with feeding people and the environment as the economy, national defense and public health. The effects of powerful industry lobbying have placed us all in a precarious position. The person chosen for this key position must be a person of deep conviction with an unwavering moral compass.

If the priorities reflected in our nation's budget are defense and human services, consider just how vital the role of the Department of Agriculture is: if conventional food production is reliant on petroleum for production and distribution, it reinforces our country's dependence on foreign oil; where local, sustainable agriculture becomes a policy of independence from imported oil and a matter of national security: If intensive industrial farming and livestock operations have depleted the life in our soil and taken animal cruelty to new levels, leading to the degradation of the nutritional value of foodstuffs, then encouraging small-scale biodiverse agriculture becomes a matter of moral and public health.

Every one of these issues can be traced back to the cozy relationship between our representatives in Washington and lobbyists representing corporate interests. We all pay for "cheap" food in fighting wars to protect our petroleum habit, the staggering costs of epidemic health issues related to eating nutritionally inferior food, the damage to the soil, water and air around us, and in the moral corruption of selling out to the mighty dollar every day, not to mention the loss of the simple joy of eating well.

While the media screams increasingly loudly about the economy, the effects of lobbying are clear here as well. With no regulation, and unchecked by any moral sense, the players were courting disaster, one we must all pay for. This obsession with the economic climate will likely make many insist that something as mundane as agricultural issues need to take a back seat, but even in hard times, people need to eat. And if they eat well: healthy food raised by people who can make a decent living using time-proven methods, we will all benefit, in terms of reduced dependence on oil, increased national security, improved public health and healthy and sustainable economic activity.

While it has become a common way of doing "business" in Washington it is no longer a viable option: We need to get government out of bed with corporations now, not just because it is a gross adultery of democracy, but because our very survival as humans and Americans depend on it.

I wish you all the best in the coming years, and hope that you will find the fortitude to maintain your guiding principles in the face of many pressures.

Running around

Sometimes things just don't work out the way you want: my intention to get to Naas for the farmer's market Saturday fizzled as the day turned greyer and greyer and the mud stuck to the bottom of my boots, making that horrid schlocking sound when I walked. It was a day for a book and cocoa.

Which meant that when Monday rolled around, I had to do some grocery shopping. Little One and I donned our soggy jackets and headed into town, where we have three choices: Harvest Fare, the little, funky health store owned by one of his classmates' parents; Dunnes, in the new shopping centre, and Kenny's SuperValu on Main Street. I always start at Harvest Fare, where they have figured out how quickly we burn through soy milk, and now order it without being asked. But Mary, the owner, is a militant vegetarian, and recoiled visibly when I asked her where I might find organic meats. I favor the local store, which means across the main street to Kenny's I go, where the usual mass-produced fare is interspersed with a few local and homemade items (pies and jams live near the butcher case). Every now and then, they have a few trays of organic meats and the odd free range chicken.

This Monday, there is one lonely free range chicken. Its label notes that it is fully traceable, something foreign to Americans (and resisted by the US meat industry), but essential in a country where BSE is a very real possibility. My chicken's label tells me it is from Martin Nash's farm (2) in Ardagh in County Limerick.


Out of curiosity, I wonder what I can find out about this chicken and its life before my pot (its carcass is bubbling away in the stockpot as I write). I plug his name into the search engine, and learn from the Limerick Leader that he was the first in his area to harvest silage this spring. Martin, who puts his good fortune down to reseeding his fields, is referred to as a dairy farmer.

I find no more mention of Martin, but further digging unearths ugliness in the industry. On the heels of a protest in 2004 by the West Limerick Co-op Poultry Producers Association Limited, (I briefly wonder if Martin is one of the approximately 28 members), the government is asked to intervene (no surprise, they decline). It appears that standard practice is for corporate processors to supply day-old chicks and feed to producers as well as cover some costs. The producer then provides labor and other overhead, including electricity. Producers receives a negotiated price per bird--and this is where the protest came in. In this particular case, the producers involved were protesting the low price of 30.85 cent per bird, which includes the transport of the birds to the processing plant. (Yes these are Euro cents, but gas also costs upwards of $6 a gallon.) I take another look at the label on my bird: that's right, it cost me €12.59.

I am sincerely hoping that Martin received more than a handful of coins for this chicken; but more importantly, I am hoping against hope that Martin could give the bird a relatively good life, and that the breed of chicken is not the standard white thing. I recognize that visualizing him raising chicks hatched from eggs laid by happy heritage birds on the green rolling hills of his Ardagh farm is a pipe dream.

The heady aroma and steam from the stockpot tell me my stock is finished. I seriously toy with leaving the whole chicken story alone, but it's like a scab I can't stop picking. How is free range defined in Ireland? In the States, I know that it is a hollow term that means that the creatures have access to the a barren spot of ground for a very minimum amount of time, usually in a way that makes no significant difference in their feed or behavior. I want to know that the regulations here give some meaning to the word. So I keep digging.

I find the latest EU directive, from 2007, that states that indoor chickens can be kept at a density of about 18 birds per square meter of floor space, which is more than a little cramped. Free range chickens, as the name implies, have complete access to an outdoors that must have vegetation (and can include orchards, woodland and other pasture) and are provided with shelter which they can go into as they choose. The farmers must provide four square meters per bird. That same area in high-density floor confinement would be stuffed with 72 birds in Ireland or 80 birds in the US.

As I pick the last bits of meat off the bones of Martin's broiler, that knowledge means that I can breathe a little easier. And so can Martin's chickens, running around the green rolling hills of his farm in Limerick.

Bottom line

Like many these days, I have avoided looking at the bottom line of my bank statements. And like many these days, when I did look, I was shocked, and then scared. That’s a big chunk of our retirement gone, or, looking at it another way, many more years of working and less playing than I was hoping for. For some, it is dreams that are lost, for others, it is much more.

I think that those who choose to plug into the media are a bit worse off, as both journalista and advertising moguls try to get more blood from an increasingly dry stone. I had the opportunity break my usual television fast during my annual translation pilgrimage this year. I wanted to see election returns: my hotel room screen blared images of hope (the three big networks), and rheotric forecasting gloom and doom (my first encounter with Fox news). And yet, I still needed to eat every day, even as markets crash and foreclosures loom around me. And I still need to eat, even in a hotel. Navigating a restaurant menu is always a challenge, and after a week, I had exhausted the possibilities and was into reruns.

As is usual for these events, I am happy to return home, in spite of the things that may have piled up in my absence (though Darling Husband does hold down a fairly tight fort and is easy to come home to). Without a TV blaring canned messages, I am free to think about things and make up my own mind. Without a grueling conference and meeting schedule, I am free to respond to my and my family’s more human needs. Without the confines of a restaurant menu, I am free to eat as I wish.

And joy of joys, my inbox was replete with good stuff: an invitation to a birthday party, an invitation to what promised to be a congenial work party at school, and an invitation to join a box scheme from a local farmer. I found it easy to say yes to all of them.

And so yesterday, I picked up carpool kids and a huge crate piled with muddy potatoes (scads of them), carrots, parsnips, cabbage and kale, intoxicatingly fragrant bunching onions and a handful of sweet pears and apples. And it is good news for our bottom line: even with an unfavorable exchange rate, this bounty of local and organic produce, farmed by people we know and have broken bread with, cost us less than $30. I shall go to the market tomorrow, and invest in a $15 chicken, and improve our bottom line for the week.

