An American in Ireland

If you’re lucky, you have a few people in your life that are just plain good. They’re unselfish, ethical and generally quite happy and their goodness inspires you to be better. If anyone were to say a bad word about them, you’d be ready to fight tooth and nail to defend their honour.

Bill and Sharon Gunter – known in foodie circles by their blog, Gunternation – are two such people. I first met them on an Irish Foodies outing I organised to the Brown Hound Bakery and Eastern Seaboard, and we immediately hit it off. They’re expats too, and we bonded on everything from adjusting to a new culture (they’ve been here a few years longer than me, so they were full of great advice) to our favourite foods from back home.

Though we’re all Americans, we hail from different regions; the Gunters are from the South and mid-west and I’m from Southern California. So when we talk about the American foods we grew up with, we talk about very different dishes. Sharon loves her Frito Pie and Bill, who went to college in New Orleans, is nuts about po’ boys and gumbo. Me, I’m all about the sushi and Cali burritos. I love hearing them talk about the foods they grew up with, because it’s so different from what I ate as a kid. From pimento cheese to chicken spaghetti, I now have a whole new list of down-home American dishes I want to try.

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The other day as I was chatting away with a fewvendors at the Honest 2 Goodness farmers market, I realised that somewhere between arriving in Ireland on March 4th, 2010 and last Saturday, I’d managed to create a life here.

When I first landed, I had a few friends I knew from years ago but as they all lived in a different area it was common for me to walk around town (Drogheda, which was my first home here) and not know a single face. I’d go grocery shopping, sit and read at a café for hours, stroll around the streets without seeing a single person I knew. I stumbled my way through getting to know the one-way streets and the opening hours of the post office and Tesco and which roads allowed free parking and which ones didn’t.

People say you either sink or swim, but for the first several months I was doggy paddling rather soppily – and doing a pretty good job at staying afloat. I couldn’t quite open my eyes underwater and sometimes I’d bump my head into a wall, but I kept kicking. After meeting Mountaineering Man and dating for several months, I made the move to Dublin and started that process again – the getting-to-know-you part – finding my way around the city, making new friends and creating a home. And I kept on paddling.

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“Did you put a clean tea towel in the kitchen?”

It’s a Saturday afternoon, and Mountaineering Man and I are doing a full house cleaning in preparation for his parents’ visit. While I’m in the bedroom primping the bedcovers, he’s finishing up the kitchen.

“Yep, all done!” he says.

“Is it the dark blue one with the stripes?” I ask.

“Yep!” says he.

“Noooo – not that one,” I said, before grabbing another tea towel from the hot press and running off to the kitchen.

MM looked confused, and understandably so. The blue striped tea towel was clean, and fresh from the press. But what he doesn’t know is that this particular tea towel is a mockery of a tea towel, or any towel for that matter. It has a large weave and a very rough surface and is cheaply made. When you wipe it across a wet surface, it doesn’t soak up any moisture; it merely spreads the water around, creating big streaks of wetness across the counter – the kind that dries into a pattern of unattractive water spots, ones you have to then wipe over again. To add insult to injury it lost its rectangular form after the first wash; it’s now just a sad, shapeless version of what it once was, when I first spied it in the kitchen aisle at TK Maxx and thought it would go nicely with some navy oven mitts I already had.

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When I was 15 years old, I worked after school and weekends at a girls’ clothing shop called Wet Seal. It was the perfect job for me at that age; as a Southern California teenager, I spent most of my free time at the mall anyway, so getting paid and receiving big discounts on Wet Seal purchases made working there a no-brainer!

I enjoyed the customer service work; I didn’t even mind cleaning out the dressing rooms and organising the hundreds of items of clothing in the shop. And I did really well. I always hit my target numbers and frequently made the top sales slot for the days I worked.

However, my manager never seem to notice or acknowledge my contributions and this was a great source of stress and irritation for me. Her name was Heather, and she was a typical LA blonde; your basic, obnoxious Valley Girl nightmare. Whether it was jealousy or flat-out stupidity (or both), she never complimented my work and often gave me a hard time about the smallest missteps.

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Even though a sandwich seems simple enough, it’s really hard to find a great, well-constructed sambos these days. The ratio of filling to bread, the texture of the bread (overly toasted means it tears up the roof of your mouth; too soft means not enough support for innards), the right size and balance of filling…it ain’t rocket science but there is definitely an art to making the perfect sandwich.

It was this idea – one of the perfect sandwich, which in this case was the classic po’ boy – that brought us together one breezy Saturday afternoon. For several weeks now, some of us Irish Foodies including Bill & Sharon Gunter, Aoife, Kristin and a few others filled the Twitterverse with chatter about having a po’ boy party; after a few email exchanges it was decided we’d meet at the Gunters’ for an afternoon of sandwich-making.

The po’ boy is a New Orleans invention and usually consists of a baguette filled with fried oysters, shredded lettuce and slices of tomato. There are also beef, chicken, veggie, catfish and other varieties of po’ boy, but as New Orleans is famous for its oysters, that is the one I’d consider the pure po’ boy. There’s a story behind the name (as with many great dishes do): Back in 1929, during the streetcar employee strike, restaurant owners Benny and Clovis Martin served the striking workers free sandwiches. Because the all-male strikers were referred to as “poor boys,” the sandwiches took on the name; with the Louisiana accent, it sounded more like “po’ boy,” and it stuck.

