What is considered American food?

Written by:  Amy listening to Devan, Abigail and Colleen “play” Minecraft “together”.

What does Ireland think is American cuisine?  We’ve been to several places that claim to have American food.  What we see is typically burgers and fries with the usual Irish cuisine thrown in for local familiarity.  When we see Mexican food, it typically tastes like barbeque.  Barbeque sauce does not taste like it is supposed to here so I’m not counting that as American Cuisine.  Tex-Mex in Ireland is a bizarre combination of foods with none of the spice.  It’s not good.

So, what would be typical American cuisine?  More specifically, what would you find in an American restaurant that you wouldn’t find anywhere else? I can tell you it’s not steak.  Or potatoes.  Those are both found all over the world.  It’s not seafood or it’s many preparations because that’s found all over the world as well.  It’s not pork chops, pulled pork, or turkey. It’s not even the hamburgers since most locations have cows and have discovered how to mince the meat up for patties.  There are hot dogs and buns, but they are usually found in the Slavic section. 

Instead, we do not see foods like jambalaya, collard greens, hush puppies, black-eyed peas, and gumbo.  So, the American south is not represented.  Weirdly enough, there is no root beer here.  It’s kinda weird.  The grocery stores lack staples like dried beans (split pea, lentils, pinto and the like), chicken broth, vegetable broth, cornmeal, dried bread, to name a few.  However, there is a make it yourself mentality so with broth, I bet they just pull a DIY on that.

We have been into some stores that claim to cater to the American ex-pat crowd living in Ireland.  What we found there was certainly an eye opener.  There was: Captain Crunch cereal, Lucky Charms cereal (so embarrassing!), Nerds, Cheetos, Marshmallow “Fluff”, Pumpkin Pie filling, Twinkies, Hawaiian Punch, Arizona Sweet Tea, Fanta Grape soda, Wonka Chocolate bars, and a whole host of candy that I have never seen before in my life. Eek.  This is American? 

So, what do you do all day? Huh?

Written by:  Amy making chicken stock from because they don’t sell it here.

I’ve had many people wondering what we do all week here.  I’ll try and take you through a typical week from my perspective.

Monday through Friday we wake up in time to roust the girls out of bed.  Abby is usually already up or close to it.  However, Colleen ALWAYS needs a nudge to start her day.  She doesn’t like leaving her cozy warm bed.  It is usually choose-your-own-adventure breakfast but we eat together in the kitchen at the small table that only has 2 chairs.  How do 4 people eat breakfast with only 2 chairs?  By using sneaky take-the-nearest-chair-first rules.  The suckers that don’t get a chair have to stand. 

I insist the girls be dressed, fed, teeth brushed before they start school at 9 am sharp.  They do not always appreciate this as they feel that since they go to school online, they should be able to go when they want in whatever attire they want.  On this, I get to have my way because I’m the parent and in charge.  I have relented and allowed Casual Friday to be PJ Friday.  But, the 9 am start time is set in stone.  I have a deal with them that if they get straight A’s, then they can have school in bed.  They are close, but no bed-time school sessions have happened yet.  You wouldn’t believe how motivated this makes them to get straight A’s.  It works even better than a trip to Disneyland.

Once they are set up and into the groove of school, Ker and I head to the fitness and leisure center in Bettystown.  It’s a tiny facility attached to the Neptune Hotel with some treadmills, elliptical and stationary bikes.  It offers classes—like spin—for 30 minutes a couple of times a week. I have attended 2 spin classes and even though they were only 30 minutes (the ones at home are 60), I got my ass handed to me both times.  I could barely walk after the last one.  I haven’t been back to the classes since because I’m a wimp. 

The gym offers several perks that are missing in my gym experience in Portland.  First, the people are some of the nicest fitness trainers I’ve ever had. They are completely approachable.  I pissed one of them off early on and she isn’t my biggest fan, but the other people are very kind and interested in stopping for a chat.  It’s nice because they are not super models, fitness zealots, or Barbies.. They are real people who sincerely want you to get the most out of your gym experience.

I go to the gym for fitness, but I also go because the gym offers my only chance at a decent shower.  The water pressure is so bad at the house that I have extra motivation to go to the gym.  And, while I’m there, I work up a sweat so I can justify using their showers.  It’s a win-win situation.

If we don’t go to the gym, Ker and I run other errands or just go exploring in the morning.  Ker’s got to work at noon-ish till 9 pm and the morning represents his free time.  So, we make it a point to go somewhere so he doesn’t feel housebound.  Also, the kids need some parent-free time and the morning is a good time to let them learn in peace.

Once we come home, it’s time to make lunch and Ker goes to work.  Abby is generally finished with her lessons for the day so she has free time.  Depending on the day, Colleen may or may not be done with her lessons.  If they are done, I drag them off for adventures.  And, I never know what those will be.  It could be a library day, or a beach walk day, or who knows.  We spend a lot of time getting groceries and meal planning.