Yellow bowl

For many years, we have used a rotation diet in our household to help us balance between foods that act as allergens and eating what most people call "normally." A rotation gives us the chance to have lasagna and ice cream cones--but not every day. And the knowledge gained from learning to think and cook a different way makes it possible to adjust our diet to the stresses and illness that ebb and flow through our days.

Over the years, the rotation was honed to the rhythm of our lives: a lighter breakfast for those early dismissal days, wheat and diary allowed on Sundays when we were all home for tea and cake. Loads of spaghetti (spelt pasta with sheep's milk romano) on Wednesday, golden waffles on Sunday morning. When we were sick, we could use dairy substitutes even on "dairy" days; when traveling, we can choose the days to "blow the diet." The goal is to maintain our health in the long-term, and the method was not to deprive ourselves of things we loved to eat every single day of every week, of every month, for years or forever.

We bought the waffle iron six years ago, at a school auction. It was a whim, and we have used it almost every Sunday since then. There are exceptions: muffins when there were fresh blueberries; buttery hot cross buns for Easter morning, pancakes when camping. Over the years, we found a waffle mix we liked a lot, and it was sheer luck that it was based on a rice flour.

During our first weeks on the Emerald Isle, I acquired a few items that I knew we would need: a drying rack (two actually, since jeans and towels take two days to dry), a printer/scanner/copier (the scanner part to be paperless, and the printer part because paperless is still a distant dream), a good sized stockpot (pasta in teenage-sized portions), and a yellow mixing bowl. I couldn't bring the waffle iron with because of the voltage thing, but I figured I could still make pancakes from scratch.

I had read that Ireland, like many northern European nations, has a fairly high rate of celiac sprue, so I was expecting that gluten free products would be relatively easy to find. There are three different types of GF flour made by Odlums (the Irish equivalent of Pillsbury) in the supermarket, but they contain egg albumen as a binder, which means I can't use them. Luckily, the health food store in town had a little bag of rice-based bread flour, and the Internet had several GF pancake recipes to choose from.

The first pancakes out of the pan were pale and flavorless. I added some salt and sugar, and they started to taste better, especially when slathered with jam and yogurt. But they were still pale, and I knew I was in trouble when Number One used the term gelatinous when referring to them the second weekend.

So yesterday in Tesco, I bought what they call a sandwich pan. It looks a bit like a shallow pie pan, almost like a cake pan. What it does hold nicely is scones. Before kids, I had perfected buttery oat scones; this morning, my yellow bowl served to mix up some GF scones laced with chunks of green apples from the neighbor's tree. It may be that waffles will have to wait until we're home again.

Oatey Scones (GF)

1 3/4 c GF flour mix (I used Doves Farm White Bread mix, a base of white rice flour with potato starch, tapioca starch, and xantham gum)
1/4 t salt
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/4 c butter
2 T sugar
2 T brown sugar
1/4 c porridge oats
1/4 c apples, chopped
1/4 t cinnamon

1/4 c (soy) yogurt
3/4 c (soy) milk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Mix dry ingredients thoroughly. Cut in the butter. Mix in liquids as gently as possible. Dough should be moist & slightly sticky so add more if necessary, a little at a time.
Turn mixture into buttered pan, shape roughly, score in quarters (or eighths) with a floured knife. Bake 20-25 minutes. Serve warm with more butter and jam.

Institutionalized

Over the summer, I mooched a book about adult learners, specifically, how adults learn musical instruments, and how it differs from how children learn them. The author, John Holt, is an expert in learning himself, and has done much work on different learning styles, and how many children are failing, not because of themselves, but because the system fails them.

As a leading thinker, he has had the opportunity to meld minds with others in his field, and a South American colleague put his finger squarely on our tendency to create institutions. At some point, nearly every field where we used to "do it ourselves" has become institutionalized: we are being raised to believe that this is good, while a few questioning souls poke around the ragged edges and point out that the scale in the economy of scale is not a human scale.

Holt's point was that learning institutions often fail people who don't fit in the mold, and especially adults, who know themselves well enough to know how they learn. But what he says also applies to other institutions: Health care, from childbirth to medications, with the establishment trying to loosen the grip of centuries of wisdom. And then there's the food industry, for an industry is yet another institution.

Along the narrow lanes of Ireland and even the more civilized Britain, we often see signs of small food producers--literally. Hand-made cardboard signs for free-range eggs, more elaborate wood-burned signs for farm stands, even a hand lettered sign in a window advertising homemade ginger-rhubarb jam. Some farm stands even have meats and cheeses, and occasional sundries like flour and honey.

That window sign for jam makes me think of the hundreds of jars of jam on my shelves at home, how I throw fruit from our plum tree away every year. I could easily make up another hundred jars every year, but there is no way we would be able to eat it, and because mine is not a commercial kitchen, I cannot legally sell it. I ran into much the same thing when I made the wedding cake for friends. I toyed with setting up a limited shop, making the occasional special cake as it fit in my life, but an investigation of the regulations revealed that there is no place for the very small producer.

The irony, of course, is that this affects things that we proclaim as Good, such as the organic standard and reducing waste and even (what some would call Christian) charity. Since the institutions we have allowed to become gigantic place the onus on even small producers to conform to regulations that really only apply to large producers, we all miss out: the person with a few grass-fed cattle who cannot slaughter them because he would need to provide two washrooms for FDA inspectors in his facility; the home baker who makes just few heavenly rhubarb pies and jam; the ambitious gardener whose bumper crop of zucchini and tomatoes end up in the garbage because even the food bank isn't allowed to accept it.

This institution-driven culture of fear is not a new idea, but we have finally given it a name. Strip searches for airline travel are only the latest manifestation, as we have allowed so many institutions to grow beyond their intended purpose. The argument for the institution in the food industry is nearly always safety: to keep our food supply safe, we must hold every producer, large and small to the same standard. But we are seeing exactly the opposite: as we push toward more and more food-as-a-commodity and factory production, our food supply has never before been so fragile. These self-same centralized practices contribute to equally large-scale outbreaks of pathogens that didn't even exist a generation ago. But the small, human, scale makes sense: if you know who grew you food, and they know you (or you are one and the same), it becomes obvious that it is in everyone's interest to bring safe food to the table.

The other argument is that at no time in our history have we been able to provide so many calories to so many people for so little money. And yet this claim is undermined by the revelation that not only are a great many of these calories empty ones that contribute to a huge health crisis, but these same savings are realized through unbalanced subsidies lobbied in back rooms by two large institutions, government and industry.

It is not a mortal error to entrust an institution with a task we do not feel up to: but the institution we are free to choose must be worthy of our trust, and we must understand just what part of us we are abdicating to that body.

Mileage

My “new” car (ok, it’s used) has a nifty little trip computer that tells me how many more miles I have on the tank, as well as calculating the mileage for that tank. Yesterday afternoon, a few miles from our friend’s alpaca farm (the same one where we saw a cria being born last summer), we stopped for petrol, and I checked the trip computer: 31.5 mpg.

Of course, that doesn’t tell the whole story. A quick check of the map reveals that we traveled about 300 miles yesterday, yet we drove for only about four hours and used only one tank of gas. No, we weren’t incredibly fast, and the car doesn’t have an unusually large tank: nope, we took the ferry.

