Rainbow of Leftovers

Last night for supper I did a clear-out of the fridge and we emptied 4 containers of leftovers for supper and finished off a couple more things that needed to be eaten. I do not like wasting food!

There was a container with cooked brown rice left from a few nights earlier, when we had a Thai veggie stir-fry.

There was a container of chilli beans from the night before--when we got here I could not find chilli powder right away, so I bought a few cans of organic chilli beans (still not used to this spelling of "chilli!"). I still had a can left so one night I sweated some onion and garlic in a bit of olive oil, added some frozen sweetcorn and a can of the chilli beans and let that heat through. We had burritos that night and there was some of that mixture left.

There was a container with one turkey burger in it. We do not have turkey mince available here, but were really happy to find turkey burgers once at SuperValu. We bought 2 packages, but Bill didn't care for them much when we had the first package. I found them acceptable (but not good enough to buy again) so last week I cooked the last package of 4 and ate them through the week.

There was a container of salsa left from what I made for the burritos. I had 4 or 5 tomatoes so I chopped them up and put them in a bowl. I added a chopped onion, a chopped fresh jalapeno, and a couple of cloves of minced garlic. I sprinkled some oregano over it all, added a tiny bit of sugar, and drizzled with cider vinegar before mixing it all up.

So to use it all, for Bill, I put mixed some chilli bean mixture and brown rice in a bowl and heated in the microwave. I added some cheddar cheese and stirred it in. I spread this on a wholemeal wrap that I'd folded in half and he topped it with salsa. For myself, I added the turkey burger--chopped--into the beans and rice mixture, added the cheese, spread it on the last wholemeal wrap folded in half, topped it with the last of a head of lettuce that I tore up and some salsa. It was delicious!

This left the fridge almost empty and ready to be resupplied. This morning we filled in the empty space :-)

Share

Sunday on One of the 700 Hills

I'm reading a book that our neighbour, Jason, brought over for us to borrow. It's a history of Killybegs. I read in there that a visiting journalist in 1893 wrote, "Rome is built on seven hills, but Killybegs is built on seven hundred hills." Here we sit partway up one of the 700 with the sun (mostly) shining and everything glowing a brilliant green. I finished this scarf today and could not resist hanging it on the pine tree that lives outside our back door. Every time I go outside or pass the sitting room window and see it, I am startled anew at the brightness and beauty of that green!

I made the scarf for another neighbour, Teresa (I have been spelling her name wrong--sorry, Teresa!). It's made with a skein of sock yarn and a size G crochet hook.

Superman Fergus stopped in for a visit and stopped in our doorway to survey the territory for a few minutes.

And since it's sunny, there must be some laundry drying on the line :-)

 It's a peaceful, colourful, pleasant Sunday on the hill. Hope it's the same wherever you are!

Share

One Month

One month ago today we left Ballinrobe for the last time. Bill snapped a photo from the bus window as we started to pull out.

We were exhausted when we got here that afternoon, but the day was not without amusing conversation, though it was probably far more amusing for us than for the guy who struck up the conversation in the first place!

We were waiting in Donegal Town for the bus to Killybegs. There is no station there--all the buses, no matter their direction, stop in front of the Abbey Hotel, so the narrow sidewalk can be crowded at times. There we were with our luggage, waiting. We saw a guy get out of a car. Before long he asked us if we were waiting for the bus to Derry. We told him we'd gotten off of that bus and were waiting to go to Killybegs. He said he thought there was a bus to Derry at 1:30--that's what he'd been told (it was about 1:10). I directed him to the schedule on the wall. He came back and said the next bus was at 2:37. Then he went on to say that he and his wife were on holiday from Northern Ireland and staying at a local hotel, where they'd locked their keys in her car, along with her phone charger and a bottle of champagne. The locksmith they called could not get the door open, so dropped him off in Donegal Town to get the bus to Derry, where he could change buses to a company that had service to his neck of the woods. He would pick up his car and the spare set of keys to her car and drive back. I told him he was really going to earn that bottle of champagne!! He was eager to get going and did not want to wait the hour and a half until the next Derry bus and kept calling people to pick him up--no one seemed interested. When we got on our bus, he was still waiting and calling. I wondered in the month since how he and his wife fared!

