Happy Thanksgiving!

Tomorrow is Thursday in Ireland, but here at the Old Coast Guard Station (aka "The Commune") it will be Thanksgiving. We will all gather for a meal tomorrow and enjoy good food, conversation, and friendship. Last night I had two slow cookers (one mine and one borrowed) cooking squash. Tonight they will be in use for sweet potatoes. In the morning I will make the stuffing for the turkey a friend and neighbour special-ordered from Dave and Kath, the butchers downtown. Early in the afternoon I will make the mashed potatoes. We are working together, borrowing stuff, and using various refrigerators to keep the food. It takes a village :-)

If you will be celebrating Thanksgiving, I wish you a wonderful day. If not, then I wish you a wonderful Thursday :-)

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Orange Banana Walnut Muffins

I used to make muffins a lot, but when we moved to Ireland I was not baking much. First of all I did not have the pans and we did not want to accumulate a lot of stuff, knowing as we did that we were likely to to move at some point after our lease was up. Secondly, the cost of baking supplies, such as what are known as "jumbo oats" here (as opposed to porridge oats which are small flakes and are everywhere) and wholemeal flour, both of which are staples in my baking, were priced such that it was simply cheaper to buy ready baked goods, which were readily available, reasonably priced, and of good quality. Finally, my oven was a small fan oven and it took a bit of getting used to so I was unsure how baked goods would come out. I remember having an oven once that was impossible to use for some things, which would be burnt on the outside and still gooey on the inside.

We've been here a year and a half now and things have changed. We've landed in our little cottage in Killybegs and I have no intention of leaving. I tell Bill that if anyone wants me out of here they can rent a crane to hoist me out, because I won't leave willingly :-) Our friend and neighbour, Tim, gave me muffin tins that belonged to his late wife, Mary. We have access to both an Aldi and a Lidl in Donegal Town, which means that I can get baking supplies, including jumbo oats and wholemeal flour at very low prices and I stock up. I still have a dinky fan oven, but I am getting used to it now and have started baking muffins once again. Turns out I've missed them quite a bit!

Today I made some orange banana walnut muffins. These are a variation on the Lynne's Muffin recipe that I first came across in The New Laurel's Kitchen Cookbook over 25 years ago--you can find it here. They are excellent as written, but I have varied them in many different ways over the years, depending on what I have around.

Here is this version:
Place 2 cups jumbo oats (rolled oats in the US--not quick cooking) and 1 1/2 cups orange juice in a container, place in fridge and refrigerate overnight for for 8 hours or more.

To the oat mixture, add:
2 Tablespoons maple syrup (could use brown sugar or regular sugar instead)
cinnamon or vanilla extract can be added, but these are optional
2 eggs
1 teaspoon each baking soda and salt
1 cup wholemeal (whole wheat in US) flour

Mix until blended and then fold in some chopped walnut pieces and chopped banana.

Spoon batter into greased or papered muffin tins and bake in a 180C fan oven (US 400F) for about 20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on wire rack.

This makes a big batch of batter and the muffin tins here run small, so once I had 12 muffins baking and I still had batter left, I added some small dark chocolate chips, stirred them in and baked 6 more muffins :-) They are yummy! They are quite healthy and quite delicious, so great to have as part of a meal or as a snack. We often have one as dessert/nighttime snack.

We went to Aldi and Lidl yesterday afternoon and I got some baking cocoa. Next batch will be chocolate!

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Seasonal

It has been a very strange year here, weatherwise. It seemed like summer arrived during the first week of April, hung around for a couple of weeks and then left again. That was just fine and dandy with me and I loved the cool, rainy, grey summer we did have. Then it started warming up a little and October was actually warmer, sunnier, and drier than usual. Now in November there are still warm temperatures and sunny blue skies. Weird.

I walked down into the lower garden this afternoon and it was autumnal and at the same time almost springlike, depending on where I looked. I was surrounded by brightly coloured fall leaves, flowers in bud and in bloom, new growth, and old growth, all with the sun shining overhead.

I wonder what winter will be like!

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Greetings from Belfast

We are staying in Belfast this week at the home of a friend while he is on his own holiday. He brought us here, showed us around the place, and surprised us with 7-day bus passes! The place where he lives is very quiet and peaceful, which is a lovely thing, especially after the hustle and bustle of the city centre. We stayed close to home the first full day we were here, but went into the city centre yesterday and today. Belfast is a small city, as cities go, but it seems quite big to us. We were reminded that we have not been in a city this size in quite a long time.

Yesterday we walked into the city from where we are just to get a sense of the area. We stopped in at St George's Market and then walked to City Hall where there is a grassy area with benches. It seemed like a good place to stop and eat the sandwiches and fruit we'd brought with us. I was shocked to see this huge TV screen there in this park-like setting. Is there not enough noise around without this thing blaring stuff at people? I have still not been able to get the words "Orwellian" and "dystopia" out of my mind when I see this thing.

There are a lot of statues in this park area and Bill walked around and took a lot of photos of them. Then we walked around the square before heading home--it was a 6 mile round trip.

