Bangers and Mash

Fall has officially come to Dublin.  Last week was crisp and cool and this week is downright windy and cold!  So last night, I decided to try something new for dinner, yet again, and make a traditional Irish meal: Bangers and Mash!  I found a gazillion recipes on Pinterest and decided, yet again, to combine like 3 different recipes that sounded good.  Drew hates it when I do this but I'm simply combining all the best parts from all the recipes to make the best dish POSSIBLE!  And he never complains once he's got an amazing meal in front of him.  Pssshh.

Bangers and Mash is a dish you'll find in many of the pubs all over Ireland and the UK.  It basically consists of sausages, mashed potatoes, and some sort of onion gravy.  Sign me up!  According to Wikipedia, "Bangers", or sausage, "is attributed to the fact that sausages, particularly the kind made during World War II under rationing, were made with water so they were more likely to explode under high heat if not cooked carefully; modern sausages do not have this attritube."

So...let's get started!

Here's the cast of characters: potatoes (I could only find 1kg of baby potatoes and 2 big red potatoes), heavy cream, garlic, mushrooms, Worcestershire sauce, a flavored sausage of your liking, dijon mustard, onions, butter, and sherry/red wine.  Though you should definitely have red wine to drink while you're cooking.

Start by peeling all of your tiny ass potatoes in the sink with a veggie peeler and try hard not to slice your hands or fingernails in the process.  I barely made it unscathed.  Then cut them into chunks and put them in some salted boiling water for 15-20 minutes, until they're softish.

Heat up a pan and throw your sausages in there to brown and cook all the way through.  

While those pups are heating up, slice two onions very finely.

Take time to take some pics of your cute husband, who surprisingly wanted to help out tonight.

Browned sausages.  Yummm.

After those are done, set those aside on a plate and throw in all of your sliced onions!

Though absolutely no recipe I've found calls for them, we sliced up some shrooms and threw those in too!  You know I can't resist mushrooms in...well, anything.

Chops up two cloves of garlic...

And measure out a cup of chicken stock.

Throw the garlic in with the onions and the shrooms....

And then add two tablespoons of flour, to get a good base going to thicken your gravy.

Stir all that up and make sure everything is coated and cookin'.

Pour in the cup of chicken stock, followed with 1/4 cup of sherry/madeira, and a couple of shakes of Worcestershire sauce.  Stir it all around and let it thicken!

Why not throw some heavy cream in?  It'll only make it taste better, for cryin' out loud.

Ohhh yeah.  Stir that shit up and prepare to be amazed.

Meanwhile, drain those taters in a colander and get all the water out.  Return them to the pot you boiled them in.

Throw in some butter (no exact measurement), some heavy cream (no exact measurement), a spoonful of dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and some salt and pepp.

Then start mashing away!

After you get all those flavors right and you've tasted the potatoes multiple times, go ahead and return those sausages to the pan with the gravy to heat up.

Time to eat!  Scoop up some mashed potatoes, two sausages each, and a bunch of the creamy yummy oniony gravy.

I threw some Herbes de Provence on there to add some green and add some more flava.

And...voila!  Bangers and Mash!

Now I've only had this once in a pub, but my homemade version was pretty darn good if I do say so myself.  However, most pictures and recipes I've seen have a thinner gravy than the one I made, and I would maybe attempt to thin mine out a bit too next time.  Some recipes also call for fried onions, which I think would be good cause it'd give the dish some crunch and a little more texture.

You can look at the 3 different recipes I combined here, here, and here.  As you can tell in my opinion, there's no right or wrong way to make this!  Or anything!  Give it a whirl and see what you like.

Cheers!

Dutch Visitors

Drew's good friend John and his wife Natalie, who currently live in Amsterdam, came to visit us this weekend!  I was of course nervous about them staying in our tiny apartment but it worked out well and we had a great time!  John has kinda become the older, wiser, European brother that Drew never knew he needed.  Over the past several months we've looked to them for advice and help and as an ear to listen when things over here have gone bonkers.  They're great.  Our weekend was low key and we mostly just talked about living in Europe and the quintessential Irish/Dutch things that make us laugh, the highs, the lows, the banks ("Tell us your bank story!  EVERYONE over here has a horrific bank story!" Natalie said), the travels, flights, credit card reward points, babies, parents, families, and anything and everything else.  It feels nice having someone echo our thoughts and feelings about the variety of topics and emotions and situations one experiences while living abroad.  