Our choice was based on several factors: flying is a hassle and produces a lot of carbon, and we’ve done so much this year (and have more to come) that we really wanted to avoid flying; the airfares for half-term break were obscenely inflated, even for discount airlines; and we very shallowly wanted to have our own car because a) it felt stupid to rent one when we had just bought two cars and b) we wanted to go to IKEA in the UK for a few items. This left us with the ferries.

Based on the distances, the Rosslare to Wales ferry looked to be the shortest route, and broke up the driving. High speed ferries are mothballed for the rough seas of fall and winter, so we opted for the big slow one. We booked it online, and yesterday, at the crack of dawn, set out for our sailing. As we waited to board, the sun rose over the Irish Sea.

To say the ferry is big is an understatement. With ten decks, half of them for vehicles, the thing was immense. There were a few families in minivans like us—we figure most got out of town Friday evening—but the main event was the trucks. Passenger cars were boarded in fifteen minutes, but the trucks kept coming aboard for over an hour.

And as we disembarked, a truck wove in front of us in slow motion: Polish registration, coming from Ireland, with “Täglich frisch!” (“Fresh daily!”) emblazoned on the side. Pictures of happy, crisp vegetables completed the illusion.

And that got me thinking. Now, we arrived in the UK just after noon. We had three more hours of driving ahead of us to make it to our destination this side of London: that truck however, would be on the road until bedtime just to make a ferry across the channel, with driving through the wee hours just to get to a German-speaking border. The south of Germany, Switzerland or Austria would easily add another 400 miles to the vegetable’s trip.

We were only a bit tired when we arrived, but we had had the chance to stretch our legs, eat two full meals and breathe fresh sea air on our trip: those carrots and leeks had no such opportunity. So, while we’re feeling fairly smart for having chosen the more pleasant journey, we have found our resolve to eat locally reinforced by a ferry trip.

On the final leg of our journey, just after the petrol station, was an organic farm stand. Fresh vegetables, fresh daily. No gallons or tons or miles involved.

Plain brown wrapper

It has been blustery since yesterday, great gusts that sneak in unsealed windows and blow open the hatch to the attic. And yet the towering oaks and chestnuts around us remain largely intact, and only a few leaves have made drifts of gold and brown by the side of the road. Trees here grow in thick stands, and the people of the land know that these stands both provide shelter and protect the soil.

The way of life here is different, some would say backwards. There's plenty of business opportunity, but I doubt people would avail themselves of it. If you need something, you need to let someone know: they'll chat with someone else (I swear Main Street looks like something from a Hollywood musical, with people stopping and chatting every 20 feet), and before you know it, someone will hear about something that just may be what you were looking for. Imagine a place where people identify their needs and then seek it out, instead of the marketing machine telling them what they want.

Our hilltop neighbor told us of the tale of finding their extraordinary home. Scouring listings in the paper and on the Internet, despairing of finding something beautiful where they could raise their family, they told their tale of woe to another school parent. On her way home, the classmate's mother noticed that someone was moving out. She stopped her car (yes, in the middle of the road), and asked the fellow what was happening to the house (yes, it is acceptable for total strangers to ask such questions) and learned that he was planning to rent it, but what with this and that, hadn't got around to it. Well, she says, let me put you in touch with this nice family that's looking for just such a place.

For the average American, coming around a sharp turn on a one-and-a-half lane road to find a car blocking it and folks chatting would be cause for becoming angry, rolling down the window and yelling at people in a not terribly civilized fashion to move their ____. But this is the way this country works, and most (not all, sigh) folks realize that it could well be an exchange like the one that found or will find them their job, their car, their house or even the love of their life. Or butter.

When we drop off Little One at his rural school, there are always a few parking lot conversations. The first few days, when Darling Husband was with, he bonded with the men folk, comparing things like cell phone reception (discovered the two places with the best reception at school), the best ways to get from here to there (learned of an excellent route over the hills and picked up an occasional rider); I concentrated on the domestic: where might I find good vegetables, butter, meat, maybe even some yarn. I learned that our little town has a health food store, which just happens to be run by another parent at the school, and that she's happy to order any product your heart desires (case of soy milk, please!); that there's an organic farm stand south of school (yup, another parent); that there's a pink building up north of Eadestown where there's a nice couple that sell yarn; that that there's another organic farm stand with meats (not another parent, but one parent knew of it); and that if I waited around at pickup time for the dairy farmer's wife, I might be able to score some fresh butter.

And here it is in my hands, heavy, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. A parking lot chat, transformed into a block of real, fresh, very local butter (from 15 minutes away).

It is an unspoken contract between neighbors that the trees will not be cut or damaged, say to unblock a view or such frivolity. We, as the trees, rely on each other to withstand the strong winds.

In the bag

When I first followed my heart to Germany, all these many years ago, I encountered my future husband's first scorn when I went shopping for the first time. No, I had not bought the wrong cheese or overspent my budget. Nope, I had said, "Ja" when offered a bag. He explained that that plastic bag had set me back 20 Pfennig (less than 10 cents at the time). In response to my dumbfounded look, he explained that plastic bags were expensive to manufacture and polluted terribly, and they were only for thoughtless people who had forgotten to bring their own bags like everyone should.

I was quickly indoctrinated, and had problems when I returned to the states three years later, and showed up at the supermarket with my cheerful wicker basket. Cashiers gathered around to admire this oddity, even stranger than the Birkenstock crowd's ugly canvas or burlap sacks.

While I was in Germany this summer, I read online that the city of Seattle recently introduced a 20-cent tax on plastic grocery bags. Uproar ensued, people resent being told what to do, it's a nanny state, I have a right to a plastic bag, they scream.

The irony is not lost on me: for I had brought shopping bags with me to Europe. They are everywhere in my life: in the trunk of my car, by the front door, and yes, in my suitcase when I venture away from home. Here in Ireland, I actually had to buy garbage bags, as I have yet to receive a single plastic bag during my many shopping excursions.

Here, bringing your own bags is the norm. This past weekend, a man was at the checkout stand next to us at the supermarket. The clerk was not alone in clucking as she sold him four plastic bags. It is the first time I have seen anyone buy bags in the four weeks I have been here.

Darling Husband took out the garbage last night (in one of our purchased biodegradable bags), and came back in with his first dumpster treasure: a new sturdy shopping bag from Tesco Ireland. I shall add it to my collection of purple co-op bags from home.

Bambi

On the windy-twisty road to Little One's rural school this morning, there was a deer in the road. It was lying on the asphalt, struggling to get up, panicked brown eyes begging me to not run it over. I wasn't sure how badly it was hurt, but it was clearly suffering. The adult voice in me told me that I should put it out of its suffering, and if I'd been a true country woman with a gun rack in the back of my rental car, I suppose I could have done just that, and bagged dinner in the process.

If this were home, there wouldn't be a deer in the road, because they've all been run out or run over long since. But if, for the sake of argument, there was one, I would call animal control, because it's dangerous to take care of these things yourself: wild animals, disease, you don't know where it's been, etc. We are a nation of people abdicating our authority to institutions. Not so the Irish.