I have a lot of time on my hands.  So, I fill it with books and I now watch TV shows on Netflix.  I find that I don’t have the stamina to sit through a lot of TV.  I start to get twitchy.  But, the upside of all this time is that my house is clean ALL THE TIME, my girls get my undivided attentions, Ker gets my undivided attention, and I can think.

Sooner than I expect, it’s time for me to cook dinner.  One of the girls is “cooker’s helper” depending on the day (odd days for Abby and even for Colleen), Ker takes his “lunch” at dinner time.  We eat and depending on the day (even days for Abby and odd for Colleen), one of the girls does the dishes while the other cleans off the table and does laundry.

Around 9 pm, Ker is done with work and is ready for some chill time.  The girls have LiveLessons week nights at 9 pm, but some are at 5 pm and 7 pm for Abby.  Since the school is based in Oregon, all times run on Oregon time.  Once LiveLessons are done, we hit the sack to do it all over again.

Weekends we try to go and explore Ireland.  I always look for a hike we can do.  I just love it.  Otherwise, we head to explore castles, historic landmarks, good tours or craft breweries. 

I gotta tell ya, it’s kind of awesome.

Dingle (bells) and Cork

By Abigail Cakebread

Come one, come all! Freshly written (but we're going to pretend it's not, like we've totally had this for a while but haven't gotten around to posting it) and late (again), this adventure is gonna knock your socks off.

So what adventure doesn't start out with waking up at 4 am on a Thursday? No good story ever starts with “I woke up at 10 am”. Instead, it's this: I woke up at 4 freaking am and, half asleep, saw a figure looming over me. Now, since I was like 90% still asleep, I figured I had a 50/50 chance of dying if I hugged it. Who knows, it could just be a lonely monkey in need of companionship. Or it could be a bear. Like I said, 50/50. Then I realized what it actually was, and wished it was a bear. It was Dad, telling me to get up because we had an exciting four hour car ride to “look forward to”. Yay. Can't wait. So I get dressed (kind of. See, I can't remember if more than half of the clothes I was wearing was dirty, but it's a good bet to say yes) and ready (mentally and physically) and lugged out the clothes and stuff I had packed the night before. Plopping into my “comfy” car seat, I remembered that we were in an enclosed space with Mom. Unfortunately, I hadn't convinced them to invest in gas masks, so we were all in danger of death by suffocation.

Skipping the boring car ride listening to music and our book on tape, we arrived in Dingle (bells) and checked into our bed and breakfast place. Outside the B&B, there was a large Mickey Mouse in the water, almost looking like he was measuring the water level. I have a pic of him on my phone. The weather outside was windy and rainy and windy and windy (did I mention windy?). We all went to lunch at a bar near the B&B at Murphy's. I had pizza, but it was a letdown. All cheese, no sauce. Dad went back to the B&B to work, and Mom, Colleen, and I went shopping. Yay. Oh, how I love walking aimlessly into stores while the weather outside was just getting worse. After like two hours, we went to the B&B to chill and “enrich ourselves with the cultural audiovisual experience”, basically watch Brits do Brit things. We had dinner in town. Guess what? They had pizza, too. I was so excited, I might get a redo of lunch! This pizza was probably better! Guess what Mom said? No. Guess what Dad did? Tormented me. Of course. Because this is a loving, caring, supportive family.

Friday was cold. We had breakfast at the B&B. Then we decided to drive around the Dingle(bells) peninsula. We saw an old fort that had been used in the early 1100s and beyond. They cared a lot about their sheep. We saw some Celtic crosses and ancient beehive huts. There was no tour for the huts, so it was up to our imagination to figure out what they were used for. Best guess is houses.  We continued along, finding two loose sheep, and going to an early Christian church called the Something Oratory. Of course there were rainbows along the way. We also went to a ceramic gallery and picked up Gma's Christmas gift. We went back to the B&B to pack up and head to Cork. After more driving, we found a hotel and repeated yesterday, lunch and then shopping. There were a lot of lights. Unfortunately, my knee started hurting again. My knee has been hurting on and off for a few months now. Presently, it hasn't acted up any, but I'm keeping a wary eye on it. After walking around (and around and around and around), Dad met us for dinner, then we headed to our hotel.

Saturday was cold (when isn't it?). We had breakfast in Kinsale where we went to the Lemon Leaf Cafe. They surved the best shortbread I have ever had in all of my existence. Know what I didn't grab? The recipe. Of course. We walked around Kinsale, then decided to walk to Charles Fort. It was a pretty cool fort, but there was nothing that really jumped out at me. We walked back and wandered around Kinsale, then headed back to Cork.

Sunday we had Breakfast in Cobh (what kind of name is that??) and went to St. Colman's Cathedral. It was very big. Mom and I attended mass. Then we headed home for another fifty thousand hours.

This is Abigail Cakebread, signing off.