The week of the 12th

It's been a holiday week over here in Northern Ireland. The 12th of July is a big holiday over here. Not so much for celebration, but just that everyone has the 12th off and a few people will get the day after. It is also my father-in-laws mother's, Great Granny F, birthday, so we had a big BBQ with the FIL side of the family.

What is so special about the 12th you ask? I like to think of it as the Protestant "St. Patrick's Day." It's actually the Protestant celebration of the Battle of the Boyne. The Protestant William of Orange and his troops beat Catholic James II and his supporters. If you want more information about the holiday, wikipedia has a short synopsis on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelfth They also call it parade season because the Protestant side of NI has a few other events they like to remind people about. This time of year used to be the most violent time because the parade marchers would deliberately march through heavily Catholic areas just to rub it in, like a big middle finger to the losers of the battle.  Bonfires are also a huge deal. They're made of old pallets and get up to 3 stories high. Those represent the old signal fires that used to be in the heavily Protestant areas. Granny F likes to leave the city at this time of year for that very reason, since there is a huge one right behind her house. Every year the districts of the Orange Order choose a town to have their big do for the 12th, next year it's here. I'm hoping to be in America next year to miss all the hoopla. It's usually a really long parade of bands and Order members and then speeches all day. The local band did come back to Tobermore around 5 and we got to see the end of the parade. O seemed to like it.

Such fierce pride in their history is something that is still foreign to me. They remind me of Confederate men not willing to admit that they lost the war. I haven't even seen many Americans with such burning passion for their Protestant history. I have my personal opinions on this, but I'm going to keep them to myself.  Now not all the Protestant's celebrate this holiday, in fact it was very quiet this year except for a smaller riot in West Belfast. Overall it's just a day off. I'm sure I'm not making sense, but I have a few pictures from my phone of the bonfire in Tobermore and the flute band.

Headed to Belfast tonight for a party and some Harry Potter tomorrow! Have a great week all.

A roaring bonfire.

The Tobermore flute band

oíche mhaith

Cork: Day 2

Yesterday was our final day in Cork before the long drive home. I have to say, that coming home felt much shorter than going there, but maybe that's because I slept from Newry to Belfast.

Sunday morning we all got up and went to Mass in Ballingeary. The church was small and had a medieval feel. However the service was in Gaelic and I had to try and keep Olivia quiet the whole time so it really didn't feel like a church service, but it was fun and different.

After mass we had a BBQ and then the whole family went on a boat cruise around the lake. The captain of the boat was a neighbor to the family down there. He had built most of the boat himself with the help of local tradesmen in the area. Ballingeary is near a bunch of tourist stops so he's hoping he can get then to stop at his boat. In fact there was a huge bus full of tourist that drove through town just as mass left out and I had to laugh to myself thinking they were taking pictures of me, an American.... Ok, not that funny, but kind of ironic, don't you think?

The boat ride was about half an hour and Jerry, the captain, gave us some insight on the local history. After the boat ride, R and I did a short kayak trip on the edge of the lake. The water was nice, but very weedy and the air was too cold to even attempt a swim. Some distance cousins of my MIL came over and we ended up taking until about midnight. Then it was up early this morning and straight onto the road. No stops this time and a lot less traffic. It's nice to be back "home." It was a great time in Cork. I wish we could have had one more day, I had wanted to try the local pub and also a nice sunny day would have been nice. It never rained, but it wasn't warm enough to go swimming in the lake or suntan. Maybe next time.

Tomorrow starts the festivities of the 12th. I'll be giving you all a history lesson about that this week. There will be parades and bonfires, maybe even some fireworks, who knows. We already missed the family BBQ in the local park, but I'm sure we'll still find something to do. I hope you all had a great weekend.

Boarding the boat

Looking out on the lake from the dock. The house we were staying in is just around the corner at the far right of the picture.



Can we say "booze cruise?"



More lake. This shot is looking away from the house toward the mouth of the Paudeen river that we swam in yesterday.  

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Cork: Day 1

Greetings from county Cork!

We arrived at my husband's aunts house in Ballygeary or as it is written on the signs, Béal Átha'n Ghaorthaidh. It's about an hour west of Cork in an area they call, geeltach. It means that it's a predominately Gaelic speaking community. In fact R's cousins go to a school where they only speak Irish and there is an Irish college in the town that people from all over come to learn Gaelic. Makes the town a little hard to find if you don't know how to read Gaelic.

Anyways, the car journey was about 6 hours, but travel time was about 9. We stopped in Belfast for a shop stop and then got through Dublin and had lunch at Brown's Bar. It was an old stable converted into a restaurant/bar. Very cool. Than it was straight to Cork from there. Being in a backseat with a grumpy infant and no room makes for a very long journey. The house here is over looking a lovely lake. (I'll have more pictures when we get back to Tobermore more of course).