They got in late evening on Friday, and we headed over to Bear for an amazing steak dinner.  We stopped by The Stag's Head for some Guinness afterwards, where John was able to confiscate a souvenir Guinness glass for "free", and then we headed home cause we're getting old and get tired easily.  Dangit.

On Saturday, we headed over to Queen of Tarts (anyone noticing a trend here?) for some scones and tea, walked around Trinity College a bit, and then took the train to Howth for the afternoon.  We had every intention of hiking a bit and seeing the sights, but we got stuck watching seals play in the water and then stuck in a pub near the water enjoying seafood and scoops (beers).  Whooops.  

We had an afternoon nap (and a tutorial session from John about reward points and miles and maximizing our travels here) and went to get some more beers before our late pizza date at Paulie's.  Lady Gaga was in concert VERY close to the restaurant AND our apartment, so we got to walk home with all of her weirdly dressed little demons or monsters or whatever they call themselves.  It was...interesting.

They left around 9:30 on Sunday morning, and it was cloudy and we were sad to see them go so we crawled back in bed and watched the UT game from the night before and dozed.  It was lovely.  We went and got some sandwiches for lunch and headed to St. Stephen's Green for a little picnic and some good quality love time.  

And then we stopped by a pub near our house and somehow managed to get them to put on American football for us!  I don't think Drew even cared who was playing.  We heard some grumbling from the old guys at the bar about how American football was "crap" and they couldn't believe the bartender would put this on TV, but then the crotchety drunk guy talking fell out of his wheelchair and Drew and I rushed to help him get back in his chair...which was an ordeal in and of itself.  That shut him up good.  And then he came over and talked to us all about sports and Ireland so I think we're all friends now.  What a relief.

Now it's Monday, and I gotta go to the store for dinner tonight and do some laundry and all kinds of other fun housewifery.  I'm planning on enrolling in my Spanish class this week, researching our upcoming trip to Paris, applying for more jobs, seeing some friends, having some pints, and all kinds of other things to keep myself entertained!  AND I think we're booking our tickets home for Christmas this week, so that's fun.  Woohoo!  Ok, see yall later.  Happy Monday! 

Limbo

The job search...isn't going well.  And this limbo feeling is for the birds!  I've applied for a gazillion jobs and have either gotten rejection letters, or nothing at all.  And in this case...no news is probably bad news.  Though I've had a good and positive and busy week again, I still don't really know what to do or what to apply for or how to proceed with anything.  I don't know anything about anything and I'm stuck!  It's a less than desirable feeling and one I've struggled with since freshman year of college unfortunately.  I never really knew what the hell I wanted to DO in college, or in life, so I went to UT and happened to place out of a bunch of Spanish classes and somehow found myself majoring in Spanish because it was the easy route.  And two years into it I thought, "Hey.  French might be cool to learn." So I started taking French classes.  And then I found out I could get degrees in BOTH of them and not have to work all that hard so I DID, never giving a thought to the fact that these degrees SUCK, yet feeling insecure about them all the while.

Enter 3 years of marketing, an industry I don't like or feel passionate about.  Because I don't like or feel passionate about anything.  After 9 months of job searching, I land a dream job at Genesis, getting to use the actual thing I went to school for, getting to build relationships with people, which I love, getting to HELP people.  I feel good about myself and my job and my self-worth for the first time, despite a kooky boss and minimal pay.

Then our dreams come true and we come to Europe, live the dream in Dublin, but the self-loathing and the college feelings start sinking in again sometimes.  I can't get a job doing even the most menial of tasks.  I don't have a "career" to speak of or work towards.  No one in Ireland knows these American companies and on paper, my resume is evidently screwing me over.  But at the same time, I don't want a job I'll hate!  And if I have this conversation with people one more time, I'll scream.

I kinda feel like I should just decide....ok.  I won't work.  I gave it a try and now I'll just commit to keeping myself busy and bettering myself without a job.  But I know some part of me feels like I'm letting Drew down because of it and because I know he wants me to have a job.  And the self-loathing and worthless feelings come back even harder and heavier when I think of it like that.