I think the Irish would simply laugh at me, and tell me to call someone to put it out of its misery, cut it up and put it in the freeze, how often does dinner just land on your plate? They would not recoil in horror at the thought of dealing with a wild animal. Indeed one of our new neighbors, a self-proclaimed semi-retired Doctor (who seems to paint and walk his dog around the lake more than work), asked if we'd like to help him work his way through some venison he received last fall; the new season is upon us, and he needs to make room in the freeze. Yup, the butcher's window on Main Street (honestly, it's called that) has a new hand-painted poster that proclaims that they now have fresh venison.

When I drove back, after promising Little One that I would find out about Animal Control, the deer was gone. A friend reports that some folks who knew what to do had moved it to the side of the road. Whether it then left of its own accord, or became someone's supper, I have no way of knowing.

Doorstep?

Upon our arrival, jetlaggy and tired, the relocation firm hired by Darling Husband's ushered us into a temporary "self-catering" apartment. To get us started, someone had brought in a "welcome pack," a selection of foods that would see us through until we could do a proper shop. The milk and cold cuts were wasted on us, though we did graze on the fruit and make good use of the butter. But can you blame us if the foreign-looking white loaf found another use? Perhaps I was still bleary-eyed from the overnight flight.

Just a chicken

Our quest for good food is ongoing, but we made a giant leap forward this weekend with the discovery of the farmer’s market in Naas. Small, but fine, fresh vegetables to be sure, but also bread piled high, meats, cheeses, the olive lady and even a few home bakers and a gourmet chocolate man. We did the first round, and then started buying: beets, avocado, onion bread, potatoes, strawberries, green onion, even back rashers and sausage. And then I stopped at the butcher’s cart.

I took a deep breathe, and launched into my well-rehearsed query on the kind of life the beasts, both great and small, live before they reach our table, in particular, whether they are fed antibiotics. We are learning that just as the Irish language has a tense that doesn’t correspond to anything we are familiar with, and the gift of Blarney extends to not really answering a question. The fellow couldn’t say for sure whether these particular beasts here had never had an infection or been treated. But, chimes in the neighbor fellow who is holding down his own stool, the chickens, they wouldna have any. Indeed, agrees the butcher, and launches into his own beef, the state of what the Americans do to their poor animals, puttin’ them on huge concrete pads in the desert and not even feeding them grass like we do our creatures. It’s no wonder they have to pump them full of medications. And hormones, well, now just don’t get him stared on that.

Sensing a lull, I nod, and tell him I’ll take a chicken. He bags it, places it on the counter, and tells me it is twelve Euro. A fair price.

As I dig in my wallet, the Stool Sitter asks me who I think will win the election, and that can of worms spilled onto the ground. More discussion and head-shaking. “Don’t the Americans care what the rest of the world thinks?” “I think that it’s not that Americans don’t care, it’s that they’re unaware that the rest of the world thinks differently.” “Ach, an insular attitude. Dangerous, that.”

And so on. The price of the chicken magically drops two Euro, the bill changes hands, and I finally make my escape. The chicken has already been roasted and curried, and the bones will make a healing soup for our common head colds. But I will be back to this market. The discussion will continue, and besides, I didn’t even get to the chocolate man yet.

The quest for dill

As we speed past on our way between work and schools, Little One notes that the green hillsides are covered with little white dots: they are fuzzy sheep, their collars turned up against the rain. It is no surprise then, that lamb features prominently on the meat shelves in Irish supermarkets.

Our first day here, we dragged our weary selves to Dunnes, where we found some lovely looking lamb chops, both Irish and organic, to my delight. I thought I could sauté them with a bit of garlic and dill and serve them up on a bed of brown rice. The garlic was right where you’d expect it to be, and I even found organic brown rice, but there was not a spot of dill to be found. Perhaps my mind is muddled from jetlag, I thought, and started reading again back at the upper left hand corner of the spice rack: Anise, bay, chives, fennel, nope, no dill. I look again, perhaps there’s a mix: I spot one for lamb. Alas, it contains garlic, onion, lemon peel, rosemary, salt and pepper, but no dill. I sigh, and toss some herbes de Provence in the trolley and head to the checkout. The chops are delicious and tender, even dill-less. Even if our minds are muddled, our bellies are well-filled.

The next day, undaunted, I aim for a larger supermarket, this time a Tesco. The Safeway-like aisles scream low prices to me, but that’s not what matters. I want organic meats, the measure of a true selection in my book. And I stop by the spice aisle, just to check, for dill has been added to my report card. They carry the same brand of spices (a British one, with a German name, go figure). Same selection, same absence of dill. I turn to Darling Husband—could this perhaps be a cultural issue, maybe the Irish don’t like the taste?

And then it happened. With the help of my sometimes trustworthy GPS and reliable map-reading Number One, I find downtown Naas, and a Superquinn, the most Irish of the supermarkets. The teeny parking spaces prove a challenge, but the mountains of fresh baked goods look promising, even if I’m not in the market for bread. They have a real butcher’s counter (sigh, no organics here), as well as the ubiquitous plastic wrapped meats (four free range chicken breasts and an organic beef roast). And then, wonder of wonders, between chives and fennel, dill weed!

A parking lot conversation at Little One’s school reveals a bit of information I have been hoping for: in the next town over (Blessington, if you have a really good map), there is a little health store with the creative moniker of Harvest Fare. There, perched on wooden shelves, are the bags and packages we seek: gluten-free rice noodles, organic local cheeses, shampoos and soap. A chat with the lady behind the counter reveals that she’s happy to order up a case of our favorite soy milk. It should be in Friday. Oh, and she has some lovely organic dill right next to the counter.

At some point, staring at the shelves of spices and food, it becomes apparent that this is not really about the availability of a certain herb or spice, but it was a reminder of why we are here in the first place: to live here. In the past, when we have visited a place for a few days or even a few weeks, the challenge is buying only what we can use in that short period. There is no comparison shopping, no buying things on sale an freezing them for later.

But we are here to live, and I am looking not for the smallest bottle of olive oil, but the right olive oil. I am not looking for a single herb or spice that I can use in every dish: I am looking to buy not only dill, but a whole collection of mismatched bottles and jars to a usable palate of spices. For just as we cannot live by bread alone, we need more than a single jar of dill to see us through.

Default vegetable

When I needed to choose a name for this blog, I reached back into my childhood, to the weekend morning when the toaster was broken and I hit upon the idea of laying the bread onto the electric coil stovetop directly. Unable to find tongs quickly, the bread became charred on one side, and my father promptly dubbed me the Irish Chef, even as he scraped it back to brown for breakfast. That “Irish” cookery of his childhood has given way to respectable cuisine, even for my Californian-French refined (read snobby) palate. Little did I know when I reclaimed the moniker a year and a half ago that I would find myself back in the old country today (“why on earth would you want to go back?” questions my father from the grave). But here I am, surrounded by golf courses, tiny terraced houses, and the misty Wicklow Mountains (they sure look like hills to me) in the background.

We have begun the cultural shift along with the time shift, with our first forays out into the countryside. It used to be that we used two maps to navigate the quaint, variable-width lanes outside the city; we now know that if the GPS (called SatNav here) knows the name of the town, it can guide you, but unfortunately, it only seems to be aware of about half of them. We still have the two maps as backup. But we do not feel singled out, indeed, the spiral pattern we and the multitude before us have followed to reach a destination is often featured in early Celtic art (check out Newgrange). No mystery there.