Today was a lovely day. R and I took a 12 mile bike ride around the whole lake. Through Ballygeary and then to the next village of Inchigeela. Both villages were so quiet and peaceful today. They roads were also pretty empty so we had a nice leisurely bike ride. The roads were the kind of roads you picture when you think of back country Ireland. No cars, no lines, no signs, just cows, sheep and fields. With a few cottages for good measure. However, because I hadn't been on a bike since who knows when, my bum is very sore and there were a few hills I walked up, but overall a very easy ride.  Miss O went with the grandparents for a 2 hour walk around the mountains.

After the bike ride, there was a nap and than I went with the 3 cousins and Uncle L up to the river Paudeen. It's a small river just past their house. To get to the swimming spot, you go under two electric fences and through a cow pasture. It's the perfect swimming hole. A nice current to keep the water clear and deep enough that you can actually swim. However, when we were getting the ready, the "locals" as I'll call the cousin were all dressing up in wetsuits, that doesn't sit well when all you've got is a small swimsuit.  I am proud to say though that I did dive in and it wasn't too bad, if only the air was warmer it would have been perfect. I'm proud to say that I'm made of stronger stuff. (The water was a hair bit warmer than the Maine ocean water).

Tomorrow we're probably going on a boat ride around the lake, more swimming and a BBQ. I might also go to mass tomorrow if the service is going to be Gaelic. Very interested to hear the difference.  Here's a few pictures taken from my phone of the swimming hole. 

Looking up the river. On the left

Looking down the river towards the bridge

The locals looking for small fish.

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A wonderful weekend

They don't celebrate the 4th of July here at all, except for a few mentions on the news and radio, but this weekend had all the elements excluding the fireworks. We had sun, family, BBQ and beach. It was perfect.

The Dublin TT's came up. Cousin A is almost 3 and R is almost 6 so they're perfect playmates for O. They chased and played away all weekend. O was a very happy baby running after her bigger cousins. The best part of the weekend was how sunny and warm it was.  This hasn't happened since before we left. Friday we had a BBQ, Saturday we did the same and Sunday we were outside all day playing baseball and just enjoying the heat. Yesterday my husband and I had the house to ourselves with the baby and it was still nice so we decided to go up to the beach after O's nap. It was a little overcast, but still relatively warm. We went to PortStewart, which is about 40 minutes north of here. It's probably the closest beach. You can drive up on the sand, park your car and enjoy the water and sand. However I will say one thing, the beach yesterday was scattered with trash. Now I don't know if this is a normal occurrence, but was kind of gross. O enjoyed the sand and a little bit of the water. I thought Maine's water was cold. Nope. The only thing that would have made this the best 4th of July weekend ever would be if I had my friends from Maine here with us.

The summer is turning out to be busy, which is great because I am starting to get a little stir crazy. This weekend we're headed down to Cork to see Aunt M and her family. It used to be about a 9 hour drive, but with these new modern highways, it takes about 6 hours. We have to drive down to Dublin and then cut across to Cork. It will be the in-laws and the three of us. Hopefully I survive the drive.

I hope all of you had a great holiday weekend. I've been thinking about many of you as you've traveled home to Maine for the holidays. I'm hoping to be back in Maine for July. (fingers-crossed). Here are some pictures of the weekend.

I just love this picture.

Look down the beach toward the end. It was he end of the day, so it was getting quieter and more and more people were leaving.



Looking up the beach toward the town of PortStewart.



Posing and getting me covered in sand

The babe and her daddy.

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It only takes a week to make one loaf....

Well I've done it. I've entered into the world of making bread. And not just any bread, sourdough bread. When you buy it at the shops, it's a quick warm-up in the oven and tastes great. What you don't know is it takes about a week just to get the starter to the point of making a loaf.
This all started because the Daily Mail (a national newspaper) printed an article about how sourdough bread is the best bread you can get because it doesn't have all the preservitves as the store bought bread. It's made only with water and organic white flour and lots of natural yeast from the air. My father-in-law started buying it at the store, but the cost as adding up a we were eating a loaf every other night. The article had said that it was really easy to make, so we looked it up and I found this recipe.http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/2791/sourdough-bread.aspx

Of course what I didn't realize when I started this project that it was under the catagory of "challenging" and I've never really baked in my life (successfully anyways).


It starts with measuring out flour and water into a large bowl and covering it with a wet tea towel and letting it pretty much rot. However if it smells funny or gets moldy, no good. With little experience with baking, of course I measured everything wrong and wondered why my starter was really watery. Once it gets bubbly, like the picture , you can "feed it", as the recipe tells you. Then another day and finally you can make the dough, but after you make the dough you have to let it rise twice so that's almost another 24 hours.  I did figure out I had measured the ounces wrong I created a second starter which has worked much better.



This is actually a picture of my secod starter, but this is what the recipe means when they say bubbly

The dough is pretty easy to make. Getting it to look like the store bought loaves is a completely different matter. My first loaf with my first started tasted ok, but my dough was a little too stick and some flour didn't get mixed so there was cooked flour in the middle of the loaf. I have just finished making a second loaf with my second (much better) starter and as you can see by the picture it came out much better. Whether it tastes better is another matter. I'm waiting for my FIL to get home so we can all try it together. I'll let you know soon how it comes out.