When our little 20-seater bus to Killybegs pulled up, we dragged our bags to the back to place them in the small luggage compartment. The door would not open. There was another woman there with a suitcase and she tried as well. No luck. Bill told the driver, who came out and said the doors would not open, so we would have to bring our bags inside the bus! Of course we had our heaviest load yet and Bill was still dragging from the shingles. I was struggling to get up the stairs and the driver grabbed the smaller suitcase and placed it on a seat. The big, heavy, red suitcase had nowhere to go except next to his seat, so that's where it sat. When there was a free seat, he hoisted it up. When we got to Killybegs, he was kind enough to haul them down again. One of the passengers said to her companion, "Wow, they must be coming for a year or something!" Yeah, something like that :-) Then we dragged everything to the end of the driveway and up the hill in stages before hauling it inside and collapsing into our chairs. After a while we went out and got some dinner. We were both thrilled that it was done! I am sure the bus driver hopes to never see us again!

We took our time unpacking and settling in. There were a few things we needed and we readily found most of them at the local charity shop and a couple of small businesses in town (and we went back to get more pillows the other day--Karen O, you will have a place to lay your head!!). One thing we could not find was a dish rack. We looked in the charity shop, though I did not expect to find one there. We didn't. We looked in other places and did not see any, except for one double decker one that was too big for our available space. We just had to leave the dishes on the stainless steel draining area and let them air dry as much as possible before finishing the job with a dish towel. This meant we always had sopping wet towels! The other day we checked in at the charity shop, went to the kitchenware section, and I looked up. There, on the top shelf, was a purple plastic dish rack. I pulled it off the shelf. Then I looked down on the bottom shelf and spotted a metal dish rack. It was missing one spoke, but was much better than the plastic one, which I put back.

I was irrationally pleased to find this and every time I pick up a dry towel or a dry dish, I am pleased all over again!!

The wild rhododendron that is blooming on my windowsill also makes me very happy! Isn't it gorgeous?

One month in and every day I still think to myself, "I can't believe I get to live here!"

Happy Saturday!

Share

Fintra with Fergus (and his mom)

Tonight I rode along with Fergus and his mom to Fintra Beach. It is beautiful, Fergus was as cute as ever, and the company was fabulous!

Fergus is a tennis ball pro. He would sometimes go in after the ball and sometimes stand and bark at it.

After Fergus played ball in the estuary for a while, we walked along a trail/boardwalk through the dunes to
the beach itself.

Share

Sharing Food

I finally moved the freezer to a better spot. I had to, since people were coming for supper and the spot where it had originally been placed by the landlord blocked part of the table!

It works out much better there. Not only does it open up the room a little bit, but now the table is unblocked and we were able to move it down a little bit away from the door, providing more space on that side too. An added bonus is that my herbs and spices and stuff are right there for me to grab while I am cooking (I keep them on top of the freezer next to that olive oil bottle). I don't know why I didn't do it before--it was just one of those things that I meant to do but never did.

I made baked fusilli that night with tomato basil and garlic herb sausages, a salad, and bread. For the pasta, I just cooked 500 grams of that and dumped it into a bowl. I sauteed some onion, red bell pepper, garlic, and courgette in some olive oil, added a couple of cans of diced tomatoes, three cans of tomato puree (paste), some oregano and basil. I dumped that into the bowl and added a couple of small containers of cottage cheese and some grated mozzarella. I put it in an oiled baking dish and out it in the oven for 20 minutes or so, then plunked the sausages on top and cooked for another 20. This served the 5 of us with leftovers.

For the salad I just sliced some Irish cucumber and cut up some cherry tomatoes. Then I sprinkled with oregano and granulated garlic, grated some of SuperValu's dried chilli mix into it, and drizzled with cider vinegar and olive oil.

When everyone arrived, they brought with them some bread that a friend had made and some artisan butter with sea salt. Yummy!

I just love the presentation here! You can tell Theresa is a florist! The basil is wilted because I took this the following morning and it had spent the night in the fridge. You can see we'd already dug in at this point!

The bread is tomato herb and it is delicious--especially warm with some of that butter melting into it!

Of course as we sat around the table one of the topics of conversation was food. Theresa asked Bill if there was any food he missed and he mentioned pepper cheese. We also talked about fish--this town is built on fish. This afternoon there was a knock at the window and I opened the door to find Theresa holding a basket with some trout that a friend had caught and given to her, a block of cheese, and a dish of little peppers! She said if we ate the peppers and cheese together, maybe it would be sort of like pepper cheese! How cool is that!? It really is amazing cheese and is delicious with the peppers! I think she said she got it at SuperValu--I will have to look for it.