Despite this yuck feeling that creeps up occasionally, I had a really great week last week.  I went to my friend's apartment (and took the bus by myself for the first time, big deal) for lunch and a movie.  I went to the first annual American Women's meeting Thursday with my new pal Lauren and her friend Mandi.  We cabbed it over there and we all had to sit at different tables but it was actually fine.  I even stood up in front of the entire room of people and introduced myself without incident!  I chatted with young moms to my right and 90 year old women at my left, chatted with lots of different girls after, and then went to a fun lunch with Lauren and Mandi when the meeting was over.  Does all of this stuff mean I'm growing?  I was feeling good and loving the weather so I decided to ride this good mood all the way over to the Cervantes Institute to get my assessment for Spanish classes.  (I realized that maybe I should focus on a language that I could continue to use if/when I come back to Texas.  Though French isn't completely out of the running yet.)  I struggled a little bit on the grammar/written part, but I DOMINATED on the spoken part.  She said I needed some brushing up on my grammar but after speaking to me, she wanted to put me in the high(er) level class.  Woohoo!  That really helped my self-esteem, which I needed.  I was happy.

Sorry.  Not trying to complain but...I need to vent occasionally.  More reports about our weekend with John and Natalie to come!

The Greenway Photo Album

This past weekend, Drew, Tracy and I headed over to the west coast to the small town of Westport in County Mayo.  Tracy had come across/heard about the Great Western Greenway, a 42 kilometer biking and walking path along the coast and through the country side, and asked if we wanted to go and bike it with her.  ABSOLUTELY!  Drew and I love biking, running, mountain climbing, camping, and anything else extreme!  Oh wait, no we don't.  I'm not sure what made us say yes, but we decided (a) we like Tracy, (b) we had nothing else to do, (c) it was supposed to be beautiful, and (d) it'll be an adventure!  Why not?

We headed over to Westport on the train early Saturday morning, dropped our stuff off at the hotel, changed, and went and got our bikes.

The Greenway is divided into three parts, and do to the whole thing you either have to start in Westport and then hop on a "shuttle" back, or you can take a tiny, rickety, old van crowded with people, get shoved in the very back, and take the most frightening ride of your life up to Achill and try not to throw up in the process, and then ride your bike back to Westport.  We went with the latter option.

(During our death-defying ride, the thought literally crossed my mind, "If I die here, will anyone know?  Will my parents know that I'm in Westport this weekend?  Will anyone have any idea WHERE I AM!?"  I need to be better about letting peeps know.  Like the US Embassy.)

It was 13K between Achill and Mulranney, where we stopped for lunch, 18K between Mulranney and Newport, and 11K from Newport to Westport.  The last leg was the absolute hardest leg and our hands, butts, backs, and limbs were so sore already we didn't know if we could make it - and wondered why the hell we ever agreed to this "adventure" in the first place.  Every time we'd break and I'd sit back down I'd experience excruciating pain - I've never given birth, but riding a bike for 42K leads me to believe that I now know what the aftermath feels like.  But like the Ring of Kerry, it's almost hard to complain about the physical discomfort when you're surrounded by the absolutely breathtaking countryside.  Here is a photo album of our trip!

Gettin' ready to head out.

They strongly suggested we wear these prison-like vests because parts of the trail were on the actual road/highway.  We needed to stand out so cars wouldn't hit us.  Fine by me!

Enchanted forest.

This was generally the order of our trip: Drew leading the pack....

Tracy in the middle (taking the picture), and me trailing far behind.  Ah well.  Can't win 'em all.

Heading into Westport, we passed this person's backyard.  Isn't it gorgeous?

TP and I having a pre-dinner drink.

My dinner: mushroom risotto!  Yummm.

Our cute hotel!  They may or may not have messed up our reservation and I may or may not have slept on a rollaway bed across the room from Drew, but we got a bottle of wine out of it and a free breakfast.  Woohoo!

The cute town!

Us in front of the canals on the way to the train station.

**Several of these photos are courtesy of Tracy, and you can check out her blog post about our trip here.**

Despite the ongoing butt pain, the sense of accomplishment was something I wouldn't trade for the world!  We did it!  It was a lovely trip with breathtaking views of coast, fields, forests, mountains, animals, greenery, nice people, and lots of laughs.  We're glad we went out of our comfort zone (literally) and made dreams come true.  Though it's Thursday and my butt still hurts.  Ah well!