This is the first loaf with the first starter. I burnt the edges making it really hard and you can see the uncooked flour on top



The second loaf with the second starter. I started this last tuesday, so I'm hoping this time it's worth the wait. But it does look much better than the last one.

 If you have any questions let me know. It sounds like a lot of steps and alot of time. But over all it really only takes a few minutes here and there and then it sits on the counter top. The hardest part is timing the second raise of the dough so that I'm not doing it in the middle of the night. I haven't quite figured out how to get it completely double in size, but I'll get there. The second loaf rose alot more so it does come alot down to the starter. Also you will go through tons of flour, so prepared. I'm also working on getting the oven just right so I don't burn the edges but cook the inside. It's going to take some fine tuning, but I'll get there.

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Let them eat cake

Another quiet week here in NI. However I did turn into a baking goddess for a few days. It was my husband's 31st birthday and since I'm too poor to buy him anything for his birthday I decided to make him a cake. He made me a fantastic cake last year for my birthday, so I thought I would try and out-do him this year. Having never baked a cake from scratch I was very wary and even tried to talk my way out of it twice. However, I found an easy cake recipe in one of my MIL's books and went for it. I made a Victorian Sponge Cake. I've got to say, it was really fun and really easy. I even made home-made butter cream frosting, which was delicious. It was very nerve racking though because I'd never had this type of cake before and had no idea what it was supposed to taste like. Based on everyone's reactions, it came out amazing and R has been eating it all week, and he doesn't normally like sweets.

Here's the cake at it's basic. It's got strawberry jam and butter cream frosting in the middle.

After the cake was done, I decided to try my hand at Regal Icing. You can make this from scratch too, but I chose to buy a pre-made cube and roll it out. It wouldn't be my favorite, way too sweet. But it makes the cake top really smooth and easy to decorate. Since my husband is a HUGE Ford Mustang lover, I wanted to do something with the pony. I free drew the emblem and traced the pony. I think it came out pretty good seeing how I can't draw at all.

Also this week I started working on my starter for Sourdough bread. Once you get it going, it can take up 4 days to get it all bubbly, then another 3 days before you can even start making the bread. The first started I messed up because I measured it wrong, so I started another. We'll see how everything goes. I'll let you know and if it works out, I'll share the recipe.

We were supposed to have the TT's up this weekend from Dublin, but that will be next weekend. So today we went to Maghera Fun Day at the movie theatre. It was a free day with 3 movies to choose from for the kiddies and then activities after. O did really well. We showed up late on purpose so that if she didn't want to sit through a movie we could still enjoy the rest of it. Well we were able to get into RIO and she sat for 45 minutes no problem, in fact it made her very sleepy, so when the movie was over, we came straight home. The activities were a little bit too old her, but it was nice to see how she reacted to the movie. I'm hoping that tomorrow is nice so we can go to the country fair at Shane's Castle.

Hope you all have a good week. Missing my friends at CampMeeting this year. If the visa hadn't gotten in the way, I would have been in Maine right now. I'm definitely going to be in Maine next July no matter what it takes.


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A Good Old Fashion Tractor Rally (With some cars of course)

On Saturday we didn't have any plans and we ended up at an advertised "Vintage Rally" in the old Maghera High School field. Seeing how I'm not from around these parts I really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. The MIL thought it would probably be all tractors, but I was sure there had to be some cars there as well. What made us head that way in the first place was walking past our neighbors house and the wee girl bragging about how she was going to the rally to play on the bouncy castle and we thought that would be fun for O.

What it turned out to be was like any truck/car show you would see at the local Legion parking lot. Except a lot more tractors. There was a wee petting area, 3 food stalls, some really sketchy yard sale areas and lots of tractors and old cars. The cars were great! Triumphs, MG, old Model A's (that's a guess), original Minis and even a 1955 Austin-Healey (If you don't know me, I like cars). The local fire and rescue did a demonstration on what they do with a car wreck and ended up taking the whole top of the car off to get a woman out. They even made a boy pretend he was dead and took him out in a body bag. It was graphic, but drove the home across about drinking/texting and driving. We then walked around, took pictures and ordered a chip to share. The ironic part is that we ended up not letting O on the bouncy castle cause it cost even more money after we already paid to get in and she didn't seem fussed going on it.  There was also a Bonny Baby competition and we entered O in, but she didn't win, even though I thought she was the cutest.

It was a fun day, even though we took O home screaming cause we missed a nap and she tossed her dummy(pacifier) to the wind. It was really interesting to see what I would call Irish "rednecks" act exactly the same way as some Downeast potato farmer or lobsterman. Maybe that would be a good anthropological study: Rednecks Across Continents.
Here's some pics of the day.

The start of the Fire and Rescue demonstration

What the car looked at the end

I would just love one of those.

A Lotus Elise

A 1955 Austin-Healey. Beautiful car.

The tractors. There were loads more behind the shot.



1960's Morris Minor. This car was so cute.



Waiting to be judged in the Bonny Baby competition.

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