I decided to cook the trout for supper. I had a bag of frozen Mediterranean veggies in the freezer--it was the first time I'd bought them. I decided I should try them and see whether they were worth buying again so I threw them on a baking pan and dressed them up just a little. It was a mix of potatoes, courgette (zucchini), cherry tomatoes, bell pepper, and onion with black pepper and basil as seasoning. I sprinkled on some oregano and granulated garlic and drizzled a bit of olive oil over it all. I cooked these until they were about 10 minutes away from done and put the fish on top. I'd sprinkled that with garlic, basil and oregano as well. Once the fish was cooked, we ate. It was delicious and oh so simple! The veggies are definitely worth buying again, so I will be keeping some in the freezer in future!

It's a bank holiday weekend here so naturally it will continue to rain. That is just dandy with me, but some people don't care for it. There could be grass frost tonight, but hey, there are "good sunny spells" in between showers. Monday is supposed to be windy and rainy though, I think, with temperatures that would be normal for March. That is my kind of summer :-)

Share

Beautiful Bruckless

Last night our neighbours, including Fergus the Superdog, came over for supper. We all sat in our little kitchen eating talking, and laughing. Today, Jason, the young man who lives next door, popped in and dumped an armload of books and some town info on our table--based on some of what we were talking about last night, he thought we'd like to borrow the reading material. How great is that? I am a happy camper when someone walks into my home and drops a bunch of books on the table! :-)

Shortly after that, Theresa took Bill, me, Jason, and of course, Fergus, to Bruckless, a small neighbouring town where she used to live. She wanted us to see the bluebell forest while the bluebells were blooming. It was beautiful!

 

 After we walked through the woods we walked along a path that led to a stone bridge.

 Through the trees you can just see a bit of a house. Theresa's friends live there, so we stopped in for an impromptu visit. They are lovely people and I enjoyed myself so much. We saw their completely charming house full of handmade items--knitted, crocheted, quilted, and cross-stitched. It is an amazing spot--so peaceful--and they have done a lot of work on the surrounding area, which was all overgrown when they got it.

This is the view from the stone bridge:

Their flowers are gorgeous!

One on side of the house they have a garden, but it's tough going this year because it has been chilly and wet--January weather as our host said. I love the use of old headboards here!

On the other side of the house, down a stone path and tucked away from the road, is the fairy garden. Theresa's friend, Mona, brought me back there and said they tell the children that if they are quiet, they will hear the fairies singing! They have a small covered bench out there strung with dragonfly lights so it's a great place to sit and listen to the fairies :-)

Mona told me that there used to be a little village there, but everyone died of cholera which they got from the water that came from that well.

When we left we passed back over the stone bridge and veered off into a small clearing with a grave. This was a communist who could not be buried anywhere else, so they created his resting spot there--and a lovely spot it is, too!

It was a wonderful evening filled with beautiful scenery and great company!

Share

Hills and a Visit From Superman

We were in the sitting room this afternoon and we had the doors open. In walked Superman for a visit. He knew just where he was going and headed straight for the kitchen, where he sniffed around and waited.

Unfortunately for him I had been told by his people (our neighbours) that he is diabetic, so treats are a no-no. This is harder on me than it is on Superman, I am sure--especially when he looks up and gives me "the face." His real name is Fergus, but I think of him as Superman because the first time I met him he was wearing his Superman vest, as he was today :-)

Before we were hanging out and denying Superman Fergus his desired treats, we went out for a walk. We walked around town and then headed up a side street that is just a little bit down the road from our place. Like most of the streets that lead away from town, it was uphill. The road runs parallel to the road we are on for a way so we ended up above and behind our place. I noticed this very tall lilac--don't think I have ever seen one quite that tall.

I guess I didn't even know they got that big. Then again, I was looking at it from across the street and the flowers looked like lilacs, but maybe they are something else!

We took a different road to get back to Main St because we wanted to know if it was the road we thought it was. It was.

The red building on the right is the Ritz Accommodation. I remember seeing their website when we were looking for a place to stay--I think it's a hostel-like place. You can get a sense of the hill from the photo--I would not want to be going down that way in snow or ice--it's steep at the bottom, though there is a railing on that far cement wall.

I looked down and saw one of these manhole covers--I've seen a few around town:

On the left, behind the stone wall you can see in the photo above, is St Mary's church and the grounds.

 You can see the harbour over the roofs beyond.

Inside the walled courtyard is a small alcove with beches built into the walls and these plaques:

You really would never know that Main St was just past those roofs--it was a very peaceful spot and quite lovely, with the views of the harbour and the plants about to flower.I noticed that when we were at the B&B too--even though it is right in town, it was really quiet.  That's just the way I like it!

Share