Where is the bacon? Musings from my vacation in Ireland

black and white pudding

I just returned from my vacation in Ireland or as the Irish would say, my holiday. I truly enjoy traveling the new places.  I love trying the regional dishes.  As unusual they sometimes seem at first, I simply say, "when in Rome, do as the Romans, do." Or, perhaps a more accurate statement would be, I will try anything... once.”

My husband, on the other hand, tiptoes around anything new.  I have to give him credit, however, because if I tease him enough he will even take a tiny taste of say, black pudding.  

Black and white puddings are pretty popular in Ireland. What, you may ask, are black and white puddings?  To the American ear, the word pudding brings to mind, sweet and creamy desserts like chocolate or banana, or even tapioca. (Seriously, if we are talking about weird dishes here, what the heck is tapioca anyway?) 

But I digress.  White and black puddings are a type of breakfast sausage.  The white consists of sausage meats, seasonings, and some types of grain, like oatmeal.  The black sausage is a blood sausage.  Yup, that's what I said. It has the same ingredients as the white pudding with the addition of blood.  So the white pudding tastes like a mildly seasoned and less greasy pork sausage patty.  The black pudding tastes very similar, but the thought of cooked blood is hard to get out of your head.

White and black puddings are on all the breakfast menus in Ireland, as are baked beans.  What?  Did I really say baked beans, the staple of all American backyard cookouts?  Well, yes, I did.  Baked beans like the kind you sometimes got out of a can when you had hot dogs are a staple of the Irish breakfast.  It's as common a side dish as hash browns are in American breakfasts.  

Not being a bean eater even with hot dogs, I avoided the stuff which husband dear ate eagerly. Guess he had a lot of hot dogs as a kid.

The oddest thing, I think, was the lack of bacon.  It wasn't a total surprise since I’d already experienced that omission in Greece.  Order a bacon cheeseburger in Greece and your burger will not be topped with a crispy strip of smoky goodness, but a big honking slice of ham.

Ireland it seems feels the same way about bacon.  Yes, breakfast menus listed, juicy bacon as a side but you soon discover it is, again, ham.  You get used to it, however, so when you see the word bacon you are not as surprised.  What is it Shakespeare said?“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  I think old Will was talking about bacon here. And actually, ham is a lot healthier than bacon. 

I didn't go into McDonald's although they are all over the place so I cannot vouch for whether or not Micky Dees, is on board with the bacon/ham debate.

The food, all in all, was fantastic.  Everything, fresh and tasty and served with a pint of Guinness. Shoot, they use Guinness in everything, stew, tarts, and soups.  

Next post, castles, blarney stone and more fun things from the emerald isle.

Why do we even have Daylight savings time and what does it really save?

Honestly, this weekend will be rough.  It’s the weekend where we turn the clocks forward an hour.  Supposedly it is supposed to save daylight, but seriously there is plenty of research to prove that it saves nothing.  In reality, it causes many, many issues from more heart attacks to car accidents. 

People are walking around in a stupor for at least a few weeks afterward.  In a perfect world, the clocks will just stay where they are spring and fall. Why do we feel the need to readjust them twice a year?

You may think that I am just saying this because I am getting set to lose an hour of my time. You would be, however, wrong. I don’t do well even in the fall when we move the clocks the other direction. I am losing more than time.  My internal clock cannot just be rewound.  It will be on its own setting for quite some time before it bends to the government’s will.  Blame the circadian rhythm if you will.

So this weekend, while my body is thinking it’s 11 O’clock, my usual bedtime it won’t really be 11.  No, it will be midnight.  And then, the next morning, when my body will try and rise at 7:00 a.m., I will discover that it is an hour later.  And I will rush and consume obscene amounts of coffee in an effort to remove the fog that descends upon me.  And no, it won’t help. 

And since the first clock change in 1918 the powers that be are not happy with one time or date.  It seems that they’ve moved the dates later in the fall and earlier in the spring several times.  Pretty soon, if we are lucky the two will meet and then, voila! We will have the clocks stay the same for all 12 months!  One can only hope.

5 reasons why GPS is a pain in the local driver's side

Year’s ago traffic was light.  In my small community, you could get from point A to point B in a flash.  Traffic lights were minimal and short in duration.  Then, development came and swiftly turned this small community into a traffic nightmare.  And GPS became the largest pain in the local driver’s side. 

Why this venom spewing at innocent old GPS?  I mean, seriously why this hatred? Sure, sometimes navigating Nancy may take you to a stranger’s front door instead of the football stadium you were looking for. And maybe she may tell you to turn the wrong way on a one-way street, but all in all, she’s got her act together.  Then again…when it comes to the local driver here are the top 5 reasons why I have come to really detest Nancy.

1.     She knows where the traffic is worse.  And she will take you on a wild ride just to work around it.  These are the back roads and little detours that local people had up their sleeves when traffic is in a snarl.  Take that advantage away and people who live hundreds of miles from the area can take those same routes, and leave the poor local driver SOL.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with this acronym…it means S*** out of luck.

2.     The non-local people who are taking these alternate routes are unfamiliar with these rocky, bumpy, and sometimes unpaved road snags.  So that chasm in that charming little back road that has been there since last winter envelops the unsuspecting automobile whole.  Thus snarling traffic further.

3.     A big city driver following a GPS detour route may be driving a bit too fast for the curved back roads.  You, however, may be driving the opposite way.  You are sitting in a ditch and calling AAA while they happily ride on oblivious to your plight.

4.     And since so many people are using GPS on their smartphones, the highways that once were just a tad bit congested have reversed the traffic flow to roads with traffic lights.  So what once was a smooth ride becomes a crawl with lines that stretch for miles!

5.     GPS is only as good as the information it receives.  Sometimes it doesn’t get updates so when a road changes from regular to a toll road. Nancy just doesn’t know it.  The drivers that are unfamiliar may not be prepared to fork out a toll. In the greater Washington D.C., area…tolls can be quite frightening!  So unable to pay the fee, they may just blaze through. And then, a mile down the road they sit on the shoulder with blue lights flashing behind them.  How does that affect the other drivers?  Well, rubbernecking is a famous interstate highway sport and has a way causing a backup.  The result is a domino effect in a way with some resulting fender benders.

So there you have it, my five reasons why GPS is a pain in the local driver’s side.  The roaming traveler doesn’t get off Scott free, however.  While they are bopping along that back road they may be unaccustomed to the wildlife.  A deer may put an end to their trip as it bounces off their car’s hood.  Or they may discover that running over a skunk, even a dead one, will infiltrate their car with its delightful scent for months after their meeting.  Until that is, navigating Nancy comes up with a way of circumventing wildlife.