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Do you ever have one of those days where you just need a few more hours to get everything done? Lately I’ve been feeling like that about entire weeks and months; it seems I always need more time to do this or that and more time to actually get some rest in between all the chores!

Though I don’t necessarily *feel* super stressed out (I am not gritting my teeth and clenching my fists…yet), I’m quite frazzled these days. Between work, wedding planning, blogging, creative projects and my everyday chores, by day’s end I feel tattered and worn. I realise this isn’t a problem specific to me, and there are plenty of people in the world with far greater issues than these. But as they say it’s all relative and lately I am feeling the strain of it all, which is typically made worse by the bi-polar Irish weather and all its resulting irritants (dampness, pollen, crazy traffic – ARGH!).

There are the necessary chores like grocery shopping and cooking, which I usually enjoy greatly. Last Sunday I spent hours in the kitchen making our usual baked oatmeal, baked ham (for Mountaineering Man’s sambos) and veggie curry with quinoa (for my lunches) plus a gluten-free brownie cake for my coeliac co-worker (just for fun) and a batch of vegan banana ice cream (just for fun). But on top of all the regular cooking the extras proved far too much work, and I didn’t enjoy it like I normally would. Because MM takes on most of the cleaning and laundry duties, I always assume I have enough time to do those pleasurable cooking projects – but somehow take on more than I can handle!

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It’s not exaggeration to say that for the last week or so, Ireland has been a different place all together. For seven days running, we’ve been enjoying cloudless, sunny skies and temperatures in the low-to-mid 20s (that would be 69 – 74 F).

The joy at such weather is downright palpable. People are running around in flip-flops and shorts taking full advantage by eating lunch outdoors and soaking in all the Vitamin D goodness. Needless to say, I’ve seen a lot of red skin around town in the last couple of days! Personally the heat and resulting dry air have been downright healing for me as I’m usually plagued with sinus issues and all kinds of upper respiratory problems due to the damp, cold Irish weather.

Most days, my eyes are bloodshot and cheeks blotchy and red from the incessant sneezing, coughing (I’ve had at least 3 chest infections in the last 2 years) and sniffling that afflict me for hours on end. Although I’ve fallen in love with Ireland, my body continues to reject the cold, pollen, viruses, bacteria – everything! My doctor actually said that she’s never heard me NOT sound stuffed-up, and sadly it’s true. But for these last few glorious days, my nose has been clear and my eyes don’t look like those of a heroin addict. I feel like my old self again and it’s been wonderful.

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The other day I overheard someone say, “Ugh, Grafton Street is so full of chuggers!”

Chuggers?

For a few minutes I pondered what a chugger could be. Someone who drinks liquids very quickly? A clever word for a chubby bugger? Wrong on both counts. A chugger is a “charity mugger,” said my Irish friend. Of course that explanation opened up a whole new world of questions. A charity mugger? Is this someone who robs people and then gives the stolen goods to the poor?

Wrong again. A charity mugger is a student or adult volunteer who aggressively asks you to sign their petition for the whales/orphans/PETA/Greenpeace/etc. You know, the seemingly well-meaning volunteer who, when you politely decline his invitation to sign whatever’s on his clipboard continues to chase you down the street, loudly spouting off all the reasons why you just NEED TO SIGN THE PETITION!

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Lately life seems to be moving along at a rapid pace, but then again that’s what happens when one is planning a wedding. Considering we got engaged in February and are set to be married autumn of this year, we didn’t really give ourselves a whole lot of time!

But that’s okay. We’re not having a big wedding; in fact, we’re having 32 guests total – about half from my side, half from Mountaineering Man’s side. It’ll be our immediate family members, and a few close friends. Despite the small size it will be a real wedding, not a courthouse affair but rather a late afternoon ceremony and evening reception at a private Villa in the Chianti region of Tuscany.

I was never one of those girls who dreamt of her wedding day from a young age; as a kid I put a pillowcase on my head so I could pretend to be a nun, not a bride [and no, I had no designs to be a woman of the cloth – I was merely impersonating my teachers at school!]. But I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this wedding is a dream, albeit one that was never fully formed before I met MM. To be married to this man amidst the rolling hills of Italy, celebrating with close family and friends while feasting on traditional Tuscan fare and drinking wine from the Villa’s own vineyard…I’m pinching myself just thinking about it!

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Recently I renewed my commitment to eat healthier; not necessarily in the caloric sense, but in that I would try to shop locally and eat as much wholesome foods as possible. The less packaged food, the better.

Due to our busy work schedules, I’d gotten quite lazy of late and found myself relying solely on Tesco deliveries for our groceries. Despite the fact that something was almost always wrong in the order – rotten onions, missing items, food with expired “Sell By” dates – it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I finally decided take back control of my weekly food shop.

The “ah-ha” moment came one evening when I was making sandwiches for Mountaineering Man to take to work the next day. As I ripped open yet another package of sliced chicken sandwich meat, I took a good look at it and realized how disgusting it was. Pinkish, shiny, not a trace of texture and clearly plugged up with salt water and gelatin, it was not nourishment – it was manufactured, God-knows-where-it-came-from processed foodstuffs.

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