And then it came to pass that we needed food for our first night here. We dragged our weary bodies to the closest shopping centre (following the traditional spiral route) and found a Dunnes store, a sort of Irish Albertson’s: pretty wrappers, not much substance. Organic produce was limited to four baskets (onions, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and an empty spot where strawberries had been); the meat selection was even more limited: lamb chops or beef stew meat. We found one shelf of soy milk and about 3 feet of gluten free products, which contained a pitiful selection of pasta (rotini or spaghetti), but a bounty of biscuits (Jaffa cakes, chocolate-covered digestives and delightful lemon zest biscuits). And to our amazement, we learned that carrots are the default vegetable.

Little One had a wonderful first day of Scoil (that’s school in Irish) today, and learned and promptly forgot how to say hello in Irish. He has promised to try harder to remember the magic word tomorrow, but has set himself the realistic goal of knowing how to greet his teacher in Irish by the end of the week. It may take me a wee bit longer to adjust.

A perfect storm

Every Wednesday morning, Mama Duck drags me out of bed to help her make breakfast, usually from a chicken egg (though once I used duck eggs, not hers). This morning, cool and clear, came far too early, punctuated by visits from the Tooth Fairy and a perambulating Little One, as well as my new phone reminding me that I forgot to turn off the reminder alarm.

It was me who had to drag Mama Duck from her nest this morning, to make pancakes, since that’s what needs to be used up. Bacon was also on the menu for the same reason, as well as the fact that it would be positively un-American to not have bacon with pancakes. And this is an election year.

There is a Russian proverb that says that you always have to throw out the first pancake, so I nearly always plan on it. But this morning was different. Perhaps it was Mama Duck’s gentle coaching, perhaps I’m just better than I think I am, but there were no dud pancakes. And the bacon came out, well, perfectly.

We’ve been watching the weather forecast for Dublin intently, noting the differences and the sameness; today is the first day that the three day forecast includes a day that we will see there. Met Éireann, the Irish national weather service, is predicting a fair day, with a bit of sun and 66 degrees, about as good as it gets. This is a good thing, as Hanna (not our Hannah, but the one that pummeled the Gulf) has followed the jet stream all the way to Dublin, and is getting the last drops out of her system as I write.

We are down to one pot of soup for tonight, and snacks for the plane tomorrow. The adventure begins, on a full tummy of a full American breakfast.

Local calls

Any talk about sustainability often turns to a discussion of acting locally. It seems odd that as a person who finds herself beating the local drum, and that rather loudly at times, that I don’t always seem to hear it myself. Consider if you will, the tale of the last week, spent not only icing and elevating an injured torn hamstring, but also bouncing from one distant DSL customer service location in a seemingly futile effort to stay connected.

A month ago, it seemed like a good idea to take care of all those things we had put off for too long before removing ourselves to the Emerald Isle, things like having teeth cleaned, selling off vehicles, and moving our broadband to newer technology (one of the disadvantages of early adoption means that our old framed relay DSL modem was getting long in the tooth, not to mention expensive). I drew the short straw, which meant that making calls to the phone behemoth (the DSL connection) and our local ISP (the email provider) fell to me. A quick, local, call to the kind soul in Bellevue—the same one who has answered that line since at least 1999—revealed that I could keep my current email address for a song, and they could make the change in a couple of hours max, no problems.

Ah, but such is not the case for the national monster: for nearly a week, we (for somewhere in there, they broke me, and Darling Husband had to take over while I retired to my bed with an ice pack for my leg, and Bailey’s on ice for the rest of me), logged nearly six hours of navigating voice mail menus, traveling the globe (to call centers in Mexico, The Philippines, India and Long Beach), and listening to the same annoying jazz music loop on hold. Darling Husband, The Mistress of Indulgence and our Housesitter Extraordinaire have rolled under the desk (no need to dust there any time soon), plugging and unplugging devices in a seemingly random fashion, all to no avail.

And so it was, that today, on the drive to our last doctor’s appointment while we still have insurance, Darling Husband and I figuratively slapped our communal foreheads and said, “why, oh why, didn’t we just call that groovy local guy for DSL, and just dump the landline (and Verizon, to name the culprit) altogether?” Perhaps, once we have recovered from the double trauma (I understand that Eirecom can be equally obtuse), we will come home and do just that—live where we are.

Larder-Bo

From the makers of Uno comes a game called Skip-Bo. It’s only related to Uno by the fact that both are played with colorful, numbered cards. But there the similarity ends. The goal in Skip-Bo is to draw down your stockpile to nothing by building up build piles, using a combination of your freshly-drawn hand, your recent discards and your stockpile itself. It is not a fast-paced game, and lends itself to knitting and chatting between turns.

It is hard not to see the similarities in what is happening on our kitchen. In a process similar to the familiar emptying the fridge to prepare for a few weeks’ absence, we have taken things to a new level. The objective of this game is to draw down the larder to nothing, building up meals using fresh veggies from the garden and the CSA, leftover odds and ends in the back of the fridge, and the dwindling contents of the larder itself. We are in the early stages, and things like tomatoes and blueberries manage to make even the most mundane noodles or baking mix seem like a summery treat. I imagine that as the season winds down, we shall increasingly turn to soups, with the ultimate concoction likely to draw sneers all around; vilified but for the thought of the airplane food to come.

For now, the last of the tomatoes join some leftover garlic oil in a quick sauté over a half-packet of elbow noodles, not bad for the start of a new game.

Summer by the numbers

Thirty-four days, 16 flights, 13,562 miles (21,816 km), 11 airports, 15 stamps in our four passports.

Two meetings, 92 degrees, 53 percent humidity, 4 monuments, .58 inches of rain in 25 minutes, four plates of mezze, one pizza. Sixty white-knuckled minutes to Dulles airport. Six hours and seven seats to spread out in to sleep.

Rowan House number 80, 62 degrees and overcast. Three fishermen in the Shannon, one swan, two coins for the dryer. Six back rashers, one white pudding, no eggs, but two glasses of orange juice and a mug of fair-trade (soy) cocoa. 087 377 2763 for ten Euro.

One silver Rolls Royce, one tiny church, 75 people, a 25-minute homily. Twelve siblings on the bride’s side, two for the groom. Two hours between ceremony and dinner, three rounds of Guinness. Four courses, one Euro each in the pool for how long the best man would speak; 30 Euros for the lucky winner at seven minutes.

One hour to Prestwick, three hours of windy roads, six pounds for supper from the chippy. 1865 semi-detached, four bedrooms, two baths, one still under construction. Five people piled in a car. A hundred feet of peat-built wall, one Victorian museum with 20 Roman altars, six NATO early warning radio masts, twenty rowing punts in a stunning lake, another two pints of Strongbow cider.

Three days apart (Two hour delay, twelve midnight arrival for him, two backpacks for the two of us). Countless meters of Hadrianic wall, one Roman fort, one priory, 70p for a bag of homemade butter toffee from the church shop. Five minutes to pick teeth clean.

Two flights, 50 minutes in Paris, two busses to the plane. Four busses, no jet ways, three airport fire departments, one ambulance with sirens blaring. One to greet us; Eight people in a three-bedroom house: two beds, one futon, one sofa, one air mattress.

Two brides, three hours at the hairdressers, twenty people in one room, one notary, ten minutes to marry. countless glasses of champagne, seven toasts, ten minutes of fireworks down in the valley. To bed at twelve.

