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.

Are you hanging Christmas vacation style lights, or are you laser lazy?

Blue light fiasco

A few years ago as my husband was putting up Christmas decorations, he slipped and fell off the roof.  He broke his wrist, on one hand, his thumb on the other, had a hematoma in his leg and a concussion.  Sounds bad, and it was.  It took several months of recovery, but he was extremely lucky he made it out of that mess alive!

So the following Christmas I went on a hunt for a way to decorate our home for Christmas without pulling out the now taboo ladder.  As I cruised around looking for ideas I noticed several houses that had tiny lights covering the entire front. After a little investigation, I learned they were laser projection lights.  I had found the answer.

That year, however, was the first year of laser light introduction and they were as rare as hen’s teeth unless you shopped for Christmas decorations in July. So I spent hours looking in stores.  When that didn’t pan out I took to the Internet.  I was soon to discover that during that first year, laser lights will go down in history with the cabbage patch kids and beanie babies.  Oh yeah, you could get them on eBay if you were willing to pay ten times its retail value.  And if you went to a legitimate store, you could wait for months and by then you were thinking about sipping a Mai Tai by the pool.

I didn’t give up though and I found these large globe light strings with blue light projection.  I thought, why not?  You still had to string them up but at least you could hang them on the lower level porch and aim the projection towards the house.  My husband used a chair to hang them, which in my estimation was even less safe than a ladder, but at least it was only three feet off the ground. He got them up without further injury unless you count a sore thumb from poor aim with a wayward tack hammer.

So the on the night of the unveiling, I was a little disappointed.  To me, our house resembled a fish tank or a swimming pool with the dizzying projected blue moving lights.  Not the Christmas feeling I was searching for. So, after Christmas, they landed in our basement of lost lights.

Next year, I was better prepared.  As soon as the stores started putting out Christmas items I was there.  Sure, it was August but the early bird gets the worm, right?

I found laser lights that had an enormous repertoire of light shows, red, green, blue, white, you name it. I was beyond excited.  I felt like Jonas Salk must have felt when he discovered the first vaccine for Polio. It was an elation that would soon evaporate.

When we opened the box, the enormous round plastic globe looked cheap but convincing.  Then we put it in the ground.  No ladder, no chair, no injury, but also no good!  The lights were large blurry, moved erratically. The cheap plastic remote was confusing but we kept it because, again when the actual Christmas season came around, there weren’t any other choices. We used it that year in moderation because I still didn't care for it. 

And this year, when we hooked it up, the remote wouldn’t work.  I replaced the batteries, checked the connections, and it still didn't work.  And then I threw it at the wall and it shattered into a million pieces. File that under Crystal's epic fails. Unfortunately, there was no manual operation for it.

Fast forward to this year.  I went out and found a laser light.  It was on sale!  And they a ton of them on display! And this one does everything that I ever wanted.  It has tiny stars that cover the entire house. It has images that project as well.  It moves or stays still, however you choose.  It’s metal, not plastic and for now, it’s perfect.

Until next year…when the next new thing appears on the horizon!

Lemon, lime, or cucumber, which is the best fruit in your water?

I have to admit I drink a lot of water.  I’m just not into sodas and other sugary drinks.  Water, however, can be a bit bland.  So I’ve always opted for a few lemon wedges in my water.  Do you like lemon, lime, or is it cucumber in your water, or do you just drink it straight from the tap?

First of all, let’s clear up one thing.  I love lemon in my water.  Lemons have one drawback though.  They are full of seeds.  I sit there and try and dig the seeds out before I put it in my water but I always miss a few. 

These errant seeds fall to the bottom of the glass and sit there waiting for the straw to reach them.  Then as I try to get a drink, I suck the seed into the straw, blocking any actual water from reaching my parched lips.

So now I have a straw with a stuck seed.  What’s a girl to do but take the straw out and blow into the straw trying to dislodge the seed?  Thus, making the straw with the seed similar to a native blowgun. I sit there trying to look innocent while my poor husband almost loses an eye from the flying seed.

So I get an epiphany.  Limes, which are a citrus fruit similar to lemons, do not have seeds. Don’t ask me why or how they grow more limes, but they don’t have them. Botany is not my forte, but it has something to with not needing to pollinate to grow fruit.  As for how one makes more lime babies, you will just have to look it up. 

I realize that restaurants that have bars usually have an ample supply of lime wedges.  So at those establishments, I always ask for limes.  I admit I get a few questioning looks as if they didn’t hear me correctly.  Sometimes they bring me lemons anyway.  At those moments I just revert to trying to seed the darned things.  And I try and warn my husband of incoming projectiles.

Now, we finally come the question of the third fruit, Yes, it is technically a fruit. I am referring to the cucumber.  Some spas and fancy establishments are big on adding cucumbers to their water.  They say it detoxifies the body. There are other benefits as well, but aside from that, to me, it just tastes weird, not horrible, just weird.

I offered my husband a glass of cucumber water from a hotel once. He sipped, he gagged, and then he watered a potted plant.  It is a taste, I believe, one has to acquire.

