Gunternation

Well, I’ll start with a wee bit of November. This year we enjoyed our first Thanksgiving meal in Ireland hosted by fellow American Amanda and her Dub husband Hagi. Amanda did most of work, preparing all the classic dishes and her first Turkey! We brought a pan of cornbread dressing. Amanda is from Georgia, so the dressing was much appreciated. We also watched Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Hadn’t seen it in ages, so awesome! I should keep a copy of the show handy for all the people who ask me what Thanksgiving is all about.

Below, our friend Graham demonstrates the proper way to eat a mince pie, following a night of caroling with our church. I think my personal mince pie tally for the holiday season is around three dozen.

And a few scenes of Dublin in its Christmas finery.

We were let out of work a bit early on Christmas Eve, so I was able to catch the sunset over St. Anne’s.  We spend the evening with the Barnes Family. Caragh prepared a lovely ham, and the kids had helped make homemade mince pies. We also sampled Yarg, a regional specialty cheese from Caragh’s homeplace, Cornwall. Yarg is a cow milk cheese based on a 13th-century recipe. It’s typically wrapped in nettle leaves, but this wheel was covered with wild garlic leaves, which infused the semi-hard cheese with lovely garlic aroma. We also enjoyed some 2-year aged Gouda (which people in the know pronounce how-da). Cheese, Grommit!

On Christmas morning, we had a bit of a lie in, followed by the Opening of Presents. Bill then set to work preparing his dishes for the Christmas feast to come.

On Christmas we loved being Kingstons for a day. Hilary, Anna and Bill put together an amazing Christmas dinner of cranberry-stuffed pork, roast potatoes, Brussels sprouts with pancetta, savory bread pudding with leeks and gruyere, and ginger-glazed sweet potatoes, followed by a dizzying collection of desserts. Those cranberry cocktails were pretty nice too!

On Stephen’s Day we visited Colin (and his dogs!) in Laytown for dinner. Bill and I worked the three days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Snow started falling on New Year’s Eve. It was the beginning of The Big Freeze.

I went for a walk yesterday on the coast road and in St. Anne’s to take some pictures. It was a lovely day and loads of people were taking advantage of the break in the weather.

The weekend of April 18 & 19 brought lots of sun to Dublin. The bright days beckoned us to leave the apartment. Saturday we headed into City Centre to S. Great Georges Street. Georges Street is home to many popular restaurants–Havana, Cafe Bar Deli, Brasserie 66, Odessa. We lunched at a pleasant Japanese place called Yamamori. After a sushi fix, we strolled through the shopping arcade and visited an instrument shop to buy a music stand and guitar stand for Bill. [Note: was recently chastised (friendlily, mostly) for saying store instead of shop.] We wound up in the green and lay upon the grass. We then visited the Asian market to stock up on dumplings, and a surprising and happy find–Paprika Pringles (our favorite)!

On Sunday afternoon we took a picnic to our neighborhood park, St. Anne’s. The sun was warm, but the breeze was cool, so we had keep rotating to stay comfortable.

The next Saturday, April 25, started out rainy, but turned nice by late afternoon. We visited the park again for a some duck watching, and also saw a heron.

We so enjoy having St. Anne’s right next door.

On Sunday we attended church at the central location on Gardiner Street. The North and Central congregations met in the main auditorium. It’s not quite finished, but it was exciting to get a glimpse of what is to come when all three congregations combine for the monthly celebration Sundays. Afterwords we brunched at The Mermaid Cafe on Dame Street. I had Eggs Norwegian–Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon instead of ham. Bill also had poached eggs with fish, smoked haddock. For dessert we had pecan pie, which was unlike the pecan pie we know, but instead a lovely pecan tart served with maple ice cream.

The weather here has been quite atrocious lately. It’s been raining almost incessantly for weeks and many areas have experienced bad flooding.

The last weekend of July, however, was quite pleasant and we enjoyed a lovely afternoon in St. Anne’s Park playing boules and smelling the roses. Our plan was to walk through the park to the rose garden, but we were pleasantly surprised to find our friends Caragh and Jasper also enjoying the afternoon with some other friends of theirs playing boules. They invited us to join them and we happily accepted.

After a couple rousing rounds we took our leave and continued our journey to the rose garden. St. Anne’s has a lovely garden with a huge variety of roses. The park also has some wonderful hidden glades with spectacular trees.

Another recent weekend was spent in art appreciation. The National Gallery had an exhibition of impressionist interiors we’d really been wanting to see, so after church we took the DART to city center. A new friend at church, Andrea, wanted to join us, so we met her at the Gallery for lunch before seeing the exhibition. Several paintings by Degas, a favorite artist of mine, were included. We really enjoyed it, though Andrea prefers landscapes. Afterward we parted company with Andrea to do some shopping. Here I am outside Hodges Figgis, a very cool bookstore on Dawson St. near St. Stephen’s Green and the largest bookstore in Ireland. Sharon picked up a few books on the discount cart. Next to the bookstore is Lemon, and we couldn’t resist crepes and lattes. The simplest crepes with fresh lemon juice and caster sugar are the best, and they make some pretty mean lattes, too. Our final destination was our favorite Chinese market on Abbey St. where we bought some frozen dumplings and stir-fried veggies with fish balls. We like to keep an assortment of dumplings around for quick dim-sum dinners, and we enjoyed some that evening with our stir-fry.

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