Four hotel rooms, twelve rolls in a basket, nine at the breakfast table, already 25 degrees. Ten minutes into town, two trailers make a tiny market. Four aunts and one cousin, two swimsuits, two hours in the pool. Twelve tables in a single tent, two cases of champagne, one keg of Bier. Five floating candles in the pool, one thunderstorm, two speeches, dinner two hours late. One mosquito bite, one wasp sting, one swollen eye on one tired kidlet.

Nine o’clock breakfast, already 25 degrees Celsius. Two bottles remaining, nine glasses, ten minutes tops. Fifteen kisses goodbye, three cars depart, 40 minutes to the airport. Two popsicles and a candy bar from one aunt, zero wait for security. Three and a half hours in Paris, two terminals, three cafes, two baguettes, two oranginas, ten pains au chocolat, two cocoas, one chocolate fondant, six hands of Uno. Two non-EU passports, ten minutes to explain the itinerary. Two smiling faces and four warm arms to greet us.

Nine hours of sleep, three days of restful companionship. Third morning: seven alpacas grazing outside my window in the morning. Two cups of cocoa, a cool 18 degrees. Ten minutes pass, one more alpaca outside my window, freshly born, wet and cold in the dewy grass. Two hours pass before she nurses for the first time.

One pound coin for the luggage cart, two pounds for a sandwich and one for a chocolate croissant. Thirty-two pence remaining. One aircoach, forty minutes to Bewley’s, ten minutes to the B&B. Five minutes to freshen up, seven stops to St. Stephen’s Green. Three hours to watch the buskers, buy two sandwiches, watch seven swans in the rain, find a license plate for Little One’s imaginary car. Supper with five new-found friends, three cups of cocoa, two PIPs. One hour train and walk, three beds, three heads, three pillows.

One hour to breakfast, two hours to pack three bags, another air coach, two hours to Frankfurt. One luggage tag torn, fifteen-minute walk to the rental car. One dent, 20 minutes to walk back to report it and be able to leave. Twenty-five minutes to the hotel.

One floor, three rooms of family, one ironing board, two wrinkly suit jackets. Forty minutes to the park, fifteen people in a horse-drawn carriage, one sister lost (one GPS malfunction), bride 50 minutes late as well. Twenty minutes of ceremony, 150 guests and four stringed instruments running to the 17^th century barn to get out of the rain; 30 more minutes of ceremony. Two speeches, three toasts, seventeen chafing dishes, one more speech. Thirty balloons, one kilometer hike to the car, three tired people, but flight 491 from Seattle left on time.

Seven a.m. breakfast, flight 491 expected twenty minutes early. Three bags stuffed quickly into the car, 20 minutes to the airport, 45 minute wait for one tired Number One. Three and a half hour drive to the number two apartment at the farm in Oberzell.

Four windows, two window screens, 26 mosquito bites. Two trips over two days to the rental agency to pick up the car; not the right one. Third time’s the charm.

Three hours westward, 35 minutes with two godsons, one hour along the Rhine, ratatouille (not the movie) with four Alsatians. Five minutes to Cora, 25 bars of chocolat, three glasses of moutarde, 2 bags of sel marin (iode, fin), 2 jars of herbes de provence, and one tube of harissa. Three hours to picnic: two baguettes, three cheeses, four éclairs.

Four bells pealing at 11:30, processional of one happy couple, four children, four in-laws and four grandchildren. Three hymns, five prayers, fifty years blessed. Forty for champagne, twenty for cake and tea.

Three Meersburger wines, one secco, 200,000 liters in the cellar kept at a constant 16 degrees Celsius. Four-course dinner, Three speeches, two musical interludes from two grandchildren (one borrowed cello). Thousands gathered by the lake, twenty-five minutes of fireworks at eleven. Kisses, hugs, 40 minutes in the dark; a thousand and one stars overhead.

Breakfast for nine, dinner for 16 from a one-butt kitchen. Two go-carts, three ride-on tractors, four bicycles and one bee sting. Two aunts, one cousin, seven hours at an amusement park. One last meal, seven bags packed, one last rental car.

Four hours to Frankfurt, two beds for four people for ten hours. Three bags to check, ten hours, two meals, four movies, 20 minutes for the shuttle. One key, one cat, finally home.

Excuses

It could be that I’ve been incredibly busy. After all, I’ve travelled hundreds of miles, acquired a passel of stamps in my passport and receipts from airport restaurants. I have a stack of wedding programs and menus, from a high mass to civil union, garden party to formal buffet for one hundred—and we still have the highpoint of the trip in front of us, my Darling In-laws’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. So it might be that I could say I have a good excuse.

But the real reason I haven’t posted to the blog is simply that I haven’t written. I have started several essays in my mind: about my like-minded Scottish friend (to be entitled Two peas in a pod); something to celebrate witnessing the birth of a cria (that’s a baby alpaca to thee and me); possibly something about being chased by small children armed with latex balloons at not one but two weddings (summarily dismissed to not offend the brides.) There might even be a short ode to having long fingernails on my left hand because I’ve been away from my violin for so long.

I wanted to pour out words of joy about our whirlwind day trip to France, where we filled our pantry and travel wine cellar; lament how much I missed hearing Number One’s cello and even his whining (the former much more than the latter). Somewhere in my heart is a soaring ode to the German breakfast (worthy of a king) and Käsespätzle (the Swabian equivalent of mac ‘n cheese). I actually started a drafted a pretty good piece where I dissected this trip by the numbers (I think I may finish it some quiet morning on my return).

But I seem unable to write about what is occupying a large slice of my mind share these days. Even if it the gift of Blarney isn’t flowing, Ireland weighs on my mind—and not just because that Limerick wedding is shaping up to be one of the more pleasant of this trip (thought the one we stumbled on today in the town square was awfully sweet, with the bride and her policeman groom handcuffed together and serenaded by incongruous Swiss Alp horns.) The reason is simple: we will be living there for a year, beginning in September. Darling Husband’s employer made us a good offer, and the adventuresome spirit that led us to each other in the first place moved us to accept it.

Our handful of days in the west of the Emerald Isle gave us a wee taste, as we strolled mehodically and attentively through supermarkets, trying to envision a yearful of meals. For we recognize that even though the relocation agency assigned to our “case” will help us with finding schools and keeping stamp-happy bureaucrats content, the task of sourcing our nourishment falls to us, and will likely be our most immediate of needs. And so, in addition to long lists of broadband providers, car rental options and furnished apartments south of Dublin (with decent guest quarters), I scour the Internet and solicit referrals for farmer’s markets and good rice noodles.

So it seems that I have picked a good name for the blog, as we will be living the Irish life for the year to come. We may not eat the full Irish every morning, but we will find a way to weave it into the fabric of our lives.

Peas and potatoes

Tucked behind a brick house in the heaving metropolis that is Carlisle is a tiny vegetable garden, fastidiously tended by the husband of my bridesmaid of oh-so many years ago. He is a number cruncher by trade, she has meandered into insurance. They are seemingly normal people, but if you scratch the surface, you find thinking, delightfully quixotic folk. When not writing policies to protect cows from death by lightning (actually it reimburses the farmer for his loss, for there is simply no way to protect a cow in a thunderstorm), she works arduously to obtain and maintain fairtrade town status for her hometown. Her accounting spouse loves planting the beans more than counting them, and has decided to leave his high-powered post go back to university to pursue a degree in environmental studies.