So what is your preference, lemons, limes, cucumbers, or just plain H20?

What is that old saying about owning a boat?

There is an old saying about owning a boat.  “The happiest days of a man’s life is the day he buys a boat, and the day he sells it.”

My poor husband a living reminder of the truth in that adage.  No, he hasn’t sold his boat as yet, but he sure is thinking about it. 

If you’ve read my blog you know that I am basically an indoor girl.  Especially in the hot and humid Virginia summers.  Although I’ve gone out on the boat with him many times, it was never fun.  It’s too bumpy to read, and bumps, as you know relocate parts of one’s body to places they should not be. 

The scenery starts to look the same as if you’ve already been through that area before.  The river water doesn’t smell pleasant and is a greenish hue. So whenever I’d go out on the boat with him, I’d count the minutes till I return. Don’t judge, indoor girl, remember?

Now the first couple of years the boat worked like a charm.  Then things went south, way south. First, it didn’t like the gas.  Then, parts of the boat started to break.  Doo-dads and thingamajigs with odd sounding names were gunked, stuck or just not working. Poor husband spent more time hunched over an open engine in searing heat than getting a tan on the deck.

And last year, first time out, the boat conked out about a mile from shore making this high tech motor boat basically a rowboat. 

So he had high hopes this year.  He fixed the carburetor; one of many repairs.  Still, the little engine that once could, couldn’t. 

So more parts came.  And still, the boat was basically a land yacht. So as a last resort he checked the gas and it seems the gas just isn’t what it should be.  So now he has to remove all the gas and replace it with good gas.  And then we will see…

Until such time as this boat becomes sea-worthy again, I will sit in the air conditioning and read my books without getting motion sickness. And I will pray, if only for husband’s sake that it will be ready before the first snowfall.

For Vincent a personalized limerick:

There once was a man from up north

Who wanted his boat to go forth

He hammered and oiled

But alas he was foiled

No sailing to be henceforth

What will be the most common names in the next century?

Greece the name of the destination

Today or rather, tonight I’d like to talk about names.  As I type, I sit in a darkened airplane on my way over the ocean.  London is the destination on my way to a vacation in Greece.  It is 12:26 in the morning and, as I look around in the darkness, I feel like the last living cell in a dead body.  I mean no one is awake!  Relax; my Vincent Price imitation is over it’s just a little creepy in a dark plane at this hour of the night. 

All is calm…and then eek, turbulence.  If I make a few typos I hope you understand.  My partner in crime, and life, is sleeping like a baby next to me.  I just don’t get how someone can sleep so happily sitting upright in a chair.  I mean this coach seat is no Laz-Z-Boy.  My knees rest up against the seat in front of me.  Still, he snores and clutches the scratchy military type blanket up to his chin.  Sweet dreams my love. 

I did say I was going to discuss names, but I digress.  I am an 8-hour a night gal.  If I get less than that my brain goes into hibernation.  If you ask my name in few hours I might not even remember.  So…here we go back to names. 

Have you ever noticed how some names go through stages of popularity?  I mean, when did Brittany unseat Bertha?  I guess it must have been around the same time that Joshua was doing the same thing to Melvin.  One wonders, if, in 2049 will Brittany sound as outdated as Ethel and Myrtle.  Seriously don’t you think we have enough Jessica’s and Jennifer’s in the world?  Wouldn’t it be refreshing to come across an Irma or Eunice?

My mom, however, bucked tradition.  She named me Crystal.  When I was growing up my name was as rare as a three-dollar bill.  There was not another Crystal in sight!

All through school I spent my life repeating, spelling, and then repeating again.  I’ve been known as Krystal, Cristal, Kristil, Chrystal, and Christal. I’d plead and spell C-r-y-s-t-a-l!  Eventually, I’d give up and just say I was named for the fine crystal glassware my mother drank her champagne out of the night I was conceived.  The teachers would peg me as troublemaker and spell it the way they wanted.  My own grandmother never spelled my name correctly!  So I’d take my check for five dollars made out to Krystal and thank her.  Why fight it?

It’s 2017 and now you can’t swing a dead cat (meaning it’s everywhere) where I don’t run into a Crystal somewhere!  I mean even Hugh Hefner was engaged to a Crystal Harris, and boy did my blog blow up when they broke up!

I didn’t have enough fun trying to get my name across to people when I was growing up so I had to go and marry an Ogle.  Ogle, just like the word that means to stare at in a leering way.  Four simple letters and I’ve had to spell it thousands of times!  O-g-l-e.  How hard is that?

In my second marriage I married a Donnelly, you know the sweet slumbering fellow snoring next to me.  No it’s not Donelli, Irish, not Italian. 

You know I once dated a guy whose last name was Diamond.  Now, if we had continued to date, and, happened to marry, my name would have been Crystal Diamond.  Now, tell me with a straight face that doesn’t sound like a stripper or a porn star.  Thank god that didn’t work out. 

3 hours and 53 minutes to destination.