As we crossed the bridge over the River Lagan, the sun was coming through at just the right angle to create this nice design on the footpath:

Today we wanted to walk around in the city so we took the bus into the city centre and it dropped us off right at City Hall. From there we walked to Donegall Quay. There is a little square there with a big blue fish, some seals, and some benches.

Many of the tiles that make up the fish are printed with designs.

Fish eye:

Seals:

Lots of tourist stuff geared to Titanic here, but I thought this sign was particularly amusing:

"Not our fault, man!"

I thought this building across the street was interestng:

And the foliage across the river was beautiful:

There is a footpath along the river and as we walked along there I happened to turn my head to the left and saw a glimpse of another part of the city and the hills beyond.

We walked back to the fish and kept going to have a closer look at the sculpture we could see in the distance.

She is Beacon of Hope and stands in Thanksgiving Square at the end of the Queen Elizabeth Bridge. From the Discover Northern Ireland webpage, we read,
"Whilst it is easy to become impressed by the sheer magnitude and aesthetic appeal of the sculpture, Artist, Andy Scott who designed the iconic statue, has highlighted his hope that the true value in terms of civic pride, should not go unnoticed by the people of Northern Ireland-

'I hope that the figure is adopted by the people of Belfast as a symbol of peace and reconciliation, and as a shining beacon of modernity and progress'."

With that we concluded our river walk, got our bus home, and settled in for a quiet evening.

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Walking Around in Donegal Town

The other day we went to Donegal Town for a few hours. We'd been told about the bank walk--a wooded trail that runs along the bay--and we wanted to walk there. It is a beautiful spot.

The walk starts right next to the library, so before we began we went in and got our library cards. Yay!

On the way back into town, we went over the River Eske.

We stopped and had lunch at a little coffee shop/cafe/bakery sort of place. I had the best caramel square there. Had I known they were so excellent, I would have been scarfing them down all those times we waited right outside for the bus during the month we were moving! I know now and can pop in and get one whenever we are in town. We plan to make regular trips there. We want to see how everything changes with the seasons along the bank walk, use the library, and stop in at Aldi.

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The Beautiful Blooming Gardens

We spent a delightful couple of weeks with a friend who visited from Oregon. The time flew by all too quickly, but we had fun while she was here. Our neighbour played tour guide for us and brought us around to various beautiful scenic spots in this area--we do live in an amazing part of the world! We looked at the magnificence of Mother Nature, stopped in little cafes for tea, coffee and dessert, and sometimes just stayed home and enjoyed chatting. It was a low-key visit and that was just right.

While she was here, our landlord, who tends the lower garden, arrived for a couple of days of work. It looks a whole lot better now and it is much easier to see the blooms!
Some are not quite ready to make an appearance:

Some are already in spectacular bloom:

I think I saw some gooseberries down there, too. The fruit and veg guy who comes to town on Saturdays sells gooseberries. I was so surprised to see them--haven't seen those since Oma used to serve gooseberry pie!

So summer meanders along--people here are kind of waiting for summer to appear because it has been most unsummerlike--in the best possible way! Temperatures have been mostly in the 50s and low 60s. It has been cloudy and rainy a lot. And of course there is always a breeze. Yesterday was so damp and chilly that we had a turf fire! In July! How great is that?!? I love it, but I mostly keep that to myself :-) Looks like the flowers love it too. I could get used to summers like this!

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My 2 Cents

It was announced the other day that Ireland will begin rounding prices up and down for cash transactions. So if we are in a shop and the total of our purchases comes to some number of euro and, say, 21 or 22 cents, the cents would be rounded down to 20. If the total ended in 23 or 24 cents, it would be rounded up to 25. This is voluntary, but there was a trial run a year or two ago in County Wexford (I think) and everyone loved it--shopkeepers and customers alike. It's easy to see why! The one and two cent coins add up quickly and are heavy. There are no one and two dollar bills here--those are coins as well, so there are amounts ranging from 1 cent to 2 euro. We like the one and two euro coins, but of course they don't accumulate quite as quickly :-)

We started removing these and keeping them in a bag from one of Bill's prescriptions. The bank has a receptacle to take them--Change for Charity--so we will dump them in there, though we did keep one of each. We have them with our US penny, our British penny, the old pre-euro Irish penny and some shells we brought home from the beach.

These coins will remain legal tender and anyone who wants to still use them will be able to do so, but I think they are hoping to cut down or eliminate  production of them. It costs more to make each coin than the coin is worth and they had to make a lot more of them than other coins because people do exactly what we do--remove them from their pockets and wallets and stick them in a jar somewhere, thus removing them from circulation. There are some curmudgeons who do not like this idea--we heard one guy crying about his "freedom of choice" being taken from him. Get a grip, dude. So if that guy wants to carry around bagfuls of 1 and 2 cent pieces in his pockets, more power to him. We will keep on weeding out the ones we get and saving them for the receptacle in the bank--we don't have to lug around the coins and the Irish Heart Foundation gets a donation. Works for me! Apparently it works well in 5 other EU states, which are already doing the same thing.

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