It was at their table in their as-yet unpainted breakfast room that we shared the bounty of their garden, from courgettes (that’s zucchini to thee and me) to yellow chard, to fragrant heritage sweet peas and classic English shelling peas. Little One delighted in hunting for the plump pods, and we all dug into the ensuing risotto with gusto.

Nestled in a vale near the English west coast live the parents of Number One son’s first crush. Lest he blush, I should remind the reader that he was but four years old at the time, but must also note that she has not lost her charm, though it is currently crowned with blue hair. I am tucked into a cozy stone cottage across the garden from the main house on their alpaca farm, where we are awaiting the appearance of Flossie’s cria (that’s a baby alpaca to thee and me). My Little One and their smallest headed out to the potato patch with a basket, and came back lugging grubby new potatoes and fat broad beans (not just for broads, mind you). We scrubbed and shelled and chopped and roasted and feasted on these, and a few more handfuls dug this morning also graced a lovely vegetable stew at lunchtime. They are gentle folk, who quietly lead by example, and have chose quiet, gentle beasts to populate their fields. There are no other animals, not even a chicken, for they keep a vegan household and would have no use for eggs. Aside from the fresh-baked bread, I can relax about the food on the table, for I know it will be healthy and delicious.

Perched on a rocky hillside just inside Bavaria, we gathered for the weekend joining of two soul mates. The menu was predictable, and predictably unsuitable for our travel-weary bodies and thinking lifestyle. Bookended between the visits to our other two friends in England, it stands out, sore-thumb like. Prepared products, conventionally grown and highly-processed offerings were the rule here, and champagne, consumed in quantity, was likely the most traditional and purest consumable. Vaguely aware that we ate outside the mainstream, our hostess provided us with Ökotest margarine; similar to the American Good Housekeeping symbol, its name implies some sort of awareness, but the hydrogenated oil in the product belies corporate emptiness.

The weeks of peas and potatoes serve as healing times, inbreaths between the weighty weekend ceremonies, and I am thankful for the good food as much as the good company. I suspect that in the long run, I shall recall the tendrils and the mud with at least as much fondness as the toasts and vows.

Limerick

I shall resist the temptation to break into a Learesque poem as I announce that we are firmly ensconced in student hosing at the University of Limerick. We are here for the first of three weddings this trip, but have chosen this little refuge to recover from our weariness and jet lag. As I write on the first morning here, it is morning, and I am the only one awake, having chosen to drag myself out of bed at a respectable hour; no worries, there are 10 solid hours of snoozing behind me.

We did a little shopping before our early bedtime yesterday, enough to put together a simple supper of organic chicken breast, snow peas and rice, the latter two being leftovers from our in-trip stores. Earlier, we had had a good midday meal at Ciaran’s café, the little hole-in-the wall across the way. Absolutely delicious, organic and vegetarian, it was the perfect kind of healing food our travel-weary bodies needed.

***

I find I am missing Number One Son, and it surprises me. I always look for four chairs at a table instead of the three we need. I know there are certain moments when he would just roll his eyes, but then there are special ones, like Wednesday. We spent much of the afternoon (we got up late) tooling around south of Limerick, near a place called Lough Gur. It's a lake, like its name implies, but surrounded by a huge concentration of ancient sites—the largest stone circle (like a short Stonehenge) in Ireland is in some farmer's field, but he's opened it up for all to see, and there was a small passage grave. His neighbor though, has an electric fence around some 4,000 year-old stone ring forts, and there was a sign in front of the 15th century castle that said, "No Trespassing, Cross Dog" so we didn’t venture in there.

So we headed to some ruins of an unpronounceable Cistercian Abbey that looked very inviting from the road. We were thinking we'd hit another locked fence, but then Little One spotted a stile next to it. So we parked the car (a black Ford Focus, ugh), and climbed over. There were ruins to a smaller chapel and churchyard on the way to the Abbey, so we poked around. Then we headed toward the little bridge to take us over to the Abbey. The farmer had very thoughtfully put the electrified cow wire on a bungee, and rigged it so there were two to make sure the beasts didn't get out, but when we met the herd, they were led by a rather large bull who was drooling and grunting rather loudly. He didn't seem terribly friendly, and we realized that there were far too many of them, and they seemed hungry. The reader may or may not be glad to hear that we didn't throw Little One to the bulls as a distraction to get to the abbey (we would have needed a second distraction to get back to the car, and we didn't have Number One with).

On the way back to the car, Little One started talking about the Aer Lingus symbol, and we explained that the shamrock, or clover, was a symbol for things Irish. He wanted to know what they looked like, so we pointed down--they were everywhere. I was thinking about what his widow had said at a classmate’s father’s funeral, about how he always found four-leaf clovers, and mentioned to Little One how it was considered good luck to find one. He told me to find one, and of course, I had to tell him that in all my years of looking (and I have looked), I'd never found one. But here they were, hundreds of them, so we set to looking. We looked for a while, and were giving up, when I took two steps—you know how it is, you don't really want to stop looking—and looked down. There it was, a four-leaf clover! I picked it, still not believing it. Darling Husband took a couple dozen pictures, and then turned around and looked down—and he found one, too! At this point, Little One couldn't believe his bad luck, and started to cry. So we hunted for one for him, but of course, there are none to be found when you really need them. So I consoled him with the knowledge that he had found the stile that led us to this magical field, and that was far more useful.

***

And here it is Saturday and we are packing again, a musing half-written, our hangovers still fresh. The first wedding, that of an Irish colleague, was terrific, done in typical Irish style. Just as they can't work long stretches, they can't seem to party without frequent breaks, which means that everyone headed to the bar (at least two rounds of Guinness) between the ceremony and the dinner. The ceremony was high mass, meaning the priest was long-winded (his assistant priest actually fell asleep during the homily), and everyone took communion. There was live, Irish music in the church (the recessional was "Haste to the Wedding"), and then during the break between the three-course dinner and live band for dancing (another two rounds of Guinness or Bailey's on the rocks, since it was after dinner), a few people produced instruments and played a mini-session: two banjoes, a fiddle, and spoons from the table.

Little One sat through the entire mass ceremony (and is very proud of the fact), and we all made it until around 11 pm, when we decided it would be wiser to go home and sleep a bit than be completely wiped the next day. It's taken until now for my head to clear a bit (a hot shower and cocoa helped).

Fireflies

I saw my first fireflies two evenings ago. Magical, as if someone gave cameras to bugs, and they were taking flash pictures of the impatiens. We were coming back from a delicious Board dinner at New Heights in Washington, D.C. (the other Washington), a Zagat-rated restaurant that would have been pretty close to sublime in many ways if they could lose the attitude.

The next night saw us hot and sweaty from heavy-duty way too many monumements touristing, in the Lebanese Taverna across the street. We adults grazed on scruptious mezze, while Little One stuffed fresh-baked pita with chunks of the butter that our gracious server—no attitude here—provided him. I realized I had asked for a table for four: my mother brain seems to have forgotten that Number One was lodged with the Mistress of Indulgence, and is probably too busy cruising the mall with her minions to have time to miss us.

We were sorely tempted by signs and awnings reading Petits Plats, Murphy’s Pub, and Organic Chinese Food among others, but there are only so many meals we can eat in a 24-hour period, and the friction economy is alive and well, gobbling up far too much of our time, and forcing us to resort to grab and go meals far too often.

But this city seems to be at odds with itself: L’Enfant’s sweeping views and allées, heavily influenced by his contemporary Haussmann’s Paris, has been filled with enough concrete barriers to sink an island the size of Manhattan. Bollards and fences everywhere ignore the meandering nature of nineteenth century pathways, forcing tourists into TSA-like cattle chutes. A folly tucked into the woods is inaccessible from the reflecting pool on the Mall.

It is easy to see the magic that this city once hold, and perhaps I am jaded by travel and extremely muggy weather, but I can’t help but feel that the spirit and history of the city is being stifled in the name of security.

Green thumbs up, green thumbs down

Our trek down to Oregon meant that we could indulge in relatively responsible fast food at Burgerville. Their commitment to local was delicious, as I ignored my allergies for a Tillamook cheeseburger, and washed it down with a fresh strawberry milkshake. The flavor and texture reminded me of a shake we picked up at a roadside shack a few years back, with real, tasty strawberry chunks that clogged the straw. Darling Husband was disappointed in his vanilla shake, but the rest of us were too busy slurping to offer him any of ours.

But one of the neatest things was the kid’s meal: this was the first time I didn’t have to remove anything from the bag before I handed it over to Little one. Burger: Oregon Country Beef, check; Fries: Oregon potatoes, check; Shake: fresh local strawberries and Tillamook ice cream, check; toy; seed packet and pot, check. Yes, you heard right, a packet of cucumber seeds and a little rice fiber pot to plant them in. Granted, the pot was made in China, but here was a freebie that we could actually use: Little One planted it all by himself (all 23 seeds, we’re going to have to transplant!) and it sits in the middle of our summer dining table on the deck.

Little One is a happy gardener, always joining me in my morning puttering, helping weeding, planting and watering. Lettuce was on today’s agenda, together with a replant of beans that fell victim to early morning slugs. I had picked up a seed packet at the coop for some green leaf lettuce from Seeds of Change, and change they have. The little paper packet has been replaced by “Exciting New” plastic envelopes that they say take less energy to produce and use up less space in the landfill. Okay, I absolutely buy the energy statement, but must take issue with the statement about landfill. In my garden, the envelope is not wasted: emptied packets sit on a stick at the end of the row (I’m forgetful, so it’s nice to remember what I planted), and a paper envelope, if it even makes it to the end of the season intact, gets collected in the fall cleanup and dumped on our very own compost heap. I may come around, but for now, I’ll remain a stick in the mud. With a paper seed packet on top, thank you.

The smell is free

My shopping list today is pretty boring: lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, avocado, butter. Because my car does not have air conditioning, it has to be a pretty compelling reason to get me to drive anywhere in the afternoon. And I’m trying to empty the fridge a bit, since our summer trek to the olde country is but ten days away. But Little One had a coupon for a one dollar token at the Crossroads Farmers’ Market, and I missed the Redmond Saturday market for camping last weekend, and just can’t face the wilted stuff in the crisper, so off we went.

It is a small market, but still had plenty of flavor, from the Laotian and Mexican farmers bringing fresh cherries over the mountains (1 pound of Rainier cherries go in the bag after begging from Number One, even if they aren’t organic), to the woman who tapes up the seed packets from seeds that I can’t get to grow, but which she has started (one Mammoth sunflower for Little One, who gets two quarters from me in addition to his token), and the Russian woman haggling over the price of a bunch of beets with the preteen who has been left to tend the till (many thanks to the woman who was quick with two quarters to save the poor lad).

I find my old friends from Full Circle Farm, and indeed, they are the only organic farmer represented, and the most local. I’ve been watching their selection turn from dark leafy winter greens to tender baby lettuces, and now it’s glorious summer, and the big heads of fresh lettuce are three for $5. One red sail, one green leaf, one romaine for tomorrow night’s Caesar salad. A farmer from Yakima has the only potatoes at the market, and they’re cheap: a dollar a pound. I find eight nice red potatoes for a salad; if they are nice, I may be back another time.

But it is the strawberries that are the stars of this market day: flats, half-flats, pints, all resplendently red, and one farmer is offering an heirloom variety that sells itself from the smell alone. Two overflowing pints tops off the bag and will tuck themselves into scones this evening.

There are no tomatoes here, but I know I will find them on Saturday in Redmond. I’ll swing by Trader Joe’s on the way home for avocados and butter, and make sure to get a little cream, for those fragrant berries are well on their way to overshadowing dinner.

Salmon finale

It’s hot. There’s no other word for it, just plain hot. Coming down the high rise on the bridge, lake Washington looked like a giant bathtub full of toy boats. Cyclists in Ballard wore more skin than anything else, and the shady English Gardens at the locks were a cool spot to play the final concert of the season.

I had not planned to play in this concert, since we had reservations to be camping in a cool evergreen glade at Cannon Beach with friends. Haystack Rock, pretty as a picture postcard, gave us two lovely sunsets, and we went through two packages of Trader Joe’s new vanilla marshmallows before the inevitable happened: the dread Bad Camping Neighbor Blight. Along with Lost Luggage Syndrome, Darling Husband carries this curse, whereby the most pleasant and idyllic spot can be transformed into camping hell in a flash—and usually in the middle of the night when most people are sound asleep.

This time, we had our bellies full of white bratwurst, pan-fried potatoes and corn on the cob, chased by slushy margaritas and a diabetes-inducing number of riffs on s’mores (with macaroons, milk vs. dark chocolate, one-marshmallow/two/three, etc.). We had capped off the tasty meal with a delicious sunset over the Tillamook lighthouse, and tumbled into bed, grubby, tired and happy, and looking forward to sunny weather and grilled salmon for our final day at the beach.

Alas, it was not to be: the sound of crunching metal woke every adult with title to a car in the campground who feared it might be their fender, but it was only someone trying to back a dented trailer into the campsite the farthest from the entrance. At two in the morning. Did I happen to mention our tent was pitched in the campsite the second-farthest from the entrance? The half hour of painfully haphazard backing and filling was capped by the raucous lighting of a campfire and a celebratory round of beer to mark only denting their own vehicle. A head count made with bleary eyes the next morning revealed an even dozen denizens viewing our chocolate-pancake-and-bacon breakfast the next morning (while they munched on and discussed the virtues of vinegar-flavored potato chips). Darling Husband, a firm believer in order and rules, in this case the one that says only six people per site, spoke to the owner, who flummoxed us by flatly refusing to remedy the situation. Given the choice between spending another sleepless night fuming in our tent, we decided to trek home, with our salmon filets still icy in our Coleman cooler.

In spite of the hot weather, our downstairs was still cool, and the cat was very happy to see us. A quick glance at the calendar showed that we had plenty of other things to do this Sunday instead of dancing on the singing sands of Cannon Beach: the orchestra concert was high on my list, and Darling Husband could indulge in the first half of the European Cup final, pitting his Fatherland against the Spaniards. He will have to wait until our neighbors come home to watch the tape of the second half, where Berliners weep and Spaniards dance in the street, but none of us had to wait for the grilled salmon, cool cucumbers and buttery rice that we enjoyed al fresco, in the cool evergreen glade that